The Airlords of Han, Philip Francis Nowlan [best fiction novels to read .TXT] 📗

automatic bookkeeping machines) for the support of the city's pensioners and whatever sum San-Lan himself had chosen to deduct for personal expenses and gratuities.

A man could not bequeath his ownership interest in industry to his son, for that interest ceased with his death, but his credit accumulation, on which interest was paid, was credited to his eldest recorded son as a matter of law.

Since many of these credit fortunes (The Hans had abandoned gold as a financial basis centuries before) were so big that they drew interest in excess of the utmost luxury costs of a single individual, there was a class of idle rich consisting of eldest sons, passing on these credit fortunes from generation to generation. But younger sons and women had no share in these fortunes, except by the whims and favor of the "Man-Dins" (Mandarins), as these inheritors were known.

These Man-Dins formed a distinct class of the population, and numbered about five percent of it. It was distinct from the Ku-Li (coolie) or common people, and from the "Ki-Ling" or aristocracy composed of those more energetic men (at least mentally more energetic) who were the active or retired executive heads of the various industrial, educational, military or political administrations.

A man might, if he so chose, transfer part of his credit to a woman favorite, which then remained hers for life or until she used it up, and of course, the prime object of most women, whether as wives, or favorites, was to beguile a settlement of this sort out of some wealthy man.

When successful in this, and upon reassuming her freedom, a woman ranked socially and economically with the Man-Dins. But on her death, whatever remained of her credit was transferred to the Imperial fund.

When one considers that the Hans, from the days of their exodus from Mongolia and their conquest of America, had never held any ideal of monogamy, and the fact that marriage was but a temporary formality which could be terminated on official notice by either party, and that after all it gave a woman no real rights or prerogatives that could not be terminated at the whim of her husband, and established her as nothing but the favorite of his harem, if he had an income large enough to keep one, or the most definitely acknowledged of his favorites if he hadn't, it is easy to see that no such thing as a real family life existed among them.

Free women roamed the corridors of the city, pathetically importuning marriage, and wives spent most of the time they were not under their husbands' watchful eyes in flirtatious attempts to provide themselves with better prospects for their next marriages.

Naturally the biggest problem of the community was that of stimulating the birth rate. The system of special credits to mothers had begun centuries before, but had not been very efficacious until women had been deprived of all other earning power, and even at the time of which I write it was only partially successful, in spite of the heavy bounties for children. It was difficult to make the bounties sufficiently attractive to lure the women from their more remunerative light flirtations. Eugenic standards also were a handicap.

As a matter of fact, San-Lan had under consideration a revolutionary change in economic and moral standards, when the revolt of the forest men upset his delicately laid plans, for, as he had explained to me, it was no easy thing to upset the customs of centuries in what he was pleased to call the "morals" of his race.

He had another reason too. The physically active men of the community were beginning to acquire a rather dangerous domination. These included men in the army, in the airships, and in those relatively few civilian activities in which machines could not do the routine work and thinking. Already common soldiers and air crews demanded and received higher remuneration than all except the highest of the Ki-Ling, the industrial and scientific leaders, while mechanics and repairmen who could, and would, work hard physically, commanded higher incomes than Princes of the Blood, and though constituting only a fraction of one per cent of the population they actually dominated the city. San-Lan dared take no important step in the development of the industrial and military system without consulting their council or Yun-Yun (Union), as it was known.

Socially the Han cities were in a chaotic condition at this time, between morals that were not morals, families that were not families, marriages that were not marriages, children who knew no homes, work that was not work, eugenics that didn't work; Ku-Lis who envied the richer classes but were too lazy to reach out for the rewards freely offered for individual initiative; the intellectually active and physically lazy Ki-Lings who despised their lethargy; the Man-Din drones who regarded both classes with supercilious toleration; the Princes of the Blood, arrogant in their assumption of a heritage from a Heaven in which they did not believe; and finally the three castes of the army, air and industrial repair services, equally arrogant and with more reason in their consciousness of physical power.

The army exercised a cruelly careless and impartial police power over all classes, including the airmen, when the latter were in port. But it did not dare to touch the repair men, who, so far as I could ever make out, roamed the corridors of the city at will during their hours off duty, wreaking their wills on whomever they met, without let or hindrance.

Even a Prince of the Blood would withdraw into a side corridor with his escort of a score of men, to let one of these labor "kings" pass, rather than risk an altercation which might result in trouble for the government with the Yun-Yun, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the case, unless a heavy credit transference was made from the balance of the Prince to that of the worker. For the machinery of the city could not continue in operation a fortnight, before some accident requiring delicate repair work would put it partially out of commission. And the Yun-Yun was quick to resent anything it could construe as a slight on one of its members.

In the last analysis it was these Yun-Yun men, numerically the smallest of the classes, who ruled the Han civilization, because for all practical purposes they controlled the machinery on which that civilization depended for its existence.

Politically, San-Lan could balance the organizations of the army and the air fleets against each other, but he could not break the grip of the repairmen on the machinery of the cities and the power broadcast plants.

CHAPTER XI
The Forest Men Attack

Many times during the months I remained prisoner among the Hans I had tried to develop a plan of escape, but could conceive of nothing which seemed to have any reasonable chance of success.

While I was allowed almost complete freedom within the confines of the city, and sometimes was permitted to visit even the military outposts and disintegrator ray batteries in the surrounding mountains, I was never without a guard of at least five men under the command of an officer. These men were picked soldiers, and they were armed with powerful though short-range disintegrator-ray pistols, capable of annihilating anything within a hundred feet. Their vigilance never relaxed. The officer on duty kept constantly at my side, or a couple of paces behind me, while certain of the others were under strict orders never to approach within my reach, nor to get more than forty feet away from me. The thought occurred to me once to seize the officer at my side and use him as a shield, until I found that the guard were under orders to destroy both of us in such a case.

So in this fashion I roamed the city corridors, wherever I wished. I visited the great factories at the bottom of the shafts that led to the base of the mountain, where, unattended by any mechanics, great turbines whirred and moaned, giant pistons plunged back and forth, and immense systems of chemical vats, piping and converters, automatically performed their functions with the assistance of no human hand, but under the minute television inspection of many perfumed dandies reclining at their ease before viewplates in their apartment offices in the city, that clung to the mountain peak far above.

There were just two restrictions on my freedom of movement. I was allowed nowhere near the power-broadcasting station on the peak, nor the complement of it which was buried three miles below the base of the mountain. And I was never allowed to approach within a hundred feet of any disintegrator ray machine when I visited the military outposts in the surrounding mountains.

I first noticed the "escape tunnels" one day when I had descended to the lowest level of all, the location of the Electronic Plant, where machines, known as "reverse disintegrators," fed with earth and crushed rock by automatic conveyors, subjected this material to the disintegrator ray, held the released electrons captive within their magnetic fields and slowly refashioned them into supplies of metals and other desired elements.

My attention was attracted to the tunnels by the unusual fact that men were busily entering and leaving them. Almost the entire repair force seemed to be concentrated here. Stocky, muscular men they were, with the same modified Oriental countenances as the rest of the Hans, but with a certain ruggedness about them that was lacking in the rest of the indolent population. They sweated as they labored over the construction of magnetic cars evidently designed to travel down these tunnels, automatically laying pipe lines for ventilation and temperature control. The tunnels themselves appeared to have been driven with disintegrator rays, which could bore rapidly through the solid rock, forming glassy iridescent walls as they bored, and involving no problem of debris removal.

I asked San-Lan about it the next time I saw him, for the officer of my guard would give me no information.

The supreme ruler of the Hans smiled mockingly.

"There is no reason why you should not know their purpose," he said, "for you will never be able to stop our use of them. These tunnels constitute the road to a new Han era. Your forest men have turned our cities into traps, but they have not trapped our minds and our powers over Nature. We are masters still; masters of the world, and of the forest men.

"You have revolutionized the tactics of warfare with your explosive rockets and your strategy of fighting from concealed positions, miles away, where we cannot find you with our beams. You have driven our ships from the air, and you may destroy our cities. But we shall be gone.

"Down these tunnels we shall depart to our new cities, deep under ground, and scattered far and wide through the mountains. They are nearly completed now.

"You will never blast us out of these, even with your most powerful explosives, because they will be more difficult for you to find than it is for us to locate a forest gunner somewhere beneath his leafy screen of miles of trees, and because they will be too far underground."

"But," I objected, "man cannot live and flourish like a mole continually removed from the light of day, without the health-giving rays of the sun, which man needs."

"No?" San-Lan jeered. "Wild tribesmen might not be able to, but we are a civilization. We shall make our own sunlight to order in the bowels of the earth. If necessary, we can manufacture our air synthetically; not the germ-laden air of Nature, but absolutely pure air. Our underground cities will be heated or refrigerated artificially as conditions may require. Why should we not live underground if we desire? We produce all our needs synthetically.

"Nor will you be able to locate our cities with electronic indicators.

"You see, Rogers, I know what is in your mind. Our scientists have planned carefully. All our machinery and processes will be shielded so that no electronic disturbances will exist at the surface.

"And then, from our underground cities we will emerge at leisure to wage merciless war on your wild men of the forest, until we have at last done what our forefathers should have done, exterminated them to the last beast."

He thrust his jeering face close to mine. "Have you any answer to that?" he demanded.

My impulse was to plant my fist in his face, for I could think of no other answer. But I controlled myself, and even forced a hearty laugh, to irritate him.

"It is a fine plan," I admitted, "but you will not have time to carry it through. Long before you can complete your new cities you will have been destroyed."

"They will be completed within the week," he replied triumphantly. "We have not been asleep, and our mechanical and scientific resources make us masters of time as well as the earth. You shall see."

Naturally I was worried. I would have given much if I could have passed this information on to our chiefs.

But two days later a mighty exultation arose within me, when from far to the east and also to the south there came the rolling and continuous thunder of rocket fire. I was in my own apartment at the time. The Han captain of my guard was with me, as usual, and two guards stood just within the door. The others were in the corridor outside. And as soon as I heard it, I questioned my jailer with a look. He nodded assent, and I did what probably every disengaged person in Lo-Tan did at the same moment, tuned in on the local broadcast of the Military Headquarters View and Control Room.

It was as though the side wall of my apartment had dissolved, and we looked into a large room or office which had no walls or ceiling, these being replaced by the interior surface of a hemisphere, which was in fact a vast viewplate on which those in the room could see in every direction. Some 200 staff officers had their desks in this room. Each desk was equipped with a system of small viewplates of its own, and each officer was responsible for a given directional section of the "map," and busied himself with teleprojectoscope examination of it, quite independently of the general view thrown on the dome plate.

At a raised circular desk in the center, which was composed entirely of viewplates, sat the Executive Marshal, scanning the hemisphere, calling occasionally for telescopic