12
"He came to me too late," said Carstall. "He had gone too far. He had to die."
"Who knows of it?" asked Olders with white lips.
"I do. Krause, the analyst, and his staff. We have only men nurses here. Do you want to hush it up for a day or so? It can be done, you know."
"It is a catastrophe. Nothing is ready. Anyone may seize power."
"I will issue a bulletin that he is emerging from a crisis and must remain insensible for forty–eight—or say, sixty hours. And then we can have a phase of coma before the end. Meanwhile suppose you as secretary stop all these pending executions."
"You think?"
"I am sure. And you add as a note to my report—not stressed but as a matter of course—that otherwise everyone, everywhere, carries on—as usual. If there is no sudden shock things will go by inertia. For a time anyhow."
"You think?" said Olders.
"Sure of it. I'm in control here. I can answer for this end. And by the by, there are certain medical formalities—There must be no suspicion about his death, you know."
He insisted upon a searching post–mortem and this was carried out by the great analyst Krause with his assistants. Carstall had suggested that either strychnine or arsenic would appear, but the autopsy revealed nothing. "Sheer overwork then," said Carstall, and the faithful Olders bowed his head and murmured, "He died for us all."
"He died for us all," Carstall agreed…
"We are still keeping back the fact of his death," said Olders next day. "I—have given a hint here and there."
"Who knows?" asked Carstall.
Olders looked reluctant but not treacherous.
"One or two possible successors have to be watched," he said.
"I am going to bring in three fresh experts and have the body embalmed. They, too, are absolutely trustworthy. No one will know they have come here. And then, why not wait a little? A pickled dictator is better than a living dog–fight."
Plainly Olders was shocked.
"Sorry," said Carstall, "but there was no one like him. Was there? The succession was never settled. He kept us guessing. No rational man wants a world civil war. In this sprawling new–born world now—it would be unending. There would be Caesars here and Caesars there. Nationalism isn't dead yet; it's scorched in the grass. We might be carried back to that old world again…If once it starts. But it needn't start…And nowadays does anyone considerable, really want Power? As power. You don't want to be his successor. You want to go on as a sort of world secretary. As you can. And you don't want any particular one of the possible successors very badly. Do you?…No. I thought so. Neither do I. Suppose we take his embalmed body back home in an ambulance and put him to bed in his own room at the executive centre. Suppose you go on being his secretary."
"I shouldn't dare."
"If I stand by you. If presently you find others standing by you. All the strings are in your hands. Nobody else has your executive knowledge. The castle there is like the centre of a spider's web. You were loyal to him. You believed in him. Believe in him still and keep this new world united and at peace. We will help you."
"There are competent men in the world still. None of these would–be successors dare move in the dark. They're a poor lot. Not like those fresh, raw Dictators of the twenties and thirties. I know their quality. The conditions have changed. Tell everyone to carry on. And get Norvel here. Norvel particularly."
"But who are we?"
"The men in the various World Controls—Bellacourt, Roots, Heming, Holbank, Sen, Lacoste, Rurik, Norvel, men like that. In love with their jobs. They'll all carry on if they can. It's in their make. Not one of them is a power politician. It's amazing how financiers and politicians have died out in the last few years. You'd have thought the breed was eternal. I did as a young man. But the desire for mere power—either in the form of money or as direct control—seems to have evaporated. Reedly had it, and Thirp, in his own peculiar twisted way."
He checked himself on the verge of adding "Rud."
"It's the natural desire of a not very social animal forced into a society too large for it and frightening it. But now we are getting a sort of security, and the impulse to hoard up power is assuaged. The Dictators eliminated the power of finance, and now here, if you will, is the end of political power. Concentrated into an individual, then into a spot, now into a mathematical point, nothingness."
He closed and clenched his hand. Was he saying too much for Olders? He stared at him and felt reassured.
"A dictator, Olders," he said, "seems to be necessary whenever there is a broad readjustment of human relationships. Apparently a major power system is necessary to destroy any minor power system that preceded the readjustment or arose out of it. Hence there must be a dictatorship. But no dictatorship can go on indefinitely. This isn't a new discovery—at least not a very new one. They're teaching it, sub rosa, now, in the new universities. But Lenin, who was head and shoulders above his generation, saw far beyond anyone else at that time, into these inevitable phases that have to follow a revolution. His language was clumsy, he spoke with a strong Marxist accent, but he had the heart of the Power question clear. This now is what Lenin was trying to foretell when he talked of the disappearance of the state. Here it was." He held out the fist he had clenched and opened it wide and wiped the palm with his other hand. "Presto, it has gone!"
Olders assented silently.
"Stalin reversed all that," said Carstall. "Stalin went back on Lenin because he did not understand this." "Yes," said Olders.
"The man to take hold of this situation now is Norvel. And between ourselves, thank God Thirp is dead." Olders nodded agreement.
"Who is there to make trouble if you and Norvel and all of us say simply 'Carry on'? There's not the shadow of a Reedly in sight, and all that nationalist Federation stuff is just fading out of men's minds. Rothberg? That blood–stained little ferret! No…You think he'll just hide? So do I. He'd better.
"If there was another possible leader, would he have a following now? All the conditions have changed. The world is busy. There's few idle hands or people and the ones there are, are scattered. Common people don't want trouble now. They're full of hope. In the days before the Revolution they were full of resentment. They relieved it, and the time for Revolution is over. There is no earthly reason whatever for another Dictator in the world—none. Not for centuries. Now that common sense has got itself organised and unified it is mere common sense to abolish an individual head even as a symbol…
"So. Let the Master Director sleep and sleep, and then let him pass into a coma—and need that coma ever end? He has done his work. He was deadly tired. It is amazing but true; he has destroyed so much, so many irritating boundaries, so many poisonous traditions, that he has united the world unawares. Why should we not go on now—with an embalmed dictator?…I mean it, Olders.
"Perhaps they had something of that sort in their minds in Russia when they embalmed Lenin. Years ago I saw him once, lying there in the little mausoleum outside the Kremlin wall, like a man, a rather tired little chap, asleep. But Trotsky and Zinoviev and Stalin and Co. had not the loyalty to carry on together. That Russian gang seems to have been a poor band of egotists—tortuous self–justifying egotists—not good enough for anything of that sort. And the Russian community was anaemic and overstrained. Now comes a chance of trying it again with all the sane men in the world to draw upon—and people busy. People, Olders, are busy. Busy. Hang on to that. He was beginning to scare them, but now, they will forget these last bad years."
"Do I dare?" said Olders.
"What else can you do, Olders? There's no possible successor who wouldn't shoot you within a year."
"Of course I have thought that the world now was, so to speak, a going concern again," said Olders. "He cleared away so much…You put it all with such confidence…Almost"—he paused for the smallest fraction of a second—"almost as if you have thought it out beforehand."