10

The house he occupied had been built not so much to his designs as to his suggestions. For after the nature of his type, he had strong architectural impulses. It was built into a cliff that jutted out upon a wide bend of the River Durance.

All the world was busy then rebuilding or building anew or irrigating or planting or restoring soil. For centuries men had developed the art of resurfacing their cities and roads, but now they were blending and manufacturing soils as they needed them and distributing them where they could be cultivated most conveniently and agreeably. None too soon had world afforestation been taken in hand. The old competitive order of little nations and private finance had already stripped the world of half its forests and a third of its soil and exterminated seals, whales and a thousand once–abundant resources. But now with the establishment of a real Common Ownership, a tremendous recuperation had begun. It was already in hand by that time.

But it had not seemed unreasonable to Rud, or indeed to anyone in the Group, that a large number of artists, architects, experts and skilled workers of all sorts should be diverted from the general reconditioning of the world to the special task of making a great cluster of residences and halls, laboratories, work–rooms and offices for the occupation of the chief members of the Group, upon a site that Rud had chosen. It had its aerodrome; it had great roads leading to it; it was in immediate nervous contact with all the world. It was a lovely piece of country he had hit upon, and this towering assemblage of structural loveliness challenged every palace and splendour of the past. Rud's own quarters had taken precedence of the rest and had been completed for his occupation with an incredible swiftness. It was, so to speak, a first intimation of all that lay before the new world.

It was Rud's own fancy that he should sleep in a bed upon a dais in a great arched loggia, into which his dressing–rooms and so forth opened from behind, and from which he could descend to the open–air life of his grand balcony. His early upbringing in stuffy little rooms had given him a sort of architectural claustrophobia.

A considerable staff of secretaries, assistants, messengers and domestic workers had already been assembled about these first completed portions of the new World Centre. Bodisham was accommodated and Thirp was coming soon. The place undoubtedly had a magnificence surpassing that of any of the kingly and presidential residences and palaces in which he might have taken up his quarters. But it was free from old–world associations and suggestions of inequality and pretension. There was no regal state about all this, there was no pose of aristocracy, no court. There was an insistence upon simplicity in its splendour. There were no bows nor salaams nor prostrations, and nothing in the nature of ceremonial.

For Rud after all was no exploiter, no tyrant; no sweater of his fellow–creatures. He was very clear in his mind about that—clearer than many other people. He was the Director of an equalitarian world, a natural leader. He was just the Common Man—triumphant at last and enthroned.