City of Endless Night Read online

  CHAPTER III

  IN A BLACK UTOPIA THE BLOND BROOD BREEDS AND SWARMS

  ~1~

  It was with a strange mixture of eagerness and fear that I received thehead physician's decision that I would henceforth recover my facultiesmore rapidly in the familiar environment of my own home.

  A wooden-faced male nurse accompanied me in a closed vehicle that rannoiselessly through the vaulted interior streets of the completelyroofed-in city. Once our vehicle entered an elevator and was let down abrief distance. We finally alighted in a street very like the one onwhich the hospital was located, and filed down a narrow passage-way. Mycompanion asked for my keys, which I found in my clothing. I stood bywith a palpitating heart as he turned the lock and opened the door.

  The place we entered was a comfortably furnished bachelor's apartment.Books and papers were littered about giving evidence of no disturbancesince the sudden leaving of the occupant. Immensely relieved I sat downin an upholstered chair while the nurse scurried about and put theplace in order.

  "You feel quite at home?" he asked as he finished his task.

  "Quite," I replied, "things are coming back to me now."

  "You should have been sent home sooner," he said. "I wished to tell thechief as much, but I am only a second year interne and it is forbiddenme to express an original opinion to him."

  "I am sure I will be all right now," I replied.

  He turned to go and then paused. "I think," he said, "that you shouldhave some notice on you that when you do go out, if you become confusedand make mistakes, the guards will understand. I will speak to Lieut.Forrester, the Third Assistant, and ask that such a card be sent you."With that he took his departure.

  When he had gone I breathed joyfully and freely. The rigid face andstaring eye that I had cultivated relaxed into a natural smile and thenI broke into a laugh. Here I was in the heart of Berlin, unsuspected ofbeing other than a loyal German and free, for the time at least, fromproblems of personal relations.

  I now made an elaborate inspection of my surroundings. I found awardrobe full of men's clothing, all of a single shade of mauve like thesuit I wore. Some suits I guessed to be work clothes from their cheapertexture and some, much finer, were evidently dress apparel.

  Having reassured myself that Armstadt had been the only occupant of theapartment, I turned to a pile of papers that the hospital attendant hadpicked up from the floor where they had dropped from a mail chute. Mostof these proved to be the accumulated copies of a daily chemical newsbulletin. Others were technical chemical journals. Among the letters Ifound an invitation to a meeting of a chemical society, and a note frommy tailor asking me to call; the third letter was written on atypewriter, an instrument the like of which I had already discovered inmy study. This sheet bore a neatly engraved head reading "Katrina,Permit 843 LX, Apartment 57, K Street, Level of the Free Women." Theletter ran:

  "Dear Karl: For three weeks now you have failed to keep your appointments and sent no explanation. You surely know that I will not tolerate such rude neglect. I have reported to the Supervisor that you are dropped from my list."

  So this was Katrina! Here at last was the end of the fears that hadhaunted me.

  ~2~

  As I was scanning the chemical journal I heard a bell ring and turningabout I saw that a metal box had slid forth upon a side board from anopening in the wall. In this box I found my dinner which I proceeded toenjoy in solitude. The food was more varied than in the hospital. Somewas liquid and some gelatinous, and some firm like bread or biscuit. Butof natural food products there was nothing save a dish of mushrooms anda single sprig of green no longer than my finger, and which, like afeather in a boy's cap, was inserted conspicuously in the top of asynthetic pudding. There was one food that puzzled me, for it wassausage-like in form and sausage-like in flavour, and I was surecontained some real substance of animal origin. Presuming, as I did atthat moment, that no animal life existed in Berlin, I ate this sausagewith doubts and misgivings.

  The dinner finished, I looked for a way to dispose of the dishes.Packing them back in the container I fumbled about and found a switchwhich set something going in the wall, and my dishes departed to thepublic dishwasher.

  Having cleared the desk I next turned to Armstadt's book shelves. Myattention was caught by a ponderous volume. It proved to be an atlas anddirectory of Berlin. In the front of this was a most revealing diagramwhich showed Berlin to be a city of sixty levels. The five lowest levelswere underground and all were labelled "Mineral Industries." Above thesewere eight levels of Food, Clothing and Miscellaneous industries. Thencame the seven workmen's residence levels, divided by trade groups.Above this were the four "Intellectual Levels," on one of which I, as achemist had my abode. Directly above these was the "Level of FreeWomen," and above that the residence level for military officers. Thenext was the "Royal Level," double in height of the other levels of thecity. Then came the "Administrative Level," followed by eight maternitylevels, then four levels of female schools and nine levels of maleschools. Then, for six levels, and reaching to within five levels of theroof of the city, were soldiers' barracks. Three of the remaining floorswere labelled "Swine Levels" and one "Green Gardens." Just beneath theroof was the defence level and above that the open roof itself.

  It was a city of some three hundred metres in height with mineralindustries at the bottom and the swine levels--I recalled thesausage--at the top. Midway between, remote from possible attack throughmines or from the roof, Royalty was sheltered, while the otherprivileged groups of society were stratified above and below it.

  Following the diagram of levels was a most informing chart arranged likea huge multiplication table. It gave after each level the words"permitted," "forbidden," and "permitted as announced," arranged incolumns for each of the other levels. From this I traced out that as achemist I was permitted on all the industrial, workmen's andintellectual levels, and on the Level of Free Women. I was permitted, asannounced, on the Administrative and Royal Levels; but forbidden on thelevels of military officers and soldiers' barracks, maternity and maleand female schools.

  I found that as a chemist I was particularly fortunate for many othergroups were given even less liberty. As for common workmen and soldiers,they were permitted on no levels except their own.

  The most perplexing thing about this system was the apparent segregationof such large groups of men from women. Family life in Germany wasevidently wonderfully altered and seemingly greatly restricted, acondition inconsistent with the belief that I had always held--that theGerman race was rapidly increasing.

  Turning to my atlas index I looked up the population statistics of thecity, and found that by the last census it was near three hundredmillion. And except for the few millions in the mines this huge mass ofhumanity was quartered beneath a single roof. I was greatly surprised,for this population figure was more than double the usual estimatescurrent in the outside world. Coming from a world in which the ancienttendency to congest in cities had long since been overcome, I wasstaggered by the fact that nearly as many people were living in this onecity as existed in the whole of North America.

  Yet, when I figured the floor area of the city, which was roughly ovalin shape, being eight kilometres in breadth and eleven in length, Ifound that the population on a given floor area was no greater than ithad been in the Island of Manhattan before the reform land laws were putinto effect in the latter part of the Twentieth Century. There was,therefore, nothing incredible in these figures of total population, butwhat I next discovered was a severe strain on credence. It was theGerman population by sexes; the figures showed that there were nearlytwo and a half males for every female! According to the usual estimateof war losses the figure should have been at a ratio of six women livingto about five men, and here I found them recorded as only two women tofive men. Inspection of the birth rate showed an even higher proportionof males. I consulted further tables that gave births by sexes andgroups. These varied somewhat but there was this great prepond
erance ofmales in every class but one. Only among the seventeen thousand membersof Royalty did the proportion of the sexes approach the normal.

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

  Turning the further pages of my atlas I came upon an elaboratelyillustrated directory of the uniforms and insignia of the variousmilitary and civil ranks and classes. As I had already anticipated, Ifound that any citizen in Berlin could immediately be placed in hisproper group and rank by his clothing, which was prescribed withmilitary exactness.

  Various fabrics and shades indicated the occupational grouping whiletrimmings and insignia distinguished the ranks within the groups. In allthere were many hundreds of distinct uniforms. Two groups alone provedexceptions to this iron clad rule; Royalty and free women were permittedto dress as they chose and were restricted only in that they wereforbidden to imitate the particular uniforms of other groups.

  I next investigated the contents of Armstadt's desk. My most interestingfind was a checkbook, with receipts and expenditures carefully recordedon the stubs. From this I learned that, as Armstadt, I was in receipt ofan income of five thousand marks, paid by the Government. I did not knowhow much purchasing value that would amount to, but from the accountbook I saw that the expenses had not equalled a third of it, whichexplained why there was a bank balance of some twenty thousand marks.

  Clearly I would need to master the signature of Karl Armstadt so Isearched among the papers until I found a bundle of returned decks. Manyof the larger checks had been made out to "Katrina," others to the"Master of Games,"--evidently to cover gambling losses. The smallerchecks, I found by reference to the stubs, were for ornaments orentertainment that might please a woman. The lack of the more ordinaryitems of expenditure was presently made clear by the discovery of anumber of punch marked cards. For intermittent though necessaryexpenses, such as tonsorial service, clothing and books. For the moreconstant necessities of life, such as rent, food, laundry andtransportation, there was no record whatever; and I correctly assumedthat these were supplied without compensation and were therefore not amatter of personal choice or permissible variation. Of money in itsancient 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 ofthe hospital staff. It read:

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

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

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

  The uncanny quiet of the streets of this city with its three hundredmillion inhabitants awed and oppressed me. Hurriedly I walked alongoccasionally passing men dressed like myself. They were pale men, withblanched or sallow faces. But nowhere were there faces of ruddy tan asone sees in a world of sun. The men in the hospital had been pale, butthat had seemed less striking for one is used to pale faces in ahospital. It came to me with a sense of something lost that my owncountenance blanched in the mine and hospital would so remain colourlesslike the faces of the men who now stole by me in their felted footwearwith a cat-like tread.

  At a cross street I turned and came upon a small group of shops withmonotonous panelled display windows inserted in the concrete walls. HereI found my tailor and going in I promptly laid down his notice and myclothing card. He glanced casually at the papers, punched the card andthen 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 thehospital; but the tailor was either disinterested or did not comprehend.

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

  As I walked more leisurely back to my apartment by a less direct way, Ifound my analytical brain puzzling over the refreshing quality of thebreezes that blew through those tunnel-like streets. With bits of paperI traced the air flow from the latticed faces of the elevator shafts tothe ventilating gratings of the enclosed apartments, and concluded thatthere 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 ventilatingfans to keep this air in motion, and then I remembered the liquid airengine I had seen in the mine, and a realization of the economy andefficiency of the whole scheme dawned upon me. The Germans had solvedthe power problem by using the heat of the deeper strata of the earth togenerate power through the agency of liquid air and the exhaust fromtheir engines had automatically solved their ventilating problem. Irecalled with a smile that I had seen no evidence of heating apparatusanywhere except that which the miners had used to warm their food. Inthis city cooling rather than heating facilities would evidently beneeded, even in the dead of winter, since the heat generated by theinhabitants and the industrial processes would exceed the radiation fromthe exterior walls and roof of the city. Sunshine and "fresh air" theyhad not, but our own scientists had taught us for generations that heatand humidity and not lack of oxygen or sunshine was the cause of thedepression experienced in indoor quarters. The air of Berlin was cooland the excess of vapor had been frozen out of it. Yes, the "climate" ofBerlin should be more salubrious to the body, if not to the mind, thanthe fickle environment of capricious nature. From my reasoning aboutthese ponderous problems of existence I was diverted to a trivialmatter. The men I observed on the streets all wore their hair clippedshort, while mine, with six weeks' growth, was getting rather long. Ihad seen several barber's signs but I decided to walk on for quite adistance beyond my apartment. I did not want to confront a barber whohad known Karl Armstadt, for barbers deal critically in the matter ofheads and faces. At last I picked out a shop. I entered and asked fora haircut.

  "But you are not on my list," said the barber, staring at me in apuzzled 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 thelevel for permission to change?"

  Returning to my apartment I looked up the office in my directory, wentthither and asked the clerk if I could exchange barbers. He asked for mycard and after a deal of clerical activities wrote thereon the name of anew barber. With this official sanction I finally got my hair cut and mycard punched, thinking meanwhile that the soundness of my teeth wouldobviate 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 hemust have an authoritative permit. Had I not been classed as a researchchemist, and therefore a man of some importance, this simple business ofgetting a hair-cut might have proved my undoing. Indeed, as I afterwardslearned, the exclusive privacy of my living quarters was a mark ofdistinction. Had I been one of lower ranking I should have shared myapartment with another man who would have slept in my bed while I was atwork, for in the sunless city was neither night nor day and the wholepopulation worked and slept in prescribed shifts--the vast machinery ofindustry, like a blind giant in som
e Plutonic treadmill, toiledceaselessly.

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

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

  On the return trip I called my floor as I had heard others do and waslet off at the medical level. It was even more monotonously quiet thanthe chemical level, save for the hurrying passage of occasionalambulances on their way between the elevators and the various hospitals.The living quarters of the physicians were identical with those on thechemists' level. So, too, were the quiet shops from which the physicianssupplied 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 bookseller staring at my chemical uniform in amazement reached quickly underthe counter and pressed a button. I became alarmed and turned to go outbut found the door had been automatically closed and locked. Trying toappear unconcerned I stood idly glancing over the book shelves, whilethe book seller watched me from the corner of his eye.

  In a few minutes the door opened from without and a man in the uniformof 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 anddiscovered the card from the hospital. Smiling on me with an air ofcondescension, he took me by the arm and led me forth and conducted meto my own apartment on the chemical level. Arriving there he pushed megently 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--thatwas 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 aLieutenant and you are a Captain--" his brows knitted as he wrestledwith the problem--"I do not know what to do. Does a Captain with anaffected memory outrank a Lieutenant?"

  "He does," I solemnly assured him.

  Still a little puzzled, he returned the card, saluted and was gone. Ithad been a narrow escape. I got out my atlas and read again the rulesthat set forth my right to be at large in the city. Clearly I had aright to be found in the medical level--but in trying to buy a bookthere I had evidently erred most seriously. So I carefully memorized thelist 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 byan occasional visit from Holknecht, the laboratory assistant, who knewnothing but chemistry, talked nothing but chemistry, and seemed dead toall human emotions and human curiosity. Applying myself diligently tothe study of Armstadt's books and notes, I was delighted to find thatthe Germans, despite their great chemical progress, were ignorant ofmany things I knew. I saw that my knowledge discreetly used, mightenable me to become a great man among them and so learn secrets thatwould be of immense value to the outer world, should I later contrive toescape from Berlin.

  By my discoveries of the German workings in the potash mines I hadindeed opened a new road to Berlin. It was up to me by furtherdiscoveries to open a road out again, not only for my own escape, butperhaps also to find a way by which the World Armies might enter Berlinas the Greeks entered Troy. Vague ambitious dreams were these thatfilled and thrilled me, for I was young in years, and the romanticspirit of heroic adventure surged in my blood.

  These days of study were quite uneventful, except for a singleilluminating incident; a further example of the super-efficiency of theGermans. I found the meals served me at my apartment rather less inquantity than my appetite craved. While there was a reasonable variety,the nutritive value was always the same to a point of scientificexactness, and I had seen no shops where extra food was available. AfterI had been in my apartment about a week, some one rang at the door. Iopened it and a man called out the single word, "Weigher." Just behindhim stood a platform scale on small wheels and with handles like ago-cart. The weigher stood, notebook in hand, waiting for me to act. Itook the hint and stepped upon the scales. He read the weight and as herecorded 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 atrifle smaller than they had been previously. The original Karl Armstadthad evidently been of such build that he carried slightly less weightthan 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 wasnot alone to save food but to increase mental efficiency, for a fat manis 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 buildof the original Karl Armstadt.

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

  ~4~

  After exhausting the rather barren sport of walking about the monotonousstreets of the four professional levels I took a more exciting trip downinto the lower levels of the city where the vast mechanical industriesheld sway. I did not know how much freedom might be allowed me, but Ireasoned that I would be out of my supposed normal environment and hencemy ignorance would be more excusable and in less danger of betraying me.

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

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

  I went on and came to a different work hall where men were tending wirewinding machinery, making the coils for some light electricalinstruments. It was work that girls could easily have done, yet thesemen were nearly, if not quite, as hulking as their mates in the stampingmill. To select such men for light-fingered work was not efficiency butstupidity,--and then it came to me that I had also thought the soldiersI had seen in the hospital to be men picked for size, and that in anormal population there could not be such an abundance of men ofabnormal size. The meaning of it all began to clear in my mind--thepedigree in my own identification folder with the numerous fraternity,the system of social castes which my atlas had revealed, theinexplicable and unnatural proportion of the sexes. These gigantic menwere not the mere pick from individual variation in the speci
es, but adistinct breed within a race wherein the laws of nature, that had keptmen of equal stature for countless centuries, even as wild animals wereequal, had been replaced by the laws of scientific breeding. These heavyand ponderous labourers were the Percherons and Clydesdales of adomesticated and scientifically bred human species. The soldiers,somewhat less bulky and more active, were, no doubt, another distinctbreed. The professional classes which had seemed quite normal inphysical appearance--were they bred for mental rather than physicalqualities? Otherwise why the pedigree, why the rigid castes, theisolation of women? I shuddered as the whole logical, inevitableexplanation unfolded. It was uncanny, unearthly, yet perfectlyscientific; a thing the world had speculated about for centuries, athing that every school boy knew could be done, and yet which I, facingthe fact that it had been done, could only believe by a strained effortat scientific coolness.

  I walked on and on, absorbed, overwhelmed by these assaulting,unbelievable conclusions, yet on either side as I walked was the everpresent evidence of the reality of these seemingly wild fancies. Therewere miles upon miles of these endless workrooms and everywhere the samegross breed of great blond beasts.

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

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

  In all this colossal business there was everywhere the atmosphere ofperfect order, perfect system, perfect discipline. Go as I might amongthe electrical works, among the vast factories of chemicals and goods,the lighter labor of the textile mills, or the heavier, noisier businessof the mineral works and machine shops the same system of colossalcoordinate mechanism of production throbbed ceaselessly. Materialsflowed in endless streams, feeding electric furnaces, mills, machines;passing out to packing tables and thence to vast store rooms. Industryhere seemed endless and perfect. The bovine humanity fitted to themachinery as the ox to the treadmill. Everywhere was the ceaselessthrobbing of the machine. Of the human variation and the free action ofman in labour, there was no evidence, and no opportunity for itsexistence.

  Turning from the mere monotonous endlessness of the workshops I made myway to the levels above where the workers lived in those hours when theyceased to be a part of the industrial mechanism of production; andeverywhere were drab-coloured men for these shifts of labour werearranged so that no space at any time was wholly idle. I now passed bymiles of sleeping dormitories, and other miles of gymnasiums, picturetheatres and gaming tables, and, strikingly incongruous with theatmosphere of the place, huge assembly rooms which were labelled "FreeSpeech Halls." I started to enter one of these, where some kind of ameeting was in progress, but I was thrust back by a great fellow whogrinned foolishly and said: "Pardon, Herr Captain, it is forbidden you."

  Through half-darkened streets, I again passed by the bunk-shelvedsleeping chambers with their cavernous aisles walled with orderly rowsof lockers. Again I came to other barracks where the men were not yetasleep but were straggling in and sitting about on the lowest bunks ofthese 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 atendless tables and their food like the material for their labours, wasserved to the workers by the highly efficient device of an endlessmoving belt that rolled up out of a slot in the floor at the end of thetable after the manner of the chained steps of an escalator.

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

  Each of the long tables of this Berlin dining hall, the ends of whichfaced me, was fenced off from its neighbours. At the entrance gates weresigns which read "2600 Calories," "2800 Calories," "3000 Calories"--Ifollowed down the line to the sign which read "Maximum Diet, 4000Calories." The next one read, "Minimum Diet 2000 Calories," and thencethe series was repeated. Farther on I saw that men were assemblingbefore such gates in lines, for the meal there had not begun. Moving tothe other side of the street I walked by the lines which curved out andswung down the street. Those before the sign of "Minimum Diet" were notquite so tall as the average, although obviously of the same breed. Butthey were all gaunt, many of them drooped and old, relatively theinferior specimens and their faces bore a cowering look of fear andshame, of men sullen and dull, beaten in life's battle. Following downthe line and noting the improvement in physique as I passed on, I cameto 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 wereoverfull of waistline, men better fed than is absolutely essential tophysical fitness. Evidently a different principle was at work here thanthe strict economy of food that required the periodic weighing of theprofessional classes.

  Turning back I now encountered men coming out of the dining hall inwhich I had first witnessed the meal in progress. I wanted to askquestions and yet was a little afraid. But these big fellows wereseemingly quite respectful; except when I started to enter the FreeSpeech Hall, they had humbly made way for me. Emboldened by theirdeference I now approached a man whom I had seen come out of a "3800Calories" gate, and who had crossed the street and stood there pickinghis 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 ofunknown disposition, for I could hardly feel that this ungainly creaturewas exactly human. He smiled back and stood waiting.

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

  "I eat thirty-eight," he grinned, "pretty good, yes? I am twenty-fiveyears 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 everyyear, one year I came up two at once. Pretty good, yes? One moreto come."

  "What then?" I asked.

  The big fellow smiled with a childish pride, and doubling up his arm, ashuge as an average man's thigh, he patted his biceps. "I get it allright. I pass examination, no flaws in me, never been to hospital, notone day. Yes, I get it."

  "Get what?"

  "Paternity," said the man in a lower voice, as he glanced about to seeif any of his fellows was listening. "Paternity, you know? Women!"

  I thought of many questions but feared to ask them. The worker waitedfor some men to pass, then he bent over me, grinning sardonically. "Didyou see them? You have seen women, yes?"

  "Yes," I ventured, "I have seen women."

  "Pretty good, beautiful, yes?"

  "Yes," I stammered, "they are very beautiful." But I was getting nervousand moved away. The workman, hesitating a little, then followed atmy side.

  "But tell me," I s
aid, "about these calories. What did you do to get thebig meals? Why do some get more to eat than others?"

  "Better man," he replied without hesitation.

  "But what makes a better man?"

  "You don't know; of course, you are an intellectual and don't work. Butwe work hard. The harder we work the more we eat. I load aluminum pigson the elevator. One pig is two calories, nineteen hundred pigs a day,pretty good, yes? All kind of work has its calories, so many for eachthing to do.

  "More work, more food it takes to do it. They say all is alike, that noone can get fat. But all work calories are not alike because some menget fatter than others. I don't get fat; my work is hard. I ought to gettwo and a half calories for each pig I load. Still I do not get thin,but I do not play hard in gymnasium, see? Those lathe men, they got ittoo easy and they play hard in gymnasium. I don't care if you do report.I got it mad at them; they got it too easy. One got paternity last yearalready, and he is not as good a man as I am. I could throw him over myshoulder in wrestling. Do you not think they get it too easy?"

  "Do the men like this system," I asked; "the measuring of food by theamount of work one does? Do any of them talk about it and demand thatall be fed alike?"

  "The skinny minimum eaters do," said the workman with a sneer, "when welet them talk, which isn't often, but when they get a chance they talkBellamism. But what if they do talk, it does them no good. We have a redflag, we have Imperial Socialism; we have the House of Hohenzollern.Well, then, I say, let them talk if they want to, every man must eataccording to his work; that is socialism. We can't have Bellamism whenwe have socialism."

  This speech, so much more informative and evidencing a knowledge I hadnot anticipated, quite disturbed me. "You talk about these things," Iventured, "in your Free Speech Halls?"

  The hitherto pleasant face of the workingman altered to an ugly frown.

  "No you don't," he growled, "you don't think because I talk to you, thatyou can go asking me what is not your right to know, even if you arean officer?"

  I remained discreetly silent, but continued to walk at the side of thestriding giant. Presently I asked:

  "What do you do now, are you going to work?"

  "No," he said, looking at me doubtfully, "that was dinner, notbreakfast. I am going now to the picture hall."

  "And then," I asked, "do you go to bed?"

  "No," he said, "we then go to the gymnasium or the gaming tables. Sixhours' work, six hours' sleep, and four hours for amusement."

  "And what do you do," I asked, "the remainder of the day?"

  He turned and stared at me. "That is all we get here, sixteen hours.This is the metal workers' level. Some levels get twenty hours. Itdepends on the work."

  "But," I said, "a real day has twenty-four hours."

  "I've heard," he said, "that it does on the upper levels."

  "But," I protested, "I mean a real day--a day of the sun. Do youunderstand that?"

  "Oh yes," he said, "we see the pictures of the Place in the Sun. That'sa fine show."

  "Oh," I said, "then you have pictures of the sun?"

  "Of course," he replied, "the sun that shines upon the throne. We allsee that."

  At the time I could not comprehend this reference, but I made bold toask if it were forbidden me to go to his picture hall.

  "I can't make out," he said, "why you want to see, but I never heard ofany order forbidding it.

  "I go here," he remarked, as we came to a picture theatre.

  I let my Herculean companion enter alone, but followed him shortly andfound a seat in a secluded corner. No one disputed my presence.

  The music that filled the hall from some hidden horn was loud and, in arough way, joyous. The pictures--evidently carefully prepared for suchan audience--were limited to the life that these men knew. The themeswere chiefly of athletic contests, of boxing, wrestling and feats ofstrength. There were also pictures of working contests, always ending bythe awarding of honours by some much bespangled official. But of loveand romance, of intrigue and adventure, of pathos and mirth, thesepictures were strangely devoid,--there was, in fact, no woman's likenesscast upon the screen and no pictures depicting emotion or sentiment.

  As I watched the sterile flittings of the picture screen I decided,despite the glimmering of intelligence that my talking Hercules hadshown in reference to socialism and Bellamism and the secrets of theFree Speech Halls, that these men were merely great stupid beastsof burden.

  They worked, they fed, they drank, they played exuberantly in theirgymnasiums and swimming pools, they played long and eagerly at games ofchance. Beyond this their lives were essentially blank. Ambition andcuriosity they had none beyond the narrow circle of their round ofliving. But for all that they were docile, contented and, within theirlimitations, not unhappy. To me they seemed more and more to be likewell cared for domestic animals, and I found myself wondering, as I leftthe hall, why we of the outer world had not thought to produce picturesin similar vein to entertain our dogs and horses.

  ~5~

  As I returned to my own quarters, I tried to recall the description Ihad read of the "Children of the Abyss," the dwellers in ancient cityslums. There was a certain kinship, no doubt, between those formersubmerged workers in the democratic world and this labour breed ofBerlin. Yet the enslaved and sweated workers of the old regime werealways depicted as suffering from poverty, as undersized, ill-nourishedand afflicted with disease. The reformers of that day were alwaystalking of sanitary housing, scientific diet and physical efficiency.But here was a race of labourers whose physical welfare was as welltaken care of as if they had been prize swine or oxen. There was apaleness of countenance among these labourers of Berlin that to meseemed suggestive of ill health, but I knew that was merely due to lackof sun and did not signify a lack of physical vitality. Meresun-darkened skin does not mean physiological efficiency, else the negrowere the most efficient of races. Men can live without sun, withoutrain, without contact with the soil, without nature's greenery and thebrotherhood of fellow species in wild haunts. The whole climb ofcivilization had been away from these primitive things. It had merelybeen an artificial perfecting of the process of giving the livingcreature that which is needed for sustenance and propagation in the mostconcentrated and most economical form, the elimination of Nature'ssuperfluities and wastes.

  As I thought of these things it came over me that this unholyimprisonment of a race was but the logical culmination of mechanical andmaterial civilization. This development among the Germans had beenhastened by the necessities of war and siege, yet it was what the wholeworld had been driving toward since man first used a tool and built ahut. Our own freer civilization of the outer world had been achievedonly by compromises, by a stubborn resistance against the forces towhich we ascribed our progress. We were merely not so completelycivilized, because we had never been wholly domesticated.

  As I now record these thoughts on the true significance of the perfectedcivilization of the Germans I realize that I was even more right than Ithen knew, for the sunless city of Berlin is of a truth a civilizationgone to seed, its people are a domesticated species, they are thelogical outcome of science applied to human affairs, with them theprodigality and waste of Nature have been eliminated, they have stampedout contagious diseases of every kind, they have substituted for thelaws of Nature the laws that man may pick by scientific theory andexperiment from the multitude of possibilities. Yes, the Germans werecivilized. And as I pondered these things I recalled those fairy talesthat naturalists tell of the stagnant and fixed society of ants in theirsubterranean catacombs. These insect species credited for industry andintelligence, have in their lesser world reached a similar perfection ofcivilization. Ants have a royal house, they have a highly specializedand fixed system of caste, a completely socialized state--yes, aUtopia--even as Berlin was a Utopia, with the light of the sun and thelight of the soul, the soul of the wild free man, forever shut out. Yes,I was walking in Utopia, a nightmare at the end of man's longdream--Utopia--
Black Utopia--City of Endless Night--diabolicallycompounded of the three elements of civilization in which the Germanshad always been supreme--imperialism, science and socialism.