The Warlord of the Air (17 page)

“I suppose you are right, Herr Bastable. When all is said and done, we are what we are. Our temperaments are such that we support one side or the other. And, I’m afraid, your side is not doing too well today.”

Before I could think, he had taken the gun from my hand and I turned to confront the cynically smiling face of the arch-anarchist himself. Behind him stood a pretty girl dressed in a long, black traveling coat. Her short, dark hair framed her heart-shaped, serious little face and she stared at me curiously with steady, grey eyes which reminded me immediately of Korzeniowski’s.

“This is my daughter, Una Persson,” said the captain from over my shoulder. “You know Count von Bek already, of course.”

O
nce again I had failed to fulfill an ambition in this world of the future. I became convinced that I was doomed never to succeed in anything I set out to do. Was it simply because I was a man existing in a period of history not his own? Or, faced with similar situations in my own time, would I have bungled my opportunities as I had these?

This was the drift of my thoughts as I sat in my cabin, a prisoner, as the ship came and went from Lahore and began heading for its next destination, which was Calcutta. After Calcutta was Saigon where the “deck passengers” were due to come aboard, and then Brunei, where von Bek and his beautiful woman friend were bound (doubtless to join the terrorists seeking to end British rule there). After Brunei we were due to pay a call at Canton, where we would put off the pilgrims who were our deck passengers (or more likely terrorist friends of Korzeniowski’s!) and then start back, via Manila and Darwin. I wondered which of these ports I should visit before the anarchists decided what to do with me. Probably they were trying to decide that now. It should not be difficult to claim that I had been lost overboard at some convenient point.

Barry brought my food in, his own revolver once again in his possession. So distorted was his point of view that he seemed genuinely sorrowful that I had turned out to be a ‘traitor’. Certainly he seemed more sympathetic than angry. I still found it hard to see Barry and Korzeniowski as villains and once I asked Barry if Una Persson, the captain’s daughter, was in some way a hostage for the captain’s good behaviour. Barry laughed at this and shook his head. “No, me boy. She’s her father’s daughter, that’s all there is to that!” But it was evidently the connection—why
The Rover
had been chosen as the vessel in which they had made their escape from Britain. It also proved to me that the captain’s moral sensibilities must be stunted, to say the least, if he allowed his daughter to share a cabin with a man to whom she was evidently not married (where was Mr. Persson? I wondered—doubtless another anarchist who
had
been apprehended). Plainly I did not have much chance of living more than a few hours longer.

I had one hope. Steeton, the telephone operator, had certainly not been in the know about von Bek’s identity. Although he might have other reasons for choosing to serve aboard
The Rover
, he was not the committed socialist the others were. Perhaps I could bribe Steeton in some way? Or offer him help, if he needed it, if he would help me now. But how was I to contact Steeton? And if I did contact him, would he not fall under suspicion and be unable to get a telephone message out to a British airpark?

I stared through the tiny porthole of my cabin. When we had berthed at Lahore, von Bek had kept me at gunpoint so that I might not shout out or drop a message through. I could see nothing but grey clouds going on and on for miles. And all I could hear was the steady roar of
The Rover’s
cumbersome engines, bearing me, it seemed, closer and closer to my doom.

At Calcutta, von Bek once again joined me in my cabin, his revolver pointing at my breast. I glanced out at the sunshine, at a distant city I had known and loved in my own time but now could not recognize. How could these anarchists say that British rule was bad when it had done so much to modernize India? I put this to von Bek, who only laughed.

“Do you know how much a pair of good boots costs in England?”

“About ten shillings,” I said.

“And here?”

“Probably less.”

“About thirty shillings in Calcutta—if you are an Indian. About five shillings if you are a European. Europeans, you see, control the bootmaking trade. While they are able to buy from source, the Indian has to buy from a shop. Retail shops need to charge thirty shillings and this is what the average Indian earns in a month. Food costs more in Delhi than it does in Manchester, but the Indian workman earns a quarter of what the English workman earns. You know why this is?”

“No.” It seemed a pack of lies to me.

“Because Britain’s prices and incomes are maintained artificially, at the expense of her colonies. All trade agreements favour her. She sets the price at which she buys. She controls the means of production so that the price remains stable, no matter how the market fluctuates. The Indian starves so that the Briton may feast. It is the same in all colonies and ‘possessions’ and protectorates, no matter how it is dressed up.”

“But there are hospitals, welfare programmes, there is a dole system,” I said. “The Indian does not starve.”

“True—he is kept alive. It is silly to let your pool of available labour die altogether, for you never know when you may next need it. Slaves represent wealth, do they not?”

I refused to rise to this sort of inflammatory stuff. I was not sure his economics were particularly sound, for one thing, and for another I was certain that he saw everything through the distorting glass of his own mind.

“All I know is that the average Indian is better off than he was in 1900,” I said. “Better off than many English people were in those days.”

“You have seen only the cities. Do you know that Indians are only allowed to come to the cities if they have permission from the government? They must carry passes which say they have a job here. If they have no job, they are returned to the countryside where they live in villages where schools, hospitals and all the other advantages of British rule are few and far between. This sort of system applies throughout Africa and the East. It has been developed over the years and now even applies to some European colonies—Poland under the Russians, Bohemia under the Germans.”

“I know the system,” I said. “It is not inhumane. It is merely a means of controlling the flow of labour, of stopping the cities from turning into the slums they once were. Everyone benefits.”

“It is a system of slavery,” said the aristocratic anarchist. “It is unjust. It leads to further erosions of liberty. You support tyrants, my friend, when you support such a system.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Ask the Indian man in the street how he feels. He will tell you he is satisfied, I am sure.”

“Because he knows no better. Because the British conspire to teach him just a little—enough to confuse his mind and let him swallow their propaganda, no more. It is strange that their educational spending remains the same, when certain other forms of ‘welfare’ spending go up to meet the demand. Thus have you broken the spirit of those you have conquered. You are the ones who speak complacently of free enterprise, of a man standing on his own feet, of ‘bettering himself’ by his own efforts—and then are horrified when those you colonize resent your patronage, your ‘system of controlling the flow of labour’. Bah!”

“I might remind you,” I said, “that, compared with seventy years ago, this world has a stability it has previously never known. There have been no major wars. There have been a hundred years of peace throughout most of the world. Is that an evil?”

“Yes—for your stability has been achieved at the expense of the pride of others. You have destroyed souls, not bodies, and in my opinion that is an evil of the worst kind.”

“Enough of this!” I cried impatiently. “You’re boring me, Count von Bek. You should feel satisfied that you have defeated my plans. I’ll listen no longer. I regard myself as a decent man—a humane man—indeed, a liberal man—but your kind makes me want to—want to—well, I had better not say...” I controlled my temper.

“You see!” von Bek laughed. “I am the voice of your conscience. That which you refuse to hear. And you are so determined not to hear it that you would wipe out anyone who tries to make you hear! You are so typical of all those ‘decent’, ‘humane’ and ‘liberal’ men who hold two thirds of the world in slavery.” He gestured with his pistol. “It is strange how all authoritarians automatically assume that the libertarian wishes to impose his own views on them when all he actually wants to do is to appeal to the authoritarian’s better nature. But I suppose you authoritarians can only see things in your own terms.”

“You cannot confuse me with your arguments. At least give me the privilege of spending my last hours in silence.”

“As you wish.”

Until we let slip from the mooring mast, he said little, save to mutter something about the “dignity of man” having come to mean nothing more than the “arrogance of the conqueror”. But I shut my ears to his ravings. It was he who was arrogant, in seeking to foist his revolutionary notions onto me.

D
uring the next part of the voyage I made desperate efforts to contact Steeton, saying that I was sick of my food being brought by Barry and I would enjoy seeing a face other than his.

Instead, they sent me the captain’s daughter. Her grace and her beauty were such that I could scarcely scowl at her as I had at the others. I tried, once or twice, to find out from her what her father intended to do with me but she said he was still “puzzling it over”. Would she help me? I asked directly. She seemed astonished at this and made no reply of any sort, but left the cabin in some haste.

At Saigon—I could tell it must be Saigon by the glitter of gilded temples in the distance—I heard the babble of the Indo-Chinese pilgrims taking their places in the space allotted for them amongst the bales of cargo. I did not envy them those hot, cramped quarters, but, of course, they were lucky—if they were genuine Buddhist pilgrims—to get an airship passage at all.

Once again—although Saigon was a ‘free’ port, under American patronage—I was guarded vigilantly by a Count Rudolf von Bek, who seemed less sure of himself than on the previous occasions we had met. He was definitely ill at ease and it occurred to me that the American authorities might have had some wind of
The Rover
’s mission and were asking awkward questions. We certainly left in what seemed to be a hurry and took the air scarcely three hours after we had moored and refueled, the engines going full out.

Later that evening I heard from across the little passage the sounds of voices raised in argument. I recognized the voices as belonging to von Bek, the captain, Barry and Una Persson—and there seemed to be another voice, softer and very calm, which I did not recognize.

I heard a few words—“Brunei”—“Canton”—“Japanese”— “Shantung”—mainly names of places which I recognized, but I could not guess the nature of the argument.

A day passed and I was brought food only once—by Una Persson, who apologized that it was a cold meal. She looked strained and rather worried. I asked her if anything were wrong. It was politeness which made me ask. She gave me a baffled look and a brief, bewildering smile. “I’m not sure,” was all she said before leaving and locking my door on the outside as usual.

I
t was at midnight, when we must have been well on our way to Brunei, that I heard the first shot. At first I thought it was a sound made by one of the engines, but I knew at once that I was wrong.

I got up, still dressed in my clothes, and stumbled to the door, pressing my ear against it and listening hard. Now I heard more shots—shouting—the sound of running feet. What on earth was happening? Had the villains fallen out amongst themselves? Or had we landed without my realizing it and taken on a boarding party of British or American police?

I went to the porthole. We were still airborne, flying high over the China Sea, if my guess were right.

The sounds of fighting went on for at least another half-an-hour. Then there were no more shots, but voices raised in angry exchange. Then the voices died. I heard footfalls in the passage, I heard the key turn in the lock on my door.

Light burst in and half-blinded me.

I blinked at the tall figure which stood framed in the opening, a revolver in one hand, his other hand on the door-knob. He was dressed in flowing Asiatic robes but his handsome face was distinctly Eurasian—a mixture of Chinese and English if I were not mistaken.

“Good morning, Lieutenant Bastable,” he said in perfect Oxford English. “I am General O.T. Shaw and this ship is now under my command. I believe you have some flying time. I should be very grateful if you would allow me to avail myself of that experience.”

My jaw dropped in stupefied astonishment.

I knew that name. Who did not? The man who addressed me was known far and wide as the fiercest of the bandit chieftains who plagued the Central Government of the Chinese Republic. This was Shuo Ho Ti—Warlord of Chihli!