The Man who Missed the War (48 page)

As soon as they were alone Philip remarked to Gloria: ‘You heard what Rakil said about the R.A.F. blotting out the German experimental station. That shows clearly enough that our people are wise to what Hitler’s game is already.’

She nodded. ‘Sure, and I spotted that myself. So it won’t be to warn our own folk about those aerial-torpedoes and rocket things that we’ve been sent here.’

Their midday meal was served by their own servants. Soon after it Zadok came in and, sitting down, asked if they had found their morning with Rakil interesting.

‘Very,’ Philip replied. ‘It is utterly amazing that you should know so much of what is going on in all the different war headquarters.’

Zadok nodded his bald head. ‘These results are achieved by hard work. The Lord Toxil is a fine German scholar. He makes himself responsible for knowing everything of importance that is decided in Berlin or Berchtesgaden. Rakil, as you know, overlooks Washington. My province is to follow the way that the big minds in London are working. Others of the Lords keep a constant watch on Moscow, Tokyo and Rome. It means many hours of hard concentration every day for all of us and the several hundred men and women whose duty it is to help us. In this way we miss very little.’

‘Why do you burden yourselves with such a fatiguing task?’ Philip asked with a puzzled frown. ‘It’s natural enough to wish to know how the war is going, but it’s quite another thing to go to the immense labour that all this entails in order to find out the plans of every General Staff in advance.’

Raising his eyebrows in surprise Zadok exclaimed: ‘But if we did not inform ourselves of each country’s intentions how could we help those we wish to help or bring our influence to bear on the situation?’

‘Influence!’ repeated Philip. ‘Do you really mean that you can influence events in the outer world? How can you possibly do that?’

‘By informing ourselves in advance of the plans of all countries
participating in a war we can create conditions favourable to those who will best serve our own interests.’

‘Will you be telling us what your interests are?’ said Gloria.

Zadok shrugged his skinny shoulders. ‘Why, the propitiation of Shaitan, of course. As I told you yesterday, we are in no position to make large sacrifices here. Our greatest offerings to him are made in the outer world. Every man, woman and child who dies an unnatural death is a sacrifice acceptable to Shaitan; and all such sacrifices that are brought about, even in part, by our efforts are counted to our credit by the Remorseless One. Therefore our life’s work is to foster conditions favourable to the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. Every earthly ruler whose ambition opens the gate to those is our ally and, although he remains unaware of it, receives all the help that it is in our power to give.’

While they were still revolving this terrible doctrine in their minds Zadok went on:

‘The weapon which through many generations of scientific experiment we have forged and brought to perfection here is the control of those natural forces that create heat and cold, drought and tempest. Our provision of a climate suitable for the Leprechauns to maintain life in their valley is no more than a small local example of what we can do in this way.’

‘Do you mean that you could cause a great storm in the Atlantic or weeks of drought in China?’ exclaimed Philip.

‘Certainly. In times of peace China has always proved a very profitable field for our endeavours, but it is wars which pay us the highest dividends. Armies are extremely vulnerable to long spells of unexpected heat or rain, and in the past thousand years we have many times so ravaged great hosts that they have afterwards fallen an easy prey in battle to those unconscious champions of Shaitan whom we have wished to help.’

Philip was utterly aghast. ‘And in this war your greatest champion is Hitler?’ he said, almost in a whisper.

Zadok’s parchment-like face broke into a self-satisfied smile. ‘Through our magno-electric installations we have been able to give him most valuable aid in almost every critical stage of the war. It was we who in May and June of 1940 gave the Germans six weeks of unbroken sunshine in which to overrun Holland,
Belgium and France. We caused the falling of the great rains in Tunisia during the winter of 1942 which gave the Axis time to rally and held up the junction of the two Allied Armies in North Africa for six months. This year, to give Hitler time to reorganise his Eastern front, we have given Russia the mildest winter she has had in a hundred years, and so greatly helped to spoil Stalin’s winter offensive.’

‘You—you’ll do your best to prevent the Allies landing on the Continent?’ Philip murmured, fascinated in spite of his repulsion for the vulture-like old Atzlantean.

‘Of course. Hitler is the finest instrument we have ever had to work through, so we shall continue to aid him to the utmost limit of our powers. We did great work in the years of the Mongol Empire and during the Spanish Conquest of South America. The religious wars after your Reformation were the best time we ever had in Europe until Napoleon arose to play our game. Then there were the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Yet never before have the number of killed been quite enough. As the population of the world increases Shaitan sets his price higher. But now we have Hitler we shall obtain our freedom.

‘It is not only the thousands that die fighting in his war every day. His concentration camps are even more profitable. The Jews whom he has starved and tortured to death run into several million—and he is now endeavouring to exterminate the whole Polish nation. He has built ovens in which he can burn great numbers of them every day—more than would be killed in several hours of battle. Yes. It will not be long now. If we can prevent Hitler from being defeated for another year or two, he will have paid the price that Shaitan demands to set us free.’

Philip and Gloria sat there appalled at this monstrous thing that they had been just told. Credible or not, the thought behind the whole idea was the very essence of Evil. Strive as they would to conceal their revulsion, it was impossible for them altogether to keep out of their faces some of the horror they felt.

Zadok saw it, and his dark eyes narrowed, as he said: ‘You appear distressed. Does not the thought of the wholesale destruction of your enemies please you?’

‘Yes,’ Philip forced the syllable from his lips, and, realising that now of all times he must not be found wanting in his part, went on: ‘It would be a great day for the world if every one of the murdering English and Scots were blotted out tomorrow. I was only thinking of all the other people who must get killed or hurt in such a huge war—particularly if you exert all your powers to keep it going indefinitely.’

‘Everyone must die some time,’ Zadok shrugged; ‘and a swift death by violence is in most cases less painful than a slow one caused by illness or old age. Why, in any case, should you concern yourself for a host of people who are unknown to you? However, you do not appear to be burdened with these absurd scruples in the case of the British. That is good, as actually I came here to ask if you would be willing to give us your help in ensuring their liquidation.’

‘Certainly.’ Philip was on his toes now and did not pause a second before replying. If some great power for good had directed his steps to this domain of evil so that he might learn what was being done there, he must reject no opportunity to find out more about the powers wielded by these Satanists.

Rakil came in at that moment. As he did so, Zadok stood up and said: ‘That is well. I will ask the Lord Toxil for his consent to my project. If he agrees to my using you, I will speak with you again tomorrow morning.’

After Zadok had gone Rakil told them that his screening was about to begin and took them to a room on the lower level, which was very long and almost bare. Fixed to the centre of the wall at one end was a sheet, about eight feet long by four feet high, of silvery, shimmering substance that looked like frosted glass. In front of it was a low stand, on top of which some form of gyroscope was spinning at a terrific speed; before it was a frame like the back of a telephone switchboard with hundreds of fine wires and a seat facing the screen. Half-way down the room stood a narrow table with three stools at each side of it and one at the far end. The wall at the other end of the room was filled with a strange array of cylinders and retorts, reminiscent of the laboratory of a mediaeval alchemist.

There were three men and three women in the room, all of whom were middle-aged except for one of the women, who was very old and stared before her with sightless eyes. Rakil introduced them as his assistants and, as they took their places, described their functions.

As the old woman walked slowly and unhesitatingly to the seat in front of the screen and sitting down began to run her fingers lightly over the wires, he said: ‘Sonsig is what you would call our operator. I tell her what we wish to see and long practice enables her to tune in to the required scene almost immediately. If I wish to change the scene in the middle of a screening, I have only to tell her.’ Then he added casually: ‘We always blind our operators—it increases the delicacy of their sense of touch.’

Philip made no comment on this brutal custom, but it confirmed his view that, whatever the scientific achievements of the Lords of the Mountain, they were still savages at heart.

One of the men had seated himself in front of the complicated array of retorts at the other end of the room, and pointing towards him Rakil said: ‘He controls our supply of magno-electric power. It is generated in a far part of the mountain, but it cannot be sent out unless the blood vapour has been passed through one of these retorts. Whenever power is required he
causes one or more of the retorts to fill, and at my order it is discharged, much as you would send out a directional wireless beam, to any part of the world that we wish to affect.’

The other four asistants were grouped around the table in the centre of the room, and as Rakil introduced them he went on to say that they all understood English, and that it was their business to interpret and record all that took place during the screenings. The assistants all bowed to Gloria and Philip, eyeing them with great curiosity, but, apart from a few words of greeting, they made no attempts at conversation, possibly owing to Rakil’s presence.

Rakil then sat down at the top of the table facing the screen, and motioned to his two guests to sit on either side of him. The two men observers sat each side of the other end of the table, and the two women sat between them and the visitors. Raising his voice, Rakil spoke to the old blind operator for some minutes, giving her instructions about what he wished to see. As her back was towards them, Philip and Gloria could not observe her hands, but from the rapid movement of her elbows it was clear that she was flicking her sensitive fingertips over the complicated web of wires in front of her. With a quick glance over his shoulder Rakil gave an order to the man at the other end of the room, the lights dimmed, and the screening then began.

The silvery screen began to vibrate, but its movement gradually lessened until it had changed to a continuous series of smooth undulations like a swell upon an oily sea running lengthwise along its surface; then its opaqueness commenced to clear, and Philip and Gloria suddenly realised that they were looking at a moving picture.

They seemed to be on a wide road in a great stream of traffic which was approaching a huge, many-storied, modern building standing by itself. The traffic stream entered the building by a big arch. The cars, runabouts, box-wagons and single-decker buses disgorged their passengers, ninety-five per cent of whom wore American uniforms. There were hundreds of men, mostly officers, but also scores of women; as the traffic line moved off down the great ramps the constant stream of arriving people was whisked away in elevators and distributed itself through the vast building.

Staring at the picture on the undulating screen, Philip and Gloria felt as though they were behind a travelling movie camera with a muted sound track attached. They were carried smoothly down seemingly endless corridors, pausing only to look in at a number of doorways inside which the scene was almost identical—innumerable officers seated behind innumerable desks, either talking together or dictating to stenographers, and all the multitudinous noises of this enormous hive of war organisation came faintly but fairly clearly to the watchers.

Eventually the field of view passed through a closed door into a larger room. A number of middle-aged officers, some of them in naval uniform, was seated at a long table. From the number of medal ribbons that most of them wore, the gold bands on the sleeves of the sailors and the general air of brisk authority that emanated from them, it was clear that they were all of high rank. Round the walls sat an even greater number of younger men, evidently there to take notes or supply information to their seniors at a conference that was just about to begin. During the next five minutes several more officers arrived, some sitting down at the table with breezy greetings to their neighbours, and others slipping quietly into places by the wall; then the buzz of conversation ceased, and they settled down to business.

At first Philip and Gloria found great difficulty in grasping anything at all of what was going on, because there were so many allusions to things that meant nothing to them. Gradually, however, it became clear that the conference was discussing the plans for an assault on another Japanese-held island in the Pacific.

From time to time one or other of Rakil’s male assistants spoke a few words in his own tongue, and one of the women took them down in strange hieroglyphics on a sheet of papyrus spread before her on the table.

Gloria soon became bored with the whole proceedings. The novelty of the thing had been great fun at first and, she felt, might have continued so if the magic mirror had gone on showing all sorts of different scenes, but to sit and watch a number of old men arguing the pros and cons of things she did not understand was proving inexpressibly dreary.