City of Endless Night Read online

  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 FORSUPREMACY ON THE CHANGING MAP OF THE WORLD

  ~1~

  When but a child of seven my uncle placed me in a private school inwhich one of the so-called redeemed sub-sailors was a teacher of theGerman language. As I look back now, in the light of my presentknowledge, I better comprehend the docile humility and carefullynurtured ignorance of this man. In his class rooms he used as a text adescription of German life, taken from the captured submarine. From thisbook he had secured his own conception of a civilization of which hereally knew practically nothing. I recall how we used to ask HerrMeineke if he had actually seen those strange things of which he taughtus. To this he always made answer, "The book is official, man'sobservation errs."

  ~2~

  "He can talk it," said my playmates who attended the public schoolswhere all teaching of the language of the outcast nation was prohibited.They invariably elected me to be "the Germans," and locked me up in theold garage while they rained a stock of sun-dried clay bombs upon theroof and then came with a rush to "batter down the walls of Berlin" bybreaking in the door, while I, muttering strange guttural oaths, wouldbe led forth to be "exterminated."

  On rainy days I would sometimes take my favoured playmates into myuncle's library where five great maps hung in ordered sequence on thepanelled wall.

  The first map was labelled "The Age of Nations--1914," and showed theblack spot of Germany, like in size to many of the surroundingcountries, the names of which one recited in the history class.

  The second map--"Germany's Maximum Expansion of the First WorldWar--1918"--showed the black area trebled in size, crowding into thepale gold of France, thrusting a hungry arm across the Hellesponttowards Bagdad, and, from the Balkans to the Baltic, blotting out allelse save the flaming red of Bolshevist Russia, which spread over theEastern half of Europe like a pool of fresh spilled blood.

  Third came "The Age of the League of Nations, 1919--1983," with the goldof democracy battling with the spreading red of socialism, for the blackof autocracy had erstwhile vanished.

  The fourth map was the most fascinating and terrible. Again the black ofautocracy appeared, obliterating the red of the Brotherhood of Man,spreading across half of Eurasia and thrusting a broad black shadow tothe Yellow Sea and a lesser one to the Persian Gulf. This map waslabelled "Maximum German Expansion of the Second World War, 1988," andlines of dotted white retreated in concentric waves till the lineof 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, soall the land was gold, save one black blot that might have been made bya single spattered drop of ink, for it was no bigger than the IrishIsland. The persistence of this remaining black on the map of the worldtroubled my boyish mind, as it has troubled three generations of theUnited World, and strive as I might, I could not comprehend why thegreat blackness of the fourth map had been erased and this small blotalone remained.

  ~3~

  When I returned from school for my vacation, after I had my first yearof physical science, I sought out my uncle in his laboratory and askedhim to explain the mystery of the little black island standing adamantin the golden sea of all the world.

  "That spot," said my uncle, "would have been erased in two more years ifa Leipzig professor had not discovered The Ray. Yet we do not know hisname 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 itdestroys the oxygen carrying power of living blood. If it were anemanation from a substance like radium, they could have fired it inprojectiles and so conquered the earth. If it were ether waves likeelectricity, we should have been able to have insulated against it, orthey should have been able to project it farther and destroy ouraircraft, but The Ray is not destructive beyond two thousand metres inthe air and hardly that far in the earth."

  "Then why do we not fly over and land an army and great guns and batterdown the walls of Berlin and he done with it?"

  "That, as you know if you studied your history, has been tried manytimes and always with disaster. The bomb-torn soil of that black land isspeckled white with the bones of World armies who were sent on landinginvasions before you or I was born. But it was only heroic folly, onegun popping out of a tunnel mouth can slay a thousand men. To pursue thegunners into their catacombs meant to be gassed; and sometimes ourforces were left to land in peace and set up their batteries to fireagainst Berlin, but the Germans would place Ray generators in the groundbeneath them and slay our forces in an hour, as the Angel of Jehovahwithered the hosts of the Assyrians."

  "But why," I persisted, "do we not tunnel under the Ray generators anddig our way to Berlin and blow it up?"

  My uncle smiled indulgently. "And that has been tried too, but they canhear our borings with microphones and cut us off, just as we cut themoff when they try to tunnel out and place new generators. It is tooslow, too difficult, either way; the line has wavered a little with theyears but to no practical avail; the war in our day has become merely awatching game, we to keep the Germans from coming out, they to keep usfrom penetrating within gunshot of Berlin; but to gain a mile ofworthless territory either way means too great a human waste to be worththe price. Things must go on as they are till the Germans tire of theirsunless imprisonment or till they exhaust some essential element intheir soil. But wars such as you read of in your history, will neverhappen again. The Germans cannot fight the world in the air, nor in thesea, nor on the surface of the earth; and we cannot fight the Germans inthe ground; so the war has become a fixed state of standing guard; thehope of victory, the fear of defeat have vanished; the romance of waris dead."

  "But why, then," I asked, "does the World Patrol continue to bomb theroof of Berlin?"

  "Politics," replied my uncle, "military politics, just futile display ofpyrotechnics to amuse the populace and give heroically inclined youngmen a chance to strut in uniforms--but after the election this fall suchfolly will cease."

  ~4~

  My uncle had predicted correctly, for by
the time I again came home onmy vacation, the newly elected Pacifist Council had reduced the aerialactivities to mere watchful patroling over the land of the enemy. Thencame the report of an attempt to launch an airplane from the roof ofBerlin. The people, in dire panic lest Ray generators were being carriedout by German aircraft, had clamoured for the recall of the PacifistCouncil, and the bombardment of Berlin was resumed.

  During the lull of the bombing activities my uncle, who stood high withthe Pacifist Administration, had obtained permission to fly over Europe,and I, most fortunate of boys, accompanied him. The plane in which wetravelled bore the emblem of the World Patrol. On a cloudless day wesailed over the pock-marked desert that had once been Germany and camewithin field-glass range of Berlin itself. On the wasted, bomb-torn landlay the great grey disc--the city of mystery. Three hundred metres highthey said it stood, but so vast was its extent that it seemed as flatand thin as a pancake on a griddle.

  "More people live in that mass of concrete," said my uncle, "than in thewhole of America west of the Rocky Mountains." His statement, I havesince learned, fell short of half the truth, but then it seemedappalling. I fancied the city a giant anthill, and searched with myglass as if I expected to see the ants swarming out. But no sign of lifewas visible upon the monotonous surface of the sand-blanketed roof, andhigh above the range of naked vision hung the hawk-like watchers of theWorld Patrol.

  The lure of unravelled secrets, the ambition for discovery andexploration stirred my boyish veins. Yes, I would know more of thestrange race, the unknown life that surged beneath that grey blanket ofmystery. But how? For over a century millions of men had felt that samelonging to know. Aviators, landing by accident or intent within thelines, had either returned with nothing to report, or they had notreturned. Daring journalists, with baskets of carrier pigeons, had onfoggy nights dropped by parachute to the roof of the city; but neitherthey nor the birds had brought back a single word of what lay beneaththe armed and armoured roof.

  My own resolution was but a boy's dream and I returned to Chicago totake up my chemical studies.