Authors: George England
"Hurrah!" shouted Allan boyishly. "Here they come—the last of my
Folk!"
He ran to the corner of the piazza and on the tall staff that
dominated the canyon and the river-valley dipped the stars and stripes
three times in signal of welcome.
And already, ere the salute was done, the rushing planes had slipped
full half the distance from the place where they had first been
sighted.
A messenger ran down the gravel driveway and saluted.
"O Kromno!" he began. "Master—"
"Master no longer!" Allan interrupted. "Brother now, only!"
The lad stared, amazed.
"Well, what is it?" smiled Allan.
"The Council of the Elders prays you to come to help greet the
last-comers. And after that the feast!"
"I come!" he answered. The lad bowed and vanished.
"They aren't going to let me out of it, after all," he sighed. "I'd so
much rather let them run their own festival to-day. But no—they've
got to ring me in, as usual! You'll come, too, of course?"
She nodded, and a moment later they were walking over the fine lawn
toward the plaza.
On the far side, in a wide, open stretch that served the children
sometimes as a playground, stood the great hangars of the community's
air-fleet. Beyond them rose workshops, their machinery driven by
electric power from the turbines at the rapids.
Even as Allan and Beatrice passed through the cheering crowd, now
drifting toward the hangars, a sound of music wafted down-wind—a
little harsh at times, but still with promise of far better things to
be.
Many flags fluttered in the air, and even the rollicking children on
the lawns paused to wonder as swift shadows cut across the park.
On high was heard the droning hum of the propellers. It ceased, and in
wide, sure, evenly balanced spirals the great planes one by one slid
down and took the earth as easily as a gull sinks to rest upon the
bosom of a quiet sea.
"They
do
work well, my equilibrators!" murmured Allan, unable to
suppress a thrill of pride. "Simple, too; but, after all, how
wonderfully effective!"
The crowd parted to let him through with Beatrice. Two minutes later
he was clasping the hands of the last Folk ever to be brought from the
strange, buried village under the cliff beside the Sunless Sea.
He summoned Zangamon and Frumuos, together with Sivad and the three
aviators.
"Well done!" said he; and that was all—all, yet enough. Then, while
the people cheered again and, crowding round, greeted their kinsfolk,
he gave orders for the housing and the care of the travel-wearied
newcomers.
Through the summer air drifted slow smoke. Off on the edge of the
grove that flanked the plaza to southward the crackling of new-built
fires was heard.
Allan turned to Beta with a smile.
"Getting ready for the barbecue already!" said he, "With that and the
games and all, they ought to have enough to keep them busy for one
day. Don't you think they'll have to let us go a while? There are
still a few finishing touches to put to the new laws I'm going to hand
the Council this afternoon for the Folk to hear. Yes, by all means,
they'll have to let us go."
Together they walked back to their bungalow amid its gardens of
palm-growths, ferns and flowers. Here they stopped a moment
to chat with some good friend, there to watch the children
and—parentlike—make sure young Allan was safe and only normally
dirty and grass-stained.
They gained their broad piazza at length, turned, and for a while
watched the busy, happy scene in the shaded street, the plaza and the
playground.
Then Beta sat down by the cradle—still in that same low chair Allan
had built for her five years ago, a chair she had steadily refused to
barter for a finer one.
He drew up another beside her. From his pocket he drew a paper—the
new laws—and for a minute studied it with bent brows.
The soft wind stirred the woman's hair as she sat there half dreaming,
her blue-gray eyes, a little moist, seeing far more than just what lay
before them. On his head a shaft of sunlight fell, and had you looked
you might have seen the crisp, black hair none too sparingly lined
with gray.
But his gaze was strong and level and his smile the same as in bygone
years, as with his left hand he pressed hers and, with a look eloquent
of many things, said:
"Now, sweetheart, if you're quite ready—?"
Allan sat writing in his library. Ten years had now slipped
past since the last of the Folk had been brought to the surface and
the ancient settlement in the bowels of the earth forever abandoned.
Heavily sprinkled with gray, the man's hair showed the stress of time
and labors incredible.
Lines marked his face with the record of their character-building,
even as his rapid pen traced on white paper the all but completing
history of the new world whereat he had been laboring so long.
Through the open window, where the midsummer breeze swayed the silken
curtains, drifted a hum from the long file of bee-hives in the garden.
Farther away sounded the comfortable gossip of hens as they breasted
their soft feathers into the dust-baths behind the stables. A dog
barked.
Came voices from without. Along the street growled a motor. Laughter
of children echoed from the playground. Allan ceased writing a moment,
with a smile, and gazed about him as though waking from a dream.
"Can this be true?" he murmured. "After having worked over the records
of the earlier time
they
still seem the reality and this the dream!"
On the garden-path sounded footfalls. Then the voice of Beatrice
calling:
"Come out, boy! See my new roses—just opened this morning!"
He got up and went to the window. She—matronly now and of ampler
bosom, yet still very beautiful to look upon—was standing there by
the rose-tree, scissors in hand.
Allan, Junior, now a rugged, hardy-looking chap of nearly
sixteen—tall, well built and with his father's peculiar alertness of
bearing—was bending down a high branch for his mother.
Beyond, on the lawn, the ten-year-old daughter, Frances, had young
Harold in charge, swinging him high in a stout hammock under the
apple-trees.
"Can't you come out a minute, dear?" asked Beatrice imploringly. "Let
your work go for once! Surely these new roses are worth more than a
hundred pages of dry statistics that nobody'll ever read, anyhow!"
He laughed merrily, threw her a kiss, and answered:
"Still a girl, I see! Ah, well, don't tempt me, Beta. It's hard enough
to work on such a day, anyhow, without your trying to entice me out!"
"
Won't
you come, Allan?"
"Just give me half an hour more and I'll call it off for to-day!"
"All right; but make it a short half-hour, boy!"
He returned to his desk. The library, like the whole house now, was
fully and beautifully furnished. The spoils of twenty cities had
contributed to the adornment of "The Nest," as they had christened
their home.
In time Allan planned even to bring art-works from Europe to grace it
still further. As yet he had not attempted to cross the Atlantic, but
in his seaport near the ruins of Mobile a powerful one hundred and
fifty-foot motor-yacht was building.
In less than six months he counted on making the first voyage of
discovery to the Old World.
Contentedly he glanced around the familiar room. Upon the mantel over
the capacious fireplace stood rare and beautiful bronzes. Priceless
rugs adorned the polished floor.
The broad windows admitted floods of sunlight that fell across the
great jars of flowers Beta always kept there for him and lighted up
the heavy tiers of books in their mahogany cases. Books
everywhere—under the window-seats, up the walls, even lining a deep
alcove in the far corner. Books, hundreds upon hundreds, precious and
cherished above all else.
"Who ever would have thought, after all," murmured he, "that we'd find
books intact as we did? A miracle—nothing less! With our
printing-plant already at work under the cliff, all the art, science
and literature of the ages—all that's worth preserving—can be still
kept for mankind. But if I hadn't happened to find a library of books
in a New York bonded warehouse all cased up for transportation, the
work of preservation would have been forever impossible!"
He turned back to his history, and before writing again idly thumbed
over a few pages of his voluminous manuscript. He read:
"March 1, A. D. 2930. The astronomical observatory on Round Top Hill,
one mile south of Newport Heights, was finished to-day and the last of
the apparatus from Cambridge, Lick, and other ruins was installed. I
find my data for reckoning time are unreliable, and have therefore
assumed this date arbitrarily and readjusted the calendar accordingly.
"Our Daily Messenger, circulating through the entire community and
educating the people both in English and in scientific thought, will
soon popularize the new date.
"Just as I have substituted the metric system for the old-time chaotic
hodge-podge we once used, so I shall substitute English for Merucaan
definitely inside of a few years. Already the younger generation
hardly understands the native Merucaan speech. It will eventually
become a dead, historically interesting language, like all other
former tongues. The catastrophe has rendered possible, as nothing else
could have done, the realization of universal speech, labor-unit
exchange values in place of money, and a political and economic
democracy unhampered by ideas of selfish, personal gain."
He turned a few pages, his face glowing with enthusiasm.
"April 15—The first ten-yearly census was completed to-day. Even with
the aid of Frumuos and Zangamon, I have been at work on this nearly
two months, for now our outlying farms, villages and settlements have
pushed away fifteen or twenty miles from the original focus at the
Cliffs, or 'Cliffton,' as the capital is becoming generally known.
"Population, 5,072, indicating a high birth-rate and an exceptionally
low mortality. Our one greatest need is large families. With the whole
world to reconquer, we must have men.
"Area now under cultivation, under grazing and under forests being
actively exploited, 42,076 acres. Domestic animals, 26,011. Horses are
already being replaced by motors, save for pleasure-riding.
Power-plants and manufacturing establishments, 32. Aerial fleet, 17 of
the large biplanes, 8 of the swifter monoplanes for scout work. One
shipyard at Mobile.
"Total roads, macadamized and other, 832 miles. Air-motors and
sun-motors in use or under construction, 41; mines being worked, 13;
schools, 27, including the technical school at Intervale, under my
personal instruction. Military force, zero—praise be! Likewise jails,
saloons, penitentiaries, gallows, hospitals, vagrants, prostitutes,
politicians, diseases, beggars, charities—all zero, now and forever!"
Allan turned to the unfinished end of the manuscript, poised his pen a
moment, and then began writing once more where he had left off when
called by Beatrice:
"The great monument in memory of the patriarch, first of all our
people to perish in the upper world, was finished on June 18. Memorial
exercises will be held next month.
"On June 22 the new satellite, which passes darkly among the stars
every forty-eight hours, was named Discus. Its distance is 3,246
miles; dimensions, 720 miles by 432; weight, six and three-quarter
billion tons.
"On July 2, I discovered unmistakable traces either of habitations or
of their ruins on the new and till now unobserved face of the moon,
hidden in the old days. This problem still remains for further
investigation.
"July 4, our national holiday, a viva-voce election and Council of
the Elders was held. They still insist on choosing me as Kromno. I
weary of the task, and would gladly give it over to some younger man.
"At this Council, held on the great meeting-ground beyond the hangars,
I again and for the third time submitted the question of trying to
colonize from the races still in the Abyss. If feasible, this would
rapidly add to our population. The Folk are now civilized to a point
where they could rapidly assimilate outside stock.
"In addition to the Lanskaarn, a strong and active race known to exist
on the Central Island in the Sunken Sea, there remain persistent
traditions of a strange, yellow-haired race somewhere on the western
coasts of that sea, beyond the Great Vortex. Two parties exist among
us.
"The minority is anxious for exploration and conquest. The majority
votes for peace and quiet growth. It may well be that the Lanskaarn
and the other people never will be rescued. I, for one, cannot attempt
it. I grow a little weary. But if the younger generation so decides,
that must be their problem and their labor, like the rebuilding of the
great cities and the reconquest of the entire continent from sea to
sea.
"In the mean time—"
At the window appeared Beatrice. Smiling, she flung a yellow rose. It
landed on Allan's desk, spilling its petals all across his manuscript.
He looked up, startled. His frown became a smile.
"My time's up?" he queried. "Why, I didn't know I'd been working five
minutes!"
"Up? Long ago! Now, Allan, you just simply
must
leave that history
and come out and see my roses, or—or—"
"No threats!" he implored with mock earnestness. "I'm coming, dearest.
Just give me time—"
"Not another minute, do you hear?"
"—to put my work away, and I'm with you!"
He carefully arranged the pages of his manuscript in order, while she
stood waiting at the window, daring not leave lest he plunge back
again into his absorbing toil.
Into his desk-drawer he slid the precious record of the community's
labor, growth, achievement, triumph. Then, with a boyish twinkle in
his eyes, he left the library.