The World Set Free, H. G. Wells [ereader for textbooks .txt] 📗

When presently Pestovitch was alone with the king again, he found him in a state of jangling emotions. His spirit was tossing like a wind-whipped sea. One moment he was exalted and full of contempt for “that ass” and his search; the next he was down in a pit of dread. “They will find them, Pestovitch, and then he’ll hang us.”

“Hang us?”

The king put his long nose into his councillor’s face. “That grinning brute wants to hang us,” he said. “And hang us he will. If we give him a shadow of a chance.”

“But all their Modern State Civilisation!”

“Do you think there’s any pity in that crew of Godless, Vivisecting Prigs?” cried this last king of romance. “Do you think, Pestovitch, they understand anything of a high ambition or a splendid dream? Do you think that our gallant and sublime adventure has any appeal to them? Here am I, the last and greatest and most romantic of the Caesars, and do you think they will miss the chance of hanging me like a dog if they can, killing me like a rat in a hole? And that renegade! He who was once an anointed king!⁠ ⁠…”

“I hate that sort of eye that laughs and keeps hard,” said the king.

“I won’t sit still here and be caught like a fascinated rabbit,” said the king in conclusion. “We must shift those bombs.”

“Risk it,” said Pestovitch. “Leave them alone.”

“No,” said the king. “Shift them near the frontier. Then while they watch us here⁠—they will always watch us here now⁠—we can buy an aeroplane abroad, and pick them up.⁠ ⁠…”

The king was in a feverish, irritable mood all that evening, but he made his plans nevertheless with infinite cunning. They must get the bombs away; there must be a couple of atomic hay lorries, the bombs could be hidden under the hay.⁠ ⁠… Pestovitch went and came, instructing trusty servants, planning and replanning.⁠ ⁠… The king and the ex-king dined together, and the ex-king talked very pleasantly of a number of subjects. All the while at the back of King Ferdinand Charles’s mind fretted the mystery of his vanished aeroplane. There came no news of its capture and no news of its success. At any moment all that power at the back of his visitor might crumble away and vanish.⁠ ⁠…

It was past midnight, when the king, in a cloak and slouch hat that might equally have served a small farmer, or any respectable middle-class man, slipped out from an inconspicuous service gate on the eastward side of his palace into the thickly wooded gardens that sloped in a series of terraces down to the town. Pestovitch and his guard-valet Peter, both wrapped about in a similar disguise, came out among the laurels that bordered the pathway and joined him. It was a clear, warm night, but the stars seemed unusually little and remote because of the aeroplanes, each trailing a searchlight, that drove hither and thither across the blue. One great beam seemed to rest on the king for a moment as he came out of the palace; then instantly and reassuringly it had swept away. But while they were still in the palace gardens another found them and looked at them.

“They see us,” cried the king.

“They make nothing of us,” said Pestovitch.

The king glanced up and met a calm, round eye of light, that seemed to wink at him and vanish, leaving him blinded.⁠ ⁠…

The three men went on their way. Near the little gate in the garden railings that Pestovitch had caused to be unlocked, the king paused under the shadow of an ilex and looked back at the place. It was very high and narrow, a twentieth-century rendering of medievalism, medievalism in steel and bronze and sham stone and opaque glass. Against the sky it splashed a confusion of pinnacles. High up in the eastward wing were the windows of the apartments of the ex-king Egbert. One of them was brightly lit now, and against the light a little black figure stood very still and looked out upon the night.

The king snarled.

“He little knows how we slip through his fingers,” said Pestovitch.

And as he spoke they saw the ex-king stretch out his arms slowly like one who yawns, knuckle his eyes, and turn inward⁠—no doubt to his bed.

Down through the ancient winding back streets of his capital hurried the king, and at an appointed corner a shabby atomic-automobile waited for the three. It was a hackney-carriage of the lowest grade, with dinted metal panels and deflated cushions. The driver was one of the ordinary drivers of the capital, but beside him sat the young secretary of Pestovitch, who knew the way to the farm where the bombs were hidden.

The automobile made its way through the narrow streets of the old town, which were still lit and uneasy⁠—for the fleet of airships overhead had kept the cafés open and people abroad⁠—over the great new bridge, and so by straggling outskirts to the country. And all through his capital the king who hoped to outdo Caesar, sat back and was very still, and no one spoke. And as they got out into the dark country they became aware of the searchlights wandering over the countryside like the uneasy ghosts of giants. The king sat forward and looked at these flitting whitenesses, and every now and then peered up to see the flying ships overhead.

“I don’t like them,” said the king.

Presently one of these patches of moonlight came to rest about them and seemed to be following their automobile. The king drew back.

“The things are confoundedly noiseless,” said the king. “It’s like being stalked by lean white cats.”

He peered again. “That fellow is watching us,” he said.

And then suddenly he gave way to panic. “Pestovitch,” he said, clutching his minister’s arm, “they are watching us. I’m not going through with this. They are watching us. I’m going back.”

Pestovitch remonstrated. “Tell him to go back,” said the king,