Victor Rousseau

“ Even she had to yield to that sacred and pitiful impulse. I learned soon that the cylinder which contained her had been discovered and adopted as a symbol of freedom. I found the world aflame and flung myself into the heart of the revolution. By will I made myself the master of men. In six months my dominance was unquestioned. I could have become supreme, but I chose to work through others, that I might have the leisure to devote myself to my plans for the regeneration of man. I have succeeded; I have made the world better, Arnold, and I have made it free. ”

“ It is a glorious free world, Arnold, to which humanity has fallen heir, and the fight for it has been a stupendous one. And it is a world of my creation! I have done what Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon failed to do; I have brought humanity under one sway, out of the darkness into light, out of ignorance to knowledge. I have set man, poor plantigrade, on his feet firmly. He looks up to the skies, not in the blind and foolish hope of bodiless immortality, but knowing himself the free heir of the ages. ”

“ You have not entered the People’s House for seven years until tonight. Do you think we have forgotten that you exist? Do you think we have not wondered why the master of the world has left us to the whims of that fat old man? Sit by me, Sanson. Do you not see how you have toiled while Lembken has taken his ease? You have waited so long for one woman. Oh, yes, I know; all a great man’s secrets are known everywhere, though he thinks them in sanctuary, securely guarded. You can take her—but take us too. Live your life, Sanson! Save us and reign over us! ”

“ He laughed.
“This night’s work, which seems so wonderful to you, is but an episode,” he said. “Come with me to America, Arnold. In six months I can build up my world anew. I shall be less scrupulous and humane in the future with this miserable mob. No moron shall live, no defective go free. I have resolved that. Man can rise only by crushing out weakness and setting himself upon the necks of those who were born to serve. In six months America will be mine; in twelve, the world. From this time onward it is a battle to the death against all that retards the human race.” ”

“ Beside him sat a man of about the same age, perhaps sixty years, but lithe and lean and muscular, and with the keenest, cruelest face that I ever had seen. His whitening hair was brushed back from his forehead, and his expression was so full of sinister and malignant power that I knew this could be none other than Sanson, the devil of this devil’s world, who ruled the superstitious multitude by the terror of “Science become Faith,” as old Sir Spofforth had so aptly phrased it.
And, as I looked at him, I seemed to see the features of Herman Lazaroff, as he might have been in his old age. ”

“ I saw Sanson stiffen and catch at the rail of the nearing bridge. I saw David, now only an arm’s length from me, staring incredulous; Elizabeth with 278wide-open eyes, the bishop’s calm face, the Guard like carven effigies.
Then, as if the power that held the populace in unison were suddenly dissolved, they broke from their places. They sprang with frantic, exultant cries toward the Ant; they formed a dozen human chains that reared themselves above the pedestal, dissolved, and poured over the golden idol. Among them I saw clusters of men—our men—with Ray rods in their hands. ”

“ There was superstition enough hidden in the hearts of all, for faith, denied, creeps in, in strange guises; but the world awaited, rather, the inevitable leader who must come to set free a people grown over-ripe for freedom. For the horrors of the new civilization had reached the point where men had grown reckless of life. Everywhere was the anticipation of the approaching change, and even Sanson must have seen that neither his Guard nor his great Ray artillery could save his crumbling power. Science had overplayed her part when she had bankrupted human hearts. ”

“ And you think you can only love one at a time, in your romantic twentieth-century way. Well, I will match myself against her. You shall bring her here, Arnold, and I will fight her for you, and I will be your blue and she shall be your white, and I will serve you obediently till I have won your heart. Look on me, Arnold! See how beautiful I am! For I was born here; I am Boss Rose’s daughter, and I have never left the People’s House. Look at the whiteness of my skin! The sun has never shone on it. Look at my lips, Arnold! ”

“ The Age of Faith is coming back to the world, and, as in that splendid twelfth century, when it was in its zenith, there is a sense of youth in us. We feel that we are upon the threshold of a new epoch, uniting the triumphs of every preceding age. It is an age of joy, and will be vitalized by that art which, since the Reformation, has been sundered from human life. Its first achievement will be the magnificent cathedral that is to rise upon the site of the old Ant Temple. It will be a new world indeed. We know each age has its own cruelties and wrongs: the Inquisition of the sixteenth century ”

“ Something was stirring in the hearts of the multitude, molding them against knowledge and will. I felt it, too: a mighty spiritual power, a Light that clove the darkness. I saw the old bishop stand out at the end of the span and shake his clenched hand at Sanson, silent, opposite.
“You cannot raise one finger save by the will of Him whom you deny, Sanson!” he said. “You are not going to make any sacrifices. You, who have raised your will against heaven, this night your soul will be required of you!” ”

“ I bore with my full weight upon the metal edge. I plunged my arms within. I felt the heavy coils of Esther’s hair, her eyelids, cheek, and chin; I placed my hands beneath her arms and drew her forth. How I contrived it I do not know, for platform and cylinder rocked fearfully as they swung; but in a moment, it seemed, I held her light and wasted body against my own. And we were on the rocking altar-stone together, while the cylinder swung rhythmically above, passing our heads in steady, sweeping flights as I crouched with Esther in my arms behind the golden grille. ”

“ Were millions of colored men and women in America to be born forever, black cattle without hope, and die without a part in life? Had not the race at last turned on itself, when the eugenics madness thrust the sword into the heart of every family and made life a more loathsome slavery than any the world had known? What a sinister end to human hopes!
The persecutions of the mob always struck to degrade humanity. ”

“ Sanson was too shrewd not to see immediately that he had struck the wrong note. He swung himself about, facing the captives on the opposite span, and his voice reverberated through the Temple.
“You have demanded sacrifices, human sacrifices,” he cried, “and you shall have them, but not in honor of the Ant. There is no Ant, no God. But there is Freedom, hidden within the cylinder where she has lain since the beginnings of time, waiting for this day to dawn, now ready to emerge into a world set free. To her we sacrifice!” ”

“ THE LORDS OF MISRULE I saw her eyelids quiver and half unclose an instant, and, though there was no other sign of awakening upon the mask-like face of sleep, I knew she lived. The indicators upon the dials showed that five days remained before the opening of the cylinder. And, as I stared through the glass plate, so horror-struck and shaken, some power seemed to take possession of me and make me very calm. An immense elation succeeded fear and rendered it impotent. Esther was restored to me. We had not slept through that whole century not to meet at last. ”

“ Civilization, he said, seemed dying, and democracy its murderer.
“Dying! It is still struggling in its birth throes!” cried Lazaroff impetuously. “I grant that the democracy of today has proved its futility. But there is a new democracy to come. We are enslaved by the traditions of the past, by a worn-out religious system based upon the primitive animistic notion of a soul. There is the fatal weakness of our democracy. Science has never found the smallest trace of a soul; on the contrary, we know beyond doubt that we live in a mechanistic universe of absolute determinism.” ”

“ THE GODDESS OF THE TEMPLE The man in blue with the machine badge on his shoulder, who was waiting for me at the entrance, surveyed me with a smile of tolerant amusement.
“You are now at the heart of civilization,” he began. “Let me act as your guide, for I see that you are a stranger. Is it not wonderful to contemplate that here, upon a space of a few hektares, man has erected a monument that shall endure forever! This wing,” he added, “is Doctor Sanson’s domain, while Boss Lembken exercises his priestly function from the People’s House, under the dome.” ”

“ I have no intention of handing you over to Lembken’s ridiculous priests to be tried for heresy. There will be no more priests after a little while. The public mind is now ripe enough for the abolition of this stupid compromise of the transition period from God to Matter. One more animist will do little harm in a world in which they are still far from uncommon. And then, I am not a man of cruel impulses, Arnold, and I do not want to penalize you for having come into a world in which you are an anachronism. ”

“ In vain I looked about me for the Institute. There was no sign of it, nor of Sir Spofforth’s house. Nowhere was anything to be seen but the same forest growth, the dead leaves scurrying before the chill wind, and the vast brick piles. I had emerged from the cellar into a trackless wilderness.
And now at last my final doubt, which had bred hope, was gone. I ran through the forest, on and on, shouting like a madman and beating my breast, stumbling over the brick heaps that lay everywhere, plunging through thorny undergrowth, heedless of any course. ”

“ It would embitter my last days to see my daughter the wife of Herman Lazaroff. I have watched and tried to study him: it isn’t his materialism, Arnold, it’s his infernal will. He’ll break everything and everybody that conflicts with it when he wakes up and knows his powers. Now he doesn’t understand himself at all. He can see nothing interiorly, as good old Swedenborg would say. I tell you, Herman Lazaroff, able fellow as he is, and splendid brain, is a machine of devilish energy, and, unfortunately, fashioned for purely destructive purposes. ”

“ And although not even the very old remembered the time when Christianity was a living faith, yet the hopes of all hinged on it. There was no other hope for the world but the same Light that lit the darkness in the most shameful days of Rome’s high civilization. So they had enrolled themselves beneath that ancient banner of human freedom; 201dozens had died under torture rather than disclose the hiding place of their treasured Scriptures—of such parts as had come down to them, rewritten in the new syllabic characters. There was a rich harvest to come from many a martyr’s blood. ”

“ I found myself upon a slender bridge that seemed to span the vault. It widened in the center to a small, square, stone-paved enclosure, like a flat altar-top, surrounded by a close-wrought grille that gleamed like gold. I halted here, and, looking down, saw, far beneath, a throng whose white faces stared upward like masks. Again that chant arose, and now I heard its burden:
“We are immortal in the germ-plasm; make us immortal in the body before we die.” ”

“ But why was he afraid of me?
“Who is this Doctor Sanson?” I asked him.
To my surprise his voice dropped, and, before answering, he cast a cautious glance toward the telephone funnel. Then, rising, he stuffed a sofa cover into it.
“An illegal act,” he said, reseating himself. “If that were known I should be liable to forced labor in the leather factories for several years. Now, Arnold, you see my faith in you. Well, then, I cannot answer you. He is a man of superhuman powers, more feared than any man has ever been feared. ”

“ The tyrant of half the world, greater than any man had been since the days when the Caesars reigned, he had bound himself to a more awful law than any he could contrive. It wrung my heart even then, the man’s grim hopes and long enduring love, checked by so slight a chance.
“I found Esther was gone,” continued Sanson presently, rising and beginning to pace the vault. “I might have re-entered my cylinder, but I did not know whether she survived in hers. I knew my ambitions claimed me, and my duty to save humanity and raise it up from the ape. ”

“ Like bolting hares they turned and scuttled into the small, hidden room, where they cowered, women and negro eunuchs, still dressed in the masquerade of the revels that Lembken had held that night even while his empire was breaking from his hand. Horned women, women in dominoes, in striped and spotted hides, Elizabethans wearing hooped skirts and huge, starched neck frills, Victorian girls with parasols and corseted bodies, a motley, cowering crew, less abject only than the cringing blacks, eyed their pursuers with terror-stricken looks that sought their eyes for pity and found only hatred. ”

“ We understand each other, so we will be frank. Men such as we are above deceptions. You ought to be about a hundred and twenty-eight years old!”
He spoke jocularly, and yet I could see that he wished to be sure I was the man he sought. Evidently he knew my history. He heaved a sigh of immense satisfaction when I acquiesced.
“I was not sure it was you,” he said. “One has to be cautious when so much depends on it. And Sanson was beginning to suspect, but he does not know that I discovered Lazaroff’s papers. Sanson does not know everything, you see, Arnold. ”

“ His grief conquered him again, and he paced the vault like a madman, weeping with all the abandonment of one who is above the need of conventional repressions. I remembered the antics of the crowd that followed me to the court. Sanson’s grief was as unrestrained as their malice. But I was brought back from pity by the realization of this new and dreadful complication. Sanson loved Esther still. And he had worked for her. I recalled her immature feminist views. He had believed her youthful impatience of authority rested upon as firm a conviction as his beliefs! He thought he had freed humanity. ”

“ Plans are well under way to make an end of democracy and restore liberty to the world. You have unwittingly placed a wonderful weapon in our hands. No man can be neutral in such times. Now, Arnold, you have to make a decision which will affect not yourself only, but all of us, Britain, the Federation, and the race of men. You must choose your party.” He turned to Jones. “He must be told nothing until the time arrives,” he continued, assuming a tone of authority. “You will say nothing—nor you, Elizabeth.” ”

“ Lembken continued. “Reasonable men cement their friendships with self-interest. Come, let me look at you.”
He touched some switch near him, and the room was illuminated with a blaze of solar light. The golden ants upon his robes leaped into view. He turned on the divan heavily and stared into my face.
“Yes, I can trust you,” he said in approbation. “Well, Sanson will learn his error in four days’ time. You shall live here with me and have a life of pleasure. You need never think about the world below. We do exactly what we please; that is my rule in the People’s House.” ”