City of Endless Night, Milo Hastings [books to get back into reading .TXT] 📗

Clearly, I was trapped, and to judge better with what I had to deal I decided to go at once to the Place of Records, of which I had twice heard.

The Place of Records proved to be a public directory of the financial status of the free women. Since the physical plagues that are propagated by promiscuous love had been completely exterminated, and since there were no moral standards to preserve, there was no need of other restrictions on the lives of the women than an economic one.

The rules of the level were prominently posted. As all consequential money exchanges were made through bank checks, the keeping of the records was an easy matter. These rules I found forbade any woman to cash checks in excess of one thousand marks a month, or in excess of two hundred marks from any one man. That was simple enough, and I smiled as I recalled that I had gone the legal limit in my first adventure.

Following the example of other men, I stepped to the window and gave the name: "Bertha 34 R 6."A clerk brought me a book opened to the page of her record. At the top of the page was entered this statement, "Bred for an actress but rejected for both professional work and maternity because found devoid of sympathetic emotions." I laughed as I read this, but when on the next line I saw from the date of her entrance to the level that Bertha's thirty days was in reality nearly three years, my mirth turned to anger. I looked down the list of entries and found that for some time she had been cashing each month the maximum figure of a thousand marks. Evidently her little scheme of pensive posing in the Hall of Flowers was working nicely. In the current month, hardly half gone, she already had to her credit seven hundred marks; and last on the list was my own contribution, freshly entered.

"She has three hundred marks yet," commented the clerk.

"Yes, I see,"--and I turned to go. But I paused and stepped again to the window. "There is another girl I would like to look up," I said, "but I have only her name and no number."

"Do you know the date of her arrival?" asked the clerk.

"Yes, she has been here four years and six days. The name is Marguerite."

The clerk walked over to a card file and after some searching brought back a slip with half a dozen numbers. "Try these," he said, and he brought me the volumes. The second record I inspected read: "Marguerite, 78 K 4, Love-child."On the page below was a single entry for each month of two hundred marks and every entry from the first was in the name of Ludwig Zimmern.

~9~

I kept my appointment with Bertha, but found it difficult to hide my anger as she greeted me. Wishing to get the interview over, I asked abruptly, "Have you read the book I left?"

"Not all of it," she replied, "I found it rather dull."

"Then perhaps I had better take it with me."

"But I think I shall keep it awhile," she demurred.

"No," I insisted, as I looked about and failed to see the geography, "I wish you would get it for me. I want to take it back, in fact it was a borrowed book."

"Most likely," she smiled archly, "but since you are not a staff officer, and had no right to have that book, you might as well know that you will get it when I please to give it to you."

Seeing that she was thoroughly aware of my predicament, I grew frightened and my anger slipped from its moorings. "See here," I cried, "your little story of innocence and virtue is very clever, but I've looked you up and--"

"And what--," she asked, while through her child-like mask the subtle trickery of her nature mocked me with a look of triumph--"and what do you propose to do about it?"

I realized the futility of my rage. "I shall do nothing. I ask only that you return the book."

"But books are so valuable," taunted Bertha.

Dejectedly I sank to the couch. She came over and sat on a cushion at my feet. "Really Karl," she purred, "you should not be angry. If I insist on keeping your book it is merely to be sure that you will not forget me. I rather like you; you are so queer and talk such odd things. Did you learn your strange ways of making love from the book about the inferior races in the world outside the walls? I really tried to read some of it, but I could not understand half the words."

I rose and strode about the room. "Will you get me the book?" I demanded.

"And lose you?"

"Well, what of it? You can get plenty more fools like me."

"Yes, but I would have to stand and stare into that fountain for hours at a time. It is very tiresome."

"Just what do you want?" I asked, trying to speak calmly.

"Why you," she said, placing her slender white hands upon my arm, and holding up an inviting face.

But anger at my own gullibility had killed her power to draw me, and I shook her off. "I want that book," I said coldly, "what are your terms?" And I drew my check book from my pocket.

"How many blanks have you there?" she asked with a greedy light in her eyes--"but never mind to count them. Make them all out to me at two hundred marks, and date each one a month ahead."

Realizing that any further exhibition of fear or anger would put me more within her power, I sat down and began to write the checks. The fund I was making over to her was quite useless to me but when I had made out twenty checks I stopped. "Now," I said, "this is enough. You take these or nothing." Tearing out the written checks I held them toward her.

As she reached out her hand I drew them back--"Go get the book," I demanded.

"But you are unfair," said Bertha, "you are the stronger. You can take the book from me. I cannot take the checks from you."

"That is so," I admitted, and handed the checks to her. She looked at them carefully and slipped them into her bosom, and then, reaching under the pile of silken pillows, she pulled forth the geography.

I seized it and turned toward the door, but she caught my arm. "Don't," she pleaded, "don't go. Don't be angry with me. Why should you dislike me? I've only played my part as you men make it for us--but I do not want your money for nothing. You liked me when you thought me innocent. Why hate me when you find that I am clever?"

Again those slender arms stole around my neck, and the entrancing face was raised to mine. But the vision of a finer, nobler face rose before me, and I pushed away the clinging arms. "I'm sorry," I said, "I am going now--going back to my work and forget you. It is not your fault. You are only what Germany has made you--but," I added with a smile, "if you must go to the Hall of Flowers, please do not wear that grey gown."

She stood very still as I edged toward the door, and the look of baffled child-like innocence crept back into her eyes, a real innocence this time of things she did not know, and could not understand.

CHAPTER VII THE SUN SHINES UPON A KING AND A GIRL READS OF THE FALL OF BABYLON ~1~

Embittered by this unhappy ending of my romance, I turned to my work with savage zeal, determined not again to be diverted by a personal effort to save the Germans from their sins. But this application to my test-tubes was presently interrupted by a German holiday which was known as The Day of the Sun.

From the conversation of my assistants I gathered that this was an annual occasion of particular importance. It was, in fact, His Majesty's birthday, and was celebrated by permitting the favoured classes to see the ruler himself at the Place in the Sun. For this Royal exhibition I received a blue ticket of which my assistants were curiously envious. They inspected the number of it and the hour of my admittance to the Royal Level. "It is the first appearance of the day," they said. "His Majesty will be fresh to speak; you will be near; you will be able to see His Face without the aid of a glass; you will be able to hear His Voice, and not merely the reproducing horns."

In the morning our news bulletin was wholly devoted to announcements and patriotic exuberances. Across the sheet was flamed a headline stating that the meteorologist of the Roof Observatory reported that the sun would shine in full brilliancy upon the throne. This seemed very puzzling to me. For the Place in the Sun was clearly located on the Royal Level and some hundred metres beneath the roof of the city.

I went, at the hour announced on my ticket, to the indicated elevator; and, with an eager crowd of fellow scientists, stepped forth into a vast open space where the vaulted ceiling was supported by massive fluted columns that rose to twice the height of the ordinary spacing of the levels of the city.

An enormous crowd of men of the higher ranks was gathering. Closely packed and standing, the multitude extended to the sides and the rear of my position for many hundred metres until it seemed quite lost under the glowing lights in the distance. Before us a huge curtain hung. Emblazoned on its dull crimson background of subdued socialism was a gigantic black eagle, the leering emblem of autocracy. Above and extending back over us, appeared in the ceiling a deep and unlighted crevice.

As the crowd seemed complete the men about me consulted their watches and then suddenly grew quiet in expectancy. The lights blinked twice and went out, and we were bathed in a hush of darkness. The heavy curtain rustled like the mantle of Jove while from somewhere above I heard the shutters of the windows of heaven move heavily on their rollers. A flashing brilliant beam of light shot through the blackness and fell in wondrous splendour upon a dazzling metallic dais, whereon rested the gilded throne of the House of Hohenzollern.

Seated upon the throne was a man--a very little man he seemed amidst such vast and vivid surroundings. He was robed in a cape of dazzling white, and on his head he wore a helmet of burnished platinum. Before the throne and slightly to one side stood the round form of a paper globe.

His Majesty rose, stepped a few paces forward; and, as he with solemn deliberation raised his hand into the shaft of burning light, from the throng there came a frenzied shouting, which soon changed into a sort of chanting and then into a throaty song.

His Majesty lowered his hand; the song ceased; a great stillness hung over the multitude. Eitel I, Emperor of the Germans, now raised his face and stared for a moment unblinkingly into the beam of sunlight, then he lowered his gaze toward the sea of upturned faces.

"My people," he said, in a voice which for all his pompous effort, fell rather flat in the immensity, "you are assembled here in the Place of the Sun to do honour to God's anointed ruler of the world."

From ten thousand throats came forth another raucous shout.

"Two and a half centuries ago," now spoke His Majesty, "God appointed the German race, under William the Great, of the House of Hohenzollern, to be the rulers of the world.

"For nineteen hundred years, God in his infinite patience, had awaited the outcome of the test of the Nazarene's doctrine of servile humility and effeminate peace. But the Christian nations of the earth were weighed in the balance of Divine wrath and found wanting. Wallowing in hypocrisy and ignorance, wanting in courage and valour; behind a pretence of altruism they cloaked their selfish greed for gold.

"Of all the people of the earth our race alone possessed the two keys to power, the mastery of science and the mastery of the sword. So the Germans were called of God to instil fear and reverence into the hearts of the inferior races. That was the purpose of the First World War under my noble ancestor, William II.

"But the envious nations, desperate in their greed, banded together to defy our old German God, and destroy His chosen people. But this was only a divine trial of our worth, for the plans of God are for eternity. His days to us are centuries. And we did well to patiently abide the complete unfoldment of the