2

At the bottom of Rud's nature, covered over and suppressed there had always been an acute sense of his physical inferiority. He had even an exaggerated sense of his own ugliness and his bodily feebleness. He had a passionate impulse to exercise power, but his primary method of exercising power was to destroy, and he consented only to the vast constructiveness his movement was developing, because that alone guaranteed the complete disappearance of the institutions, restraints and compulsions he hated. It was at first with a definitely reluctant scepticism that he found Thirp, with Norvel's connivance, building up a detailed legend of a pseudo–personality for him. Modesty with him at any rate was fear of failure. Maybe that is always the essense of modesty. So that when at length he realised that Thirp's propaganda might indeed attain its ends, his confidence in his essential self blossomed.

It would need vast volumes after the manner of Tom Harrisson's Mass Observers to convey the hundreds of millions of individual reactions to the intricate advertisement process by which the vaguely apprehended World Director of the Common–sense Revolution became a concrete living personality in the human imagination. It followed upon the best precedents. He was "displayed" by word and picture, put upon postage stamps and on public buildings, written up, systematically alluded to; a thousand anecdotes were invented about him. Skilful photographers arranged lighting about him and contrived novel angles of approach, and for every picture of him that went into circulation, scores were destroyed. His scowl upon his ample brow became an expression of concentration upon human destiny; his eyes caught an abstracted benevolence. He looked less and less into his mirror and more and more at those approved photographs. He became more and more interested in the press cuttings expounding himself, that his secretaries selected.

He talked upon the air at chosen intervals, and millions of simple homes to which the Revolution had brought security listened to his indignation at the disorders of the past and to his promises for the future. Never more would a bomb descend upon a house nor a son be taken off to war. He made a practice of explaining in simple language the developing merits of the new order, using the modest yet regal "we" and unobtrusively annexing all the credit for the bold constructive work of his multiplying associates. These men and women were building now like bees, but he figured as the bee–keeper. To the simple mind everywhere in the world, he became the Promethean figure that brought the light and heat of the Power Administration into the social circle; he also was production and his name was Plenty; he was distribution and his name was Service; he it was who now fed the world variously, employed it interestingly, instructed it, released it for holidays and travel about the world. He had slain soldiering, slain it in the person of Reedly. He had guided the world through the terrific opening crises of the Age of Adaptation to their present universal hope and freedom. Now one was free; now one could learn and live.

Norvel in his private thoughts decided that this was as good a working embodiment of the scientific ordering of the world as mankind could have for the time being, and as good a use as any for Rud. Personal Leadership the multitude would still insist upon until his schools made a new generation. Until the human crowd could respect itself it might just as well concentrate its respect upon Rud. Meanwhile a new world–brain organisation would grow and spread, the proportion of critical and enlightened intelligences would increase in geometrical progression, irony would creep into loyal gestures. In due time Rud would die in glory, revered as the father of a new civilisation, the last and greatest of the culture gods; and the human mind would be ready to adjust itself to the realities of the great transition, and ultimately get him back into his due place in the universe.

While common men were still amenable to the idea of power, still anxious to say "Yes, Sir" to some one they felt would be protective, the only way of abstracting the commanding quality from ownership, money, class, rank and elected authority, was by concentrating it for them in this way upon a single individual—who would at any rate be mortal. Norvel assumed that gradually they would acquire the habit of doing their jobs without any other inducement than the intrinsic interest of the job. So, under Rud, acquiescing in Rud and sustaining Rud, he set himself to his essential work. Irwell, Bellacourt, Roots, Darwin and all the able new chiefs who were coming into the comprehensive network of Bodisham's scientific replanning of human life on its new scale, worked in much the same spirit, content that Rud had cleared the way for them, and Thirp was allowed to fence off a special department for the organisation, according to the best precedents, of Rud's publicity, his establishment in the human imagination as the sole, unchallengeable Trustee of power.

Thirp did not do this work himself, but he made all the arrangements for its being done. His essential quality was a feline curiosity in the less obvious motives of his fellow–creatures. It was this that had first attracted him to criminology and prison reform. He was interested in human errors and misconceptions, his life as a watcher and shepherd of rebellious spirits, was primarily one of vicarious anti–social activities. He had Rud's fear and hatred of stark power, but in a subtler, more penetrating form. He had worked with energy, he had become a party man, because he realised the trend of the old order towards a mosaic of military and spasmodically moral tyrannies, but he had no desire whatever to establish a new order with possibly even austerer disciplines of its own.

He was tied up now to the Revolution, he did not dare turn against it, but in the place of the new strenuousness of Norvel and Bodisham, all his instincts would have preferred a gently rotten society in which the essential queerness of humanity could have been stimulated and released in the fullest abundance. He did not believe in anything that looked simple. He had a fear of simple things. To his intelligence they were rigid things without escapes. He had a mind for orchids, queerly shaped fungi, peculiar insects, drugs, wicked little carvings in jade and ivory, occult phenomena and Rosicrucian mysteries. He was the strangest, most alien of all the adherents of the last Revolutionary Group.

But Rud had a use for him. He felt in him a kindred fear of restraint, to which the others were oblivious. He perceived Thirp's animal alertness to any antagonistic movement in the world about them. It was, he remembered, Thirp's sharpness and his own natural distrust which had saved him and the Revolution from Reedly. The others in the Group would have been caught. They could take care of everything but themselves. Bodisham would have been killed like Archimedes over his diagrams.

The old world had left over a very considerable class of advertisers, personal journalists, agents, impresarios and the like, many of whom were odd characters and so very attractive to Thirp, and with the return of confidence now that the revolutionary blood bath and blasting operations were over, gossip, organised entertainment, social life and a disingenuous patina upon behaviour, were reappearing in the world. Caricature looked up, and little non–political local talk papers, living on their merits, broke out in every language. The leading figures of the pre–revolutionary world, from kings to cinema stars, had had their publicity cultivated and protected by experts of outstanding brilliance, many of whom were still alive and available for Thirp. Dimly apprehended behind the arras of history is Quinlan, Rud's publicity manager, building up his official picture and arranging interesting and characteristic events for him. He made all Rud's comings and goings important; he made his birthday a great public event from pole to pole.

All over the earth on that auspicious day flags were flying. Rud, in one of his rhetorical moments, had designed a world flag. He had seen a man handling a pile of cases for some public use. On each was a little national flag of the country of origin, and this man had a piece of white chalk in his hand and just crossed off the flag on each packet. Some national clash had to be considered. "Of course!" said Rud. "Cross off all the flags." He made the world flag a white saltire on azure. And for all regional or local purposes he had a white saltire, imposed upon the national or provincial colours. All over the world now the birthday bunting fluttered, bearing over every racial or cultural symbol that white clamp of peace.

A practice of personal relationship was fostered by Quinlan. It was physically impossible for Rud to meet the entire human brotherhood and shake hands with it, nevertheless people were emboldened to write and even telephone to him. His fan mail attained astronomical dimensions. To meet that Quinlan was creating a huge staff of Director's Correspondents, many of whom could produce a fair imitation of Rud's handwriting or speak almost with his voice. They were most of them polyglots, and there were very few languages in which Rud's composite personality could not reply. So that Rud, at one and the same moment, could take an interest in a little girl's white rabbits in Pekin, parley with a young Norwegian who was disappointed in his preliminary trials for the air service because of a poisoned hand, and promise an enquiry into the troubles of an old lady tied in knots by arthritis who didn't like her doctor in Perth.

"Who wants Providence when they have me?" said Rud, and "Isn't it amazing that neither the Vatican nor British Royalty ever thought of this!"

Thirp collected half a dozen convicted but now reformed forgers who could do the most brilliant variations of Rud's signatures.

Operations of this sort stimulated the world–wide desire for closer contacts and nearer relationships still further. Strange imaginations appeared.

"Seventeen women to–day," said Quinlan, "want to bear him a child. That is mild. It was thirty–seven last Saturday."

"The old morality never sat very well on the ladies," said Thirp. "No…But they endured it as women will…All races, I suppose?"

"Practically," said Quinlan, "but mainly Americans and Europeans."

"You haven't let Him know?"

"Not a word."

"Good," said Thirp, with his head on one side, putting his long hands together as if in prayer. "In a way, it's an attractive idea. I don't know…If anything of the sort did occur…Something might be done. But it would have to be kept a profound secret. Just a trifle too modern…I suppose that sort of thing will come. If there are Dictators a hundred years hence it will seem quite sensible to make them the Fathers of the People. I'm surprised they didn't try that in Russia."

Quinlan consulted the eugenists. He thought, too, that something might be done about it, and that something of the sort might come, but it was clear that for the present the business bristled with difficulties. He did not put the matter before Rud until his own ideas about Rud's possible reactions were more definite.