The Unbegotten (16 page)

Maddern glanced at Joyce, who looked quite ethereally beautiful in the mist, and nodded.

They stepped inside.

Maddern had just room to sit on a hinged seat at one side. The master sat next to him, and when he pressed another spot on the inside of the casing, the door slid to. Maddern found himself clenching his teeth. On one side was a small panel, with no more controls than on a small car. He pulled a lever, and there was a faint whirr of sound. Next moment there was a jolt, rather as if a lift had left its base, but Maddern felt nothing more.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again there was a kind of window

slot at his side, and he could see the stars; only the stars. Even though the stars must be so far away, they seemed to be moving very fast. The Master was sitting on his narrow seat, reading a small book. Soon, Maddern was lulled to drowsiness by the faint whirring and the passing stars, and he closed his eyes. He had no idea how long he had been asleep when he woke to a touch on his shoulder.

‘Dr. Maddern—Dr.
Maddern
.'

It was the Master, leaning over him and shaking him. As he began to struggle up the other said, ‘We are on Nega. Nega is our base from which we control all the satellites in our galaxy.'

Shakily and stupidly, Maddern got to his feet. The door was open, and he saw beyond to lighted passages and one big foyer, except that the gangway was very short. He stepped off it, on to the satellite, and at the same instant Joyce stepped from a door only a few feet away from him. The Master went ahead, taking all of this so much for granted that he gave an air of verisimilitude if not of reality. There was just room for Maddern and Joyce to walk side by side. Their hands touched.'
Is
it really a planet?' whispered Maddern.

‘That was undoubtedly a space capsule,' Joyce said.

‘I wonder where—' Maddern began, and then stopped abruptly for they reached an intersection of two passages, and Palfrey appeared from the other passage. He looked alert and eager and at sight of them, actually laughed.

‘It isn't wholly a hoax, then,' he remarked. ‘We're all here together.'

‘Nothing about this confrontation is a hoax,' said the Master sharply. ‘Please come in here.'

He led them into a big room with a curved wall, beautifully appointed in contemporary furniture and with many couches and easy chairs facing the wall as well as facing inwards. He motioned them to one of the long, curved couches, and as they sat down, the wall began to open. In fact, two sections of a huge window opened, and they looked out on the stars.

It was as if they were part of an unknown or unrecognisable galaxy.

The scene was of such beauty, such brilliance against the darkness of the sky. Slowly, a sphere floated into sight like an enormous moon and they became aware of the contours of the Earth and the outline of its western hemisphere.

There was a slight sensation, much as when the spacecraft had started off; then they were absolutely still, and the Earth seemed to fill the whole of space beyond the window.

‘Now do you see how easy it is to control the world?' asked the Master. ‘Now do you see how small and insignificant it is when seen against the enormity of one galaxy in the universe?'

‘But in the beginning, surely,' Palfrey said, ‘you came from there.'

 

 

The Master did not answer Palfrey but he seemed to disapprove of the remark. He pressed a switch and the windows closed, then he touched the side of the couch so that it turned slowly on a pivot base and they were facing inwards. The Master stood up in one of those bewilderingly swift movements – he seemed to be in two places at once, they hardly saw him move. He sat in a chair opposite them, with Azran by his side, like an acolyte. No one else was in this room, and there were no sounds except a faint burring. The Master looked from one to the other very intently and then stated, ‘I believe, above all, in evolution. Do you?' His glance darted from one to the other, demanding an answer.

‘Yes,' Palfrey said plainly.

‘Yes,' said Joyce, quietly.

‘I don't know any alternative but stagnation and decay,' replied Maddern.

‘Then so far we are in agreement and understand one another. There is a great difference, however, between your earthly concept of evolution and my celestial one. You believe that the whole human race will evolve, over thousands of years, to a form of perfection as conceived in the human mind. Is that so?'

‘Roughly,' Palfrey said.

‘There would be a lot of argument about what constitutes perfection,' remarked Joyce, with obvious feeling.

‘But roughly, yes, I think you're right,' agreed Maddern.

He was fascinated by this man, by the realisation that they were here in space, had come here to the satellite as easily – more easily – than if they had got into a car from city to city in England, and by the fact that they were discussing a bizarre and in some ways inconceivable situation in such a dispassionate mood. The Master was obviously intent on making his attitude clear, and his enunciation was beautifully precise.

‘Very good,' he said. ‘Dr. Palfrey, it is true that this planet was colonised from the Earth, by a team of scientists who worked privately, financed by two wealthy men, both now dead. They did not agree with what was happening on Earth. They believed that the process could be greatly speeded up.' He paused long enough to allow that to sink in, then went on, ‘You believe that evolution must come slowly, by trial and error, as it were. We, here, disagree with you. We believe that with careful breeding from a selection of male sperm and female ova, the perfect man and woman can be born. However, the terrestrial or what we now call the subhuman way to conceive children is by the physical union of male and female. This means that at the time of conception deep emotions are brought into play which adversely affect any child so conceived. Further, you still believe that the child, once conceived, should remain in the female's womb. This means that in the nine months of gestation the child is under constant emotional pressure from the mother. Moreover, the child in the womb is subject to ailments which the mother might suffer. The simplest illustration is that Earth children can be blinded by mothers who have such a mild illness as German measles. So, we have the children in artificial but wholly satisfactory wombs, and, on full birth, place them under communal care. This has proved wholly effective here on Nega and on our satellites. The time has come, I am sure, to apply the same methods to the Earth. In fact—' He gave a haughty smile as he went on, ‘We are about to colonise the Earth from here.'

And he sounded as if he meant exactly what he said.

Palfrey felt a shiver of horror through his body, but before he could speak, almost before he could think, the Master went on, ‘If the world continues in your way, Dr. Palfrey, you would be doomed to failure in any case. The process will fail because you permit the animal instincts of the human being as known on Earth to become the focal point of the male and female relationship. This is why we call you the Terrestrial
homo sapiens
as distinct from those of us who stem from my family and those who first came to Nega. I call us the Celestial
homo sapiens,
because we live and work in the universe, among the planets. We are far superior in every respect, largely because we do not spend our natural energy in sexual activity. As I have told you we do not conceive in the way Terrestrial
homo sapiens
conceive. At intervals we have induced sexual orgasms, when under sedation, and we are not aware of the stimuli used. That is, a mild form of mechanical manipulation. The semen and ova so obtained are stored indefinitely and taken only when the female is at her prime—between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five. None of the false sentimentality and emotional stresses common on Earth is therefore extant. There are no known human blood relationships. Friendships are made intellectually, never emotionally.'

The Master paused and Palfrey watched unbelieving yet sure this man meant exactly what he said. Again the Master hardly gave them time to grasp the full implication of his words.

‘You are perhaps aware of some of the most abominable aspects of the Terrestrial
homo sapiens.
I have to remind you that there is no process of selection – breeding is entirely haphazard. There is no truly effective system of training, either. Children are brought up in conditions of appalling ignorance and often squalor. The parent-child relationship is seldom, if ever, satisfactory. The dependence of one human being on others is, apart from its proven failure over many thousands of years, quite unethical. The Earth-child is brought up in an atmosphere of tradition which fills its mind with fallacies. Why, some people on Earth still believe in God! What a way to bring a child up!'

He looked and sounded appalled by the thought and oblivious of the irony that he should talk so.

Maddern said drily, ‘A great number do.'

‘What possible hope is there for a child brought up in an atmosphere of superstitious hero-or-God-worship?' demanded the Master. ‘What hope is there for a child who, from an early age, has to consider the emotional gravity pull, as one might say, from mother to father, sister to brother—oh, it is ludicrous. On Earth you have a gravitational pull towards the Earth's core one moment and one towards, say, the north pole the next, or the south pole. Supposing these gravitational pulls were variable, not constant. People would have little or no control over their movements, over the more obvious physical inclinations of their bodies. Imagine such a situation—and then remind yourselves that this is the kind of multi-directional influence to which
all
children are born on Earth.'

He paused and this time it was Palfrey who commented, non-committally.

‘A great number of people advocate that the child should be separated from the parents early, so that bad parental influences are removed.'

‘A great number? Nonsense! It is doubtful whether there are a thousand psychiatrists on Earth who advocate this. Moreover there are countless other difficulties to be overcome before a child can even begin to develop—to
evolve
—into a rational being capable of using its intellectual capacity to the utmost.'

Maddern murmured, ‘There's something in that. Wasn't it Thoreau who said “Man's capacities have never been measured, nor are we to judge of what he can do, by any—”' He broke off, groping for lost words.

‘”—by any precedents, so little has been tried”,' the Master finished for him, almost impatiently. ‘Yes. He, with a few others, have glimpsed the truth – that the potential of man's mind has never been properly developed or allowed to
evolve.
Something always gets in the way of such evolution and mankind is thrown back into an era of primitive survival. Pestilence or wars or famines or—and most recent and most damaging—the production of far too many children because children come as a result of emotional urges leading to physical desire between the sexes. There is no chance for the evolution of a perfect race because of these and other restricting factors. No chance at all.'

‘Don't you mean there wasn't?' asked Palfrey, quietly.

‘If that remark was intended to be sarcastic I trust it will be the last of its kind you make,' rebuked the Master. ‘If it was an acceptance of simple fact, yes. By a process of simple selection, by using the sperm and ova of physically and mentally perfect men and women, by developing the system of the artificial womb, I have produced a race of people who have none of the defects of the Earth-bound human being. You see in Azran an example of such a person. Only in self-defence against Terrestrials do she and others use the quite exceptional physical strength they possess. We try to restrict the need for such excesses by giving to each one who visits Earth a small pistol which compresses air and is powerful enough to force human beings and even vehicles off balance. Show me yours,' he ordered Azran.

He glanced at the girl with a kind of stern approval, and she smiled, as if quietly pleased, and took a small, flat object from her trousers pocket. It was so flat that its shape had not been revealed, even by that ‘skin'. The Master gave it to her back as he continued, ‘We on Nega have many dependent satellites which are all controlled by us. We call the manmade galaxy Nega-plus. The Nega children, never influenced by any of the normal emotions, are taken to remote places on various planets and other dependent satellites and they are trained to use their
minds.
To
think,
not to
feel.
Their pleasures are all cultural. They study the fourth and even the fifth dimension. And there will soon be sufficient of them to populate the Earth efficiently.'

The Master stopped, and the silence was so profound that the faint buzzing was inaudible. It did not occur to any one of the three ‘Earth' human beings with him to doubt the truth: there
were
enough of these children of the Nega galaxy to populate the Earth, even if not in the same way as the hundreds of millions of human beings already teeming there.

As if he understood this and accepted what was going through their minds, the Master went on, ‘There are, of course, too many people on Earth. Replacement at the present rate of turnover would take far too long, even with the advantages I have outlined to you evolution would not be quick enough. Obviously, the best way to deal with this situation was first to restrict and then to prevent any new Terrestrial human births. I have been responsible for many experiments in such birth control, the last of which have proved to be wholly satisfactory. We have small dependent satellites, also controlled by Nega, the master satellite. Many Terrestrial humans call these flying saucers. These so-called saucers affect all the women of a selected area with the semen-neutraliser, which makes conception impossible. The whole of the selected area is potentially barren from the first waves of neutraliser, which we call
Nega
waves and which affect the ovaries and the creative or genital organs of both men and women. One such treatment is sufficient for at least a year. I have not yet sufficient
Nega
waves to cover the whole of any country but substantial areas of each country have now been affected. Moreover, problems in the production of the
Nega
waves have been overcome. The
Nega
waves are produced from electrical impulses common in outer space, it was simply a case of concentrating and controlling them. They are inexhaustible, like plankton of the oceans. Larger areas on Earth are being affected each day. There is no known form of protection. The waves pass through all known construction materials, such as steel, cement, brick, reinforced concrete, aluminium. Nothing yet discovered has resisted them.'

As Palfrey listened to all this his mouth seemed to become parched, painfully stiff and parched. He could not look away from the Master and had no idea what the other two were doing. There was a doom-like positiveness in what this creature said – obviously there was no likely margin for error – what he said was the simple truth.

Palfrey gulped and asked, ‘How much of the Earth have you conditioned so far?'

‘About one tenth of the major population areas and a far greater proportion of the scattered communities,' said the Master, promptly. ‘The effect will become apparent very soon, certainly within a month.'

‘How—how long will it take to cover the whole Earth?' muttered Maddern.

‘At most, another thirty days,' answered the Master. ‘It is possible that it can be done in twenty days. I had intended to slow the process down—it had not been my intention to proceed at anything like such speed, because there were not enough trained Celestial humans to take over on the Earth. It is a living Earth we wish to see, not a dying one. This problem, as I have told you, has been overcome. Delay is not now possible. I had intended to come to terms with the big powers. However, since the announcement of the incidence of Nega-induced birth-control has been made, it would be an act of inhuman cruelty to slow the process.'

He stopped and Maddern spoke angrily and bitterly – the first sign of emotion he had shown.

‘There would have been no news to break if you—'

‘Reggie,' interrupted Palfrey in the mildest of voices, ‘recrimination won't help. We still don't know what the Master proposes, and obviously it was a grave error to release the news.'

Maddern drew in his breath as if it hurt, but he made no retort. Joyce looked narrowly at Palfrey then closed her eyes. The Master gave a quick nod of approval and then went on briskly, ‘You are a man of rare discernment, Dr. Palfrey. I am beginning to believe that it might be possible for us to come to some arrangement even now. Contrary to what others may think, it has never been my desire to wipe out all Terrestrial humans. Those who remain will have much more food and much more leisure as their number lessens. What I desire—' he hesitated, spread his hands and then leaned forward with an earnestness even he had not shown before ‘—are a number of places on Earth where my Celestial human beings can become acclimatised and learn what they will have to do when eventually we take over. They can, of course, do a great deal of preparatory work. In fact they will have to if they are to control the world in which the vast mass of people are old or ageing. The Terrestrials can, however, lead a contented life, surrounded by their normal pleasures, even their sensual pleasures. It would have been possible, of course, to make the men impotent and to take away the pleasures of physical love-making, but this I have no desire to do.