The Land Leviathan (A Nomad of the Time Streams Novel) (8 page)

By the beginnings of the new century, therefore, it seemed that Utopia had been achieved. There was not one person in the world who was not well-nourished and did not have the opportunity to receive a good education. Poverty had been abolished almost overnight.

Man
can
live by bread alone when all his energies are devoted to attaining that bread, but once his mind is clear, once he has ceased to labour through all his waking hours to find food, then he begins to think. If he has the opportunity to gather facts, if his mind is educated, then he begins to consider his position in the world and compare it with that of other men. Now it was possible for thousands to understand that the world’s power was in the hands of a few—the landowners, the industrialists, the politicians and the ruling classes. All these people had welcomed O’Bean’s scientific and technical advances—for they were able to lease his patents, to build their own machines, to make themselves richer as those they ruled became better off. But twenty-five years is enough time for a new generation to grow up—a generation which has never known dire poverty and which, unlike a previous generation, is no longer merely grateful that it has leisure time and more than enough to eat. That generation begins to want to control its own fate in myriad ways. In short, it seeks political power.

By 1900, in this world, civil strife had become a fact of life in almost every nation, large and small. In some countries, usually those which had been the most backward, revolutions succeeded, and, attended by a fanatical nationalism, new power groups were formed. The Great Powers found their colonial territories snatched from them—in Asia, in Africa, in the Americas—and since the sources of power were cheap and O’Bean’s patents were distributed everywhere, since military power no longer depended so much on large, well-trained armies (or even navies), these older nations were wary of starting wars with the newer nations, preferring to try to retain their positions by means of complicated diplomacy, by building up ‘spheres of influence’. But complicated diplomatic games played in the far corners of the world tend to have a habit of creating stronger tensions at home, so in Europe, in particular, but also in the United States and Japan, nationalism grew stronger and stronger and fierce battles of words began to take place between the Great Powers. Trade embargoes, crippling and unnecessarily unfair tariff restrictions were applied and returned. A madness began to fill the heads of those who ruled. They saw themselves threatened from within by their young people, who demanded what they saw as more social justice, and from without by their neighbouring countries. More and more resources were devoted to the building up of land, sea and air fleets, of large guns, of armies which could control dissident populations (and at the same time, hopefully, absorb them). In many countries enforced military service, after the Prussian model, became the norm— and this in turn brought an increasingly furious reaction from those who sought to reform their governments. Active, violent revolutionary methods began to be justified by those who had originally hoped to achieve their ends by means of oratory and the ballot box.

What O’Bean himself thought of this nobody knows, but it was likely that he did feel enormously guilty. One story has it that on the inevitable day when the Great Powers went to war he quietly committed suicide.

The war was at first contained only in Europe, and in the first weeks most of the major cities of the Continent and Britain were reduced to ash and rubble. A short-lived Central American Alliance lasted long enough to go to war with the United States and quickly achieved a similar end. Huge mobile war machines rolled across the wasted land; sinister aerial battleships cruised smoke-filled skies; while under the water lurked squadrons of subaquatic men-o’-war, often destroying one another without ever once rising to the surface where more conventional ironclads blasted rivals to bits with the horrifically powerful guns invented by a boy of thirteen years old.

“But most of the
real
fighting’s over now,” said the sergeant, with a tinge of contempt. “The fuel ran out for the generators and the engines. The war machines that were left just—well— stopped. It all went back to cavalry and infantry and that sort of stuff for a while, but there was hardly anyone knew
how
to fight like that—and precious few people left to do it. And not much ammunition, I shouldn’t wonder. We’re down to about one cartridge each.” He tapped the weapon which hung at his belt. “It’ll be bayonets, if we ever do meet the enemy. The bally Indians’ll be top dogs—those who’ve still got swords and lances and bows and arrows and that...”

“You don’t think the war will stop? People must be shocked by what’s happened—sickened by it all.”

The soldier shook his head, waxing philosophical. “It’s a madness, sir. We’ve all got it. It could go on until the last human being crawls away from the body of the chap he’s just bashed to bits with a stone. That’s what war is, sir—madness. You don’t think about what you’re doing. You forget, don’t you—you just go on killing and killing.” He paused, almost embarrassed. “Leastways, that’s what
I
think.”

I conceded that he could well be right. Filled with unutterable gloom, obsessed by the irony of my escape from a relatively peaceful world into this one, I yet felt the need somehow to get back to England, to see for myself if the sergeant had told me the truth, or whether he had exaggerated, either from a misguided sense of drama, or from despair at his own position.

I told him that I should like to try to return to my own country, but he smiled pityingly at me, telling me that there wasn’t the slightest chance. If I headed, say, for Darjiling, then I was bound to be captured by the Russians or the Arabians. Even if I managed to reach the coast, there were no ships in the harbours (if there were harbours!) or the aerodromes. My best plan, he suggested, was to fall in with them. They had done their duty and their position was hopeless. They planned to get up into the hills and make some sort of life for themselves there. The sergeant thought that, with the population killing itself off so rapidly, game would proliferate and we should be able to live by hunting—“and live pretty well, too”. But I had had enough of the hills already. For better or worse, as soon as I had recovered my strength I would try to get to the coast.

A couple of days later I bid farewell to the sergeant and his men. They begged me not to be so foolhardy, that I was going to certain death.

“There was talk of plague, sir,” said the sergeant. “Terrible diseases brought about by the collapse of the sanitary systems.”

I listened politely to all the warnings and then, politely, ignored them.

Perhaps I had had my share of bad luck, for good luck stayed with me for the rest of my journey across the Indian subcontinent. Darjiling had, indeed, fallen to the Arabians, but they had evacuated the shell of that city soon after occupying it. Their forces were stretched pretty thin and had been needed on the home front. There were still one or two divisions left, but they were busy looking for Russians, and when they discovered that I was English they took this to mean that I was a friend (towards the end, I gathered, there had been some attempt to make a pact between Britain and Arabia) and these chaps were under what turned out to be the utterly false impression that we were fighting on the same side. I fell in with them. They were heading for Calcutta—or where Calcutta had once stood—where there was some hope of getting a ship back to the Middle East. There was a ship, too—a, to them, old-fashioned steamer, using coal-burning engines—and although the name on its side was in Russian, it flew the crossed-scimitar flag of the Arabian Alliance. It was in a state of terrible disrepair and one took one’s life in one’s hands when going aboard, but there had been a chance in a million of finding any kind of ship and I was not in a mood to miss it. She had been an old cargo ship and there was very little room, as such, for passengers. Most of the men were crowded into the holds and made as comfortable as possible. As an officer and a ‘guest’ I got to share a cabin with four of the Arabians, three of whom were Palestinians and one of whom was an Egyptian. They all spoke perfect English and, while somewhat reserved, were decent enough company, going so far as to lend me a captain’s uniform and most of the necessities of life which I had learned, in recent months, to do without.

The ship made slow progress through the Bay of Bengal and I relieved my boredom by telling my companions that I had been the prisoner of a Himalayan tribe for several years and thus getting them to fill in certain details of their world’s history which the sergeant had been unable to give me.

There was some talk of a man whom they called the “Black Attila”, a leader who had emerged of late in Africa and whom they saw as a threat to themselves. Africa had not suffered as badly from the effects of the war as Europe and most of her nations— many only a few years old—had done their best to remain neutral. As a result they had flourishing crops, functioning harvesting machines and a reserve of military power with which to protect their wealth. The Black Attila had growing support in the Negro nations for a
jehad
against the whites (the Arabians were included in this category, as were Asiatics), but, at the last my informants had heard, was still consolidating local gains and had shown no sign of moving against what remained of the countries of the West. There were other rumours which said that he had already been killed, while some said he had invaded and conquered most of Europe.

The ship had no radio apparatus (another example of my good fortune, it emerged, for the Arabians had never reached the point of signing a pact with Britain!), and thus there was no means of confirming or denying these reports. We sailed down the coast of India, through the Gulf of Mannar, managed to take on coal at Agatti in the Laccadives, got into heavy weather in the Arabian Sea, lost three hands and most of our rigging, entered the Red Sea and were a few days away from the approach to the Suez Canal when, without any warning at all, the ship was struck by several powerful torpedoes and began to sink almost immediately.

It was the work of an undersea torpedo-boat—one of the few still functioning—and it was not, it emerged, an act of war at all, but an act of cynical piracy.

However, the pirate had done his work too well. The ship sighed, coughed, and went to the bottom with most of her passengers and crew. I and about a dozen others were left clinging to what little wreckage there was.

The undersea boat lifted its prow from the water for a few seconds to observe its handiwork, saw that there was nothing to be gained by remaining, and left us to our fate. I suppose we should have been grateful that it did not use the guns mounted along its sides to finish us off. Ammunition had become scarce almost everywhere, it seemed.

I
shan’t describe in detail my experiences of the next twenty-four hours. Suffice to say that they were pretty grim as I watched my companions sink, one by one, beneath the waves and knew that ultimately I should be joining them. I suppose I have had a great deal of practice in the art of survival and somehow I managed to remain afloat, clinging to my pathetic bit of flotsam, until the late afternoon of the next day when the monster rose from the waves, steaming water pouring off its blue-black skin, its great crystalline eyes glaring at me, and a horrible, deep-throated roaring issuing from its belly. At first my exhausted mind
did
see it as a living creature but my second thoughts were that the undersea torpedo-boat had returned to finish me off.

Slowly the disturbance in the water ceased and the growling subsided to a quiet purring and the sleek and slender craft came to rest on the surface. From hatches fore and aft sailors in sea-green uniforms sprang onto the deck and ran quickly to the rails. One of them flung a life-buoy out over the side and with the last of my strength I swam towards it, seizing it and allowing myself to be hauled towards the ship. Hands dragged me aboard and a cup of rum was forced down my throat while blankets were thrown around me and I was carried bodily along the rocking deck and down into the forward hatch. This hatch was closed swiftly over us and as I was borne below I could feel the ship itself descending back below the waves. The whole thing had taken place in the space of a few minutes and I had the impression of urgency, as if much had been risked in coming to the surface at all. I surmised that this could not be the same ship (it seemed larger, for one thing) which had left me to my fate, that it must be another. It was certainly not a British ship, and I could make little of the language spoken by the seamen who carried me to a small, steel-walled cabin and stripped me of my sodden Arabian uniform before lowering me into the bunk and drawing warm blankets over me. It was probably a Slavonic language and I wondered if I had been made a prisoner of war by the Russians. I heard the ship’s engines start up again, and there was a barely perceptible lurch as we began to go forward at what I guessed to be pretty high speed. Then, careless of what my fate might be, I fell into a heavy and, thankfully, dreamless sleep.

U
pon awakening, I glanced automatically towards the porthole but, of course, could not tell whether it was night or day, let alone what the time was! All I saw was dark green swirling water rushing past, faintly illuminated by the lights from the ship as it coursed with shark-like speed through the deeps. For a while I stared in fascination at the sight, hoping to make out some details of my first glimpse of the mysterious underwater world, but we were doubtless moving too rapidly. As I stared, the door of the cabin opened and a seaman entered, bearing a large tin cup which proved to contain hot, black coffee. He spoke in a thick accent:

“The captain’s compliments, sir. Would you care to join him in his cabin, at your leisure.”

I accepted the coffee, noting that my borrowed uniform had been washed, dried and pressed and that a fresh set of undergarments had been laid out on the small table fixed against the opposite wall to the bunk.