The Land Leviathan (A Nomad of the Time Streams Novel) (12 page)

“I can’t bear to think of that,” I said. “But if it did happen, I would be for carrying on some sort of guerrilla war against him. We’d go under, sooner or later, but we’d have done something...”

Korzeniowski smiled. “I have no special loyalties to Britain, Bastable. What makes you think I’d agree to such a scheme?”

I was nonplused. Then his smile broadened. “But I would, of course. The Scots have been good to me. If I have any sort of homeland now I suppose it is in the Outer Hebrides. However, I have a hunch that the black conquest of Britain would only be a token affair. Cicero Hood has his eye on larger spoils.”

General Cicero Hood (or so he called himself) was the military genius now known as the Black Attila. We had heard that he was not a native of Africa, at all, but had been born in Arkansas, the son of a slave. It was logical to suspect that his next main objective would be the United States of America (though “United” meant precious little these days), if his main motive for attacking the Western nations was revenge upon the White Race for the supposed ills it had done him and his people.

I commented on the massive egotism of the man. Even his namesake had somewhat nobler motives than simple vengeance in releasing his Huns upon the world.

“Certainly,” agreed Korzeniowski, “but there is a messianic quality about Hood. He pursues the equivalent of a religious
jehad
against the enslavers of his people. We have had leaders like that in Poland. You would not understand such feelings, I suppose, being British, but I think I can. Moreover, whatever your opinion of his character (and we know little of that, really), you must admit that he is something of a genius. First he united a vast number of disparate tribes and countries, fired them with his ideals, and worked with amazing speed and skill to make those ideals reality.”

I said that I did not doubt his ability as a strategist or, indeed, his intelligence, but it seemed to me that he had perverted a great gift to a mean-spirited ambition.

Korzeniowski only added: “But then, Mr. Bastable, you are not a Negro.”

I hardly saw the point of this remark, but dropped the subject, since there was nothing more I had to say on it.

I
t was perhaps ironic, therefore, that a couple of months later, having sounded out possible ‘employers’, we sailed for Bantustan with the intention of joining that country’s navy.

Bantustan had been better known in my own world as South Africa. It had been one of the first colonies to make a bid for independence during those pre-war years when O’Bean’s inventions had released the world from poverty and ignorance. Under the leadership of a young politician of Indian parentage called Gandhi, it had succeeded in negotiating a peaceful withdrawal from the British Empire, almost without the Empire realizing what had happened. Naturally, the great wealth of Bantustan—its diamonds and its gold alone—was not something which British, Dutch and American interests had wished to give up easily, yet Gandhi had managed to placate them by offering them large shareholdings in the mines without their having to invest any further capital. Since most of the companies had been public ones, shareholders’ meetings had all voted for Gandhi’s schemes. Then the war had come and there was no longer any need to pay dividends to the dead and the lost. Bantustan had prospered greatly during and after the war and was well on its way to becoming an important and powerful force in the postwar political game. By building up its military strength, by signing pacts with General Hood which ensured him of important supplies of food and minerals at bargain prices, President Gandhi had protected his neutrality. Bantustan was probably one of the safest and most stable small nations in the world, and since it required our experience and our ship, it was the obvious choice for us. Moreover, we were assured, we should find no racialistic nonsense there. Black, brown and white races lived together in harmony—a model to the rest of the world. My only reservations concerned the political system operating there. It was a republic based upon the theories of a German dreamer and arch-socialist called Karl Marx. This man, who in fact lived a large part of his life in a tolerant England, had made most radicals sound like the highest of High Tories, and personally I regarded his ideas as at best unrealistic and at worst morally and socially dangerous. I doubted if his main theories could have worked in any society and I expected to have quick proof of this as soon as we docked in Cape Town.

W
e arrived in Cape Town on 14th September, 1906, and were impressed not only by a serviceable fleet of surface and underwater ships, but also a large collection of shipyards working at full capacity. For the first time I was able to see what O’Bean’s world must have been like before the war. A great, clean city of tall, beautiful buildings, its streets filled with gliding electric carriages, criss-crossed by public monorail lines, the skies above it full of individual airboats and large, stately airships, both commercial and military. Well-fed, well-dressed people of all colours strolled through wide, tree-lined arcades, and the London I had visited in some other 1973 seemed as far behind this Cape Town as my own London had seemed behind that London of the future.

Suddenly it did not seem to matter what political theories guided the ruling of Bantustan, for it was obvious that it scarcely mattered, so rich was the country and so contented were its people. We had no difficulty in communicating with our new colleagues, for although the official language was Bantu, everyone spoke English and many also spoke Afrikaans, which is essentially Dutch. Here there had been no South African war and as a result there had been little bitterness between the English and Dutch settlers, who had formed a peaceful alliance well before President Gandhi had risen to political power. Seeing what South Africa had become, I almost wept for the rest of the world. If only it had followed this example! I felt prepared to spend my life in the service of this country and give it my loyalty as I had once given Britain my loyalty.

President Gandhi personally welcomed us. He was a small gnome-like man, still quite young, with an infectious smile. In recent years he had devoted quite a lot of his energies to attracting what remained of the West’s skilled and talented people to Bantustan. He dreamed of a sane and tranquil world in which all that was best in mankind might flourish. It was his regret that he needed to maintain a strong military position (and thus in his opinion waste resources) in order to guard against attack from outside, but he managed it gracefully enough and felt, he told us at the private dinner to which Korzeniowski and myself were invited, that there was some chance of setting an example to men like Cicero Hood.

“Perhaps he will begin to see how wasteful his schemes are, how his talents could be better put to improving the world and making it into a place where all races live in equality and peace together.”

I am not sure that, presented with these ideas in my own world, I could have agreed wholeheartedly with President Gandhi, but the proof of what he said lay all around us. O’Bean had thought that material prosperity was enough to abolish strife and fear, but Gandhi had shown that a clear understanding of the subtler needs of mankind was also necessary—that a moral example had to be made, that a moral life had to be led without compromise—that hypocrisy (albeit unconscious) among a nation’s leaders led to cynicism and violence among the population. Without guile, without deceiving those he represented, President Gandhi had laid the foundations for lasting happiness in Bantustan.

“This is, indeed, a haven of civilization you have here,” Captain Korzeniowski said approvingly, as we sat on a wide verandah overlooking the great city of Cape Town and smoked excellent local cigars, drinking a perfect home-produced port. “But you are so rich, President Gandhi. Can you protect your country from those who would possess your wealth?”

And then the little Indian gave Korzeniowski and myself a shy, almost embarrassed look. He fingered his tie and stared at the roof-tops of the nearby buildings, and he sounded a trifle sad. “It is something I wished to speak of later,” he said. “You are aware, I suppose, that Bantustan has never spilled blood on behalf of its ideals.”

“Indeed we are!” I said emphatically.

“It never shall,” he said. “In no circumstances would I be responsible for the taking of a single life.”

“Only if you were attacked,” I said. “Then you would have to defend your country. That would be different.”

But President Gandhi shook his head. “You have just taken service in a navy, gentlemen, which exists for only one reason. It is effective only while it succeeds in dissuading those we fear from invading us. It is an expensive and impressive scarecrow. But it is, while I command it, as capable of doing harm as any scarecrow you will find erected by a farmer to frighten the birds away from his fields. If we are ever invaded, it will be your job to take as many people aboard as possible and evacuate them to some place of relative safety. This is a secret that we share. You must guard it well. All our officers have been entrusted with the same secret.”

The enormity of President Gandhi’s risk in revealing this plan took my breath away. I said nothing.

Korzeniowski frowned and considered this news carefully before replying. “You place a heavy burden on our shoulders, President.”

“I wish that I did not have to, Captain Korzeniowski.”

“It would only take one traitor...” He did not finish his sentence.

Gandhi nodded. “Only one and we should be attacked and overwhelmed in a few hours. But I rely on something else, Captain Korzeniowski. People like General Hood cannot believe in pacifism. If a traitor did go to him and inform him of the truth, there is every chance that he would not believe it.” He grinned like a happy child. “You know of the Japanese method of fighting called Jiu-Jit-Su? You use your opponent’s own violence against him. Hopefully, that is what I do with General Hood. Violent men believe only in such concepts as ‘weakness’ and ‘cowardice’. They are so deeply cynical, so rooted in their own insane beliefs, that they cannot even begin to grasp the concept of ‘pacifism’. Suppose you were a spy sent by General Hood to find out my plans. Suppose you left here now and went back to the Black Attila and said to him, ‘General, President Gandhi has a large, well-equipped army, an air fleet and a navy, but he does not intend to use them if you attack him.’ What would General Hood do? He would almost certainly laugh at you, and when you insisted that this was a fact he would probably have you locked up or executed as a fool who had ceased to be of use to him.” President Gandhi grinned again. “There is less danger, gentlemen, in living according to a set of high moral principles than most politicians believe.”

And now our audience was over. President Gandhi wished us happiness in our new life and we left his quarters in a state of considerable confusion.

It was only when we got to our own ship and crossed the gangplank to go aboard, seeing the hundred or so similar craft all about us, that Korzeniowski snorted with laughter and shook his head slowly from side to side.

“Well, Bastable, what does it feel like to be part of the most expensive scarecrow the world has ever known?”

A
peaceful year passed in Bantustan—peaceful for us, that is. Reports continued to reach us of the ever-increasing conquests of the Black Attila. We learned that he had raised his flag over the ruins of London and left a token force there, but had met with no real resistance and seemed, as we had guessed, content (like the Romans before him) to claim the British Isles as part of his new Empire without, at this moment in time, making any particular claims upon the country.

Our friends in the Outer Hebrides would be safe for at least a while longer. Our most strenuous duties were to take part in occasional naval manoeuvres, or to escort cargo ships along the coasts of Africa. These ships were crewed entirely by Negroes and we rarely had sight of land. It was regarded as politic for whites not to reveal themselves, even though Hood knew they were not discriminated against in Bantustan.

We had a great deal of leisure and spent it exploring President Gandhi’s magnificent country. Great game reserves had been made of the wild veldt and jungle and silent airboats carried one over them so that one could observe all kinds of wildlife in its natural state without disturbing it. There was no hunting here, and lions, elephants, zebra, antelope, wildebeest, rhinoceri, roamed the land unharmed by Man. I could not help, sometimes, making a comparison with the Garden of Eden, where Man and Beast had lived side by side in harmony. Elsewhere we found model farms and mines, worked entirely by automatic machinery, continuing to add to the wealth of the country and, ultimately, the dignity of its inhabitants. Processing plants—for food as well as minerals—lay close to the coast where the food in particular was being stockpiled. Bantustan had more than enough to serve her own needs and the surplus was being built up or sold at cost to the poorer nations. I had begun to wonder why so much food was being stored in warehouses when President Gandhi called a meeting of a number of his air- and sea-officers and told us of a plan he had had for some time.

“All over the world there are people reduced to the level of savage beasts,” he said. “They are brutes, but it is no fault of their own. They are brutes because they are hungry and because they live in fear. Therefore, over the last few years I have been putting aside a certain percentage of our food and also medical supplies—serums which my chemists have developed to cope with the various plagues still lingering in Europe and parts of Asia. You all know the function of your fleets is chiefly to give Bantustan security, but it has seemed a shame to waste so much potential, and now I will tell you of my dream.”

He paused, giving us all that rather shy, winning smile for which he was famous. “You do not have to share it. I am asking only for volunteers, for there is danger involved. I want to distribute that food and medicine where it is most needed. You, Mr. Bastable, have seen and reported what has happened in Southern England. Would you not agree that these supplies would help to alleviate some of the worst aspects of the conditions there?”