2

But before we can assist at this sunlit breakfast of Rud's, it will be better to relate the main events that had converted Marshal Reedly into a nightmare horror of a frozen, faceless shout, and installed Rud, a nervous wreck, in that palatial sleeping place.

For two years Rud, sustained continually by drugs and the excitement of the struggle, had been living without a pause. He had been using himself to his utmost stretch. As the end of the War had approached, it had seemed to him that the stresses of his life were drawing to a climax. But thereafter his activities had never fallen below the crisis level. The attainment of world mastery by the Group had not been an end but the beginning of a far more subtle and serious struggle, and only after a two–year crescendo of strenuousness did there seem to be any hope whatever of relaxation in his gigantic revolutionary effort.

Until the very end of the War of the Ideologies it had been in doubt whether the Old World, so far as it was embodied in the Allied Governments, had captured and was making use of the Group and its World Revolution or whether the World Revolution had taken control of them. In the end where would mastery lie? No brain in the world had been more acutely aware of this indecisiveness than Rud's. Day by day, long before the war was over, that ceaseless conflict had gone on, now a point won, now a point lost, now a phase of grip and assurance, now a phase when everything seemed slipping away from him.

Reedly had not been the whole of the trouble; he had not been the heart of the trouble; but he had been its forefront. Reedly and his ambitions and intrigues, his romanticism and his arrogance, his obvious good looks, melodramatically aristocratic, and his obvious contempt for the Common Man, had become the centre and embodiment of the old order of things that Rud was bent upon destroying. He was World Marshal; it was manifest that he hoped to be the first World Caesar. He played off the governments against the Group and the Group against the governments more and more plainly. Until he was destroyed, his destruction seemed to be the final victory for which the Group had to fight. When he was destroyed his destruction seemed only an incident in a far profounder conflict.

In the days before the outbreak of war had brought the Group into official existence, it had carried on its propaganda against astonishingly little resistance. It had slipped in between right and left, with such an air of undogmatic neutrality that few people realised that its fundamental propositions ploughed deeper than either reactionary or "red." It had spread its ideas and phrases about the world with scarcely any counter–attack. To the middle–aged people who constituted the directive stratum in every one of the combatant states, it only became apparent how very definite and uncompromising was the Party of the Common Man and how steadily it was setting itself to create new lines and forms of human activity, when it was already in partial possession of the essential services of the community. The younger officials, the foremen and non–commissioned officer class were already, to a large extent, explicitly or tacitly "Rudite." You never knew, nowadays, among the younger people particlarly, the old stagers began to remark, where those Commonsense ideas might not crop up, and how much these younger men might not insist on disregarding orders in pursuit of some overriding idea. "It is a phase," said the old stagers, uneasily. "It will pass…But we had better do something nevertheless. We don't want this sort of thing to go too far."

As the defeat of militant totalitarianism became more certain, the resolve of this active and ascendant Party of the Common Man to keep its grip on the world industries and the transport services it had practically commandeered, and to go on disregarding the national separatisms it had over–ridden in the name of military necessity, became more definite and outspoken. And with that, resistance to the Group rose.

The hold the Common–sense Movement had secured upon the means of counter–propaganda varied widely in different countries, and Rud realised with a gathering anger that a widespread series of movements for national and racial assertion, against "deadly uniformity," against "socialism" and the "bureaucratic control" of financial processes, against "educational tyranny" and "the suppression of local and individual enterprise," were putting up a more and more effective opposition to his rapid drive towards a permanent socialistic world organisation and administration. "After the war," they said, "Restoration." "After the war," said the Common–sense Party, "go on to the new world."

A mind whose operations were becoming of increasing importance in Rud's view of the world at that time was the slow, clear, competent intelligence of Bellacourt. So far Rud had met few engineers or scientific workers, and he found himself dealing with a type of mentality less rhetorical and firmer than any he had encountered before. Bellacourt's general trend was conservative; his disposition was to take it for granted that a vaguely apprehended but highly desirable civilisation was endangered by the failure of something he called vaguely "moral progress" to keep pace with material advance, and that this civilisation had to be saved and reconditioned. After which he was inclined to think no more about it and settle down to what he considered to be his own particular job. He loved the applications of flight to exploration and research, to the taking of food, relief, medical aid to otherwise inaccessible places, to the spraying of crops, the fighting of fires and suchlike humanitarian services. Civil aviation was the very axis of his mind and he could not get away from it.

The whole complex plan of a new world that Bodisham had elaborated had to be correlated with air–necessity before Bellacourt could be brought into militant co–operation with the Group. Rud feared he might throw his weight on to the other side, and consent to a premature peace settlement and another hopeless tangle of efforts to put the world back to some imaginary former contentment. His influence in the air forces was enormous. He was, Rud realised, an absolutely indispensable man.

But educational work upon Bellacourt, that Rud and Bodisham found heavy going, was happily for them taken out of their hands by Reedly's eagerness to gain control of the air arm. He found it difficult to regard a man so slight, fair and civil as Bellacourt as in any way formidable. He spoke of him as an "ideologue," a word he used to express the nadir of his contempt. He had picked it up from some Life of Napoleon, and by it he meant a man who believed without qualification in his own beliefs, and who was, therefore, a difficult associate. Rud and Bodisham were a little inclined to agree with that opinion, but they let Reedly do the talking. Bellacourt disliked Reedly's moustaches, disliked his overriding, short, sharp manner, his barking judgments that were always wrong when you thought them over. He detested the noises Reedly made coming into a room. Bellacourt was indeed the whole machine–age ahead of Reedly. Mechanisation means lubrication. One can hector men about but not machines, and so they mend our manners.

Reedly's attempts to loosen Bellacourt's hold on the air services of the world forced the latter towards a complete liaison with the Common–sense Party. It was attacking institutions that seemed to him not merely harmless but amiable; he thought its hostility to religion and its educational aggressiveness harsh and unnecessary; but he realised that in contrast with Reedly's dangerous unscrupulousness it was set inflexibly upon the creation of one common air service for the whole world. That was what he wanted.

That was what Bodisham wanted. That was one of the "parallel independent co–operations" that collectively were to make a new world for mankind. It was typically a world service that had to be "put out of politics." And what Rud wanted chiefly was to destroy the old traditional institutions, the old respectabilities and dignities and loyalties he hated, the separating distinctions and time–honoured claims, that were now creeping out of their hiding–places and abandoning their protective camouflages again as the defeat of the quasi–modernised Authoritarians became more and more assured.

At first the widespread resistance to World Unification had seemed various in its nature, very human and spontaneous. At first perhaps it was. Rud put it down for a while to the natural perversity of his fellow Common Men. He was disposed to deal with it piecemeal. Then as he heard Thirp's reports upon Reedly's ever–ramifying activities and discussed the accumulating opposition with the organising Bodisham and the shrewd, observant Chiffan, he began to realise the increasing interrelation of these difficulties. They were being drawn together and shaped into a definite, new, reactionary organisation. Very rapidly now.

As usual his mind leapt beyond his instructors'.

He summoned his inner cabinet, his most trusted intimates, Bodisham, Steenhold and Chiffan, to his room at the Aerodrome.

"I want to talk to you three about something urgent," he said. "Let me explain…"

They did nothing to prevent him.

"This new movement. It's beginning to crop up, in speeches, books, newspapers, diplomatic conversations. We have all been too busy at our particular jobs to note it. They have a word: 'Federation!' You must have observed it…One hears more and more of it…The way it breaks out here, there and everywhere has puzzled me…Perhaps you don't think it amounts to much. It does. Yesterday I was baffled by a world that looked like a scattered jigsaw puzzle—one thing after another that wouldn't fit in place. Then in the night I woke up."

"You would," said Chiffan.

"And it was all clear. Suddenly I saw it clear. I thought we were just up against Reedly. I thought it would be easy to deal with him when the time came. In fact I thought I had that provided for. But it's something much bigger than that. It's 1918 over again if we don't save it. The world will be cheated again. This Federation movement is becoming a line–up of all the war–battered conservative forces in the world. They blundered into this world war quite on the old lines, and now they want to blunder out of it again quite on the old lines. Instead of our Common World Law we are to end in a revised patchwork of what do they call them?—free sovereign countries, a Federal United States of the World. Each of them still with its own little flag and money and religion and finance and peculiar company laws and all that. It's going to be a sort of Reformed Yesterday. An agreement against war—some sort of treaty again—some sort of Geneva again. With a World President (or an Emperor maybe) and a World Senate of dodderers and a Supreme Court to bar any constructive action. Each rotten little state still free to do what it likes with its own common men so long as it doesn't go to war. Sweat 'em—sell 'em, Exile 'em. Like throwing snails over the garden wall. A long time that will last! It sounds so free and liberal—the Federation of the World. Wilson's self–determination over again. Tennysonian and all that. Broaden down from precedent to precedent, but remain squatting good and tight on your particular allotment of the Common Man…I'll die a thousand deaths before I'll stand it! I'll raise the world against it."

He couldn't sit at the table, He walked about the room, white–faced, gesticulating with clenched fists. "I see it all," he said, "I see it all. They think they've used us and they think they're done with us. And the hand that is drawing all the threads together is that hairy fist of the future First World President, the Conqueror of the Last War of All, the ultimate Julius Caesar, Judas Caesar—Reedly…

"Who I thought was just on his own…"

And then in an intense voice, and as if he soliloquised, he said something that lifted Chiffan's eyebrows.

"I will not have my Revolution assassinated," he said. "No. I will not be tricked now. Now that I have got thus far. I have struggled for this day—for five and twenty centuries. Yes. I and my sort. Five and twenty centuries of it against the bullies and the bouncers and the quiet, sly, plausible people, one down another up. My sort of men have struggled long enough. My sort of men. The pre–Ruds and the sub–Ruds, the vulgar, ugly, slighted, cheated, resentful, free–spirited Common Men. The Crowd. The Rebels. The Great Unwashed. Me! Do you think I haven't been here before and do you think all of you haven't been here before? In the same corner. They can kill us and bury us and burn us up or let us rot away. Back we come again and again. Now, this time, we're nearer winning than ever we were. I feel it in my bones…

"Do you think the Son of Man is going to be downed by a chap who neighs like a horse…?"

He stopped short and stared at Chiffan. "Sometimes you think I'm crazy, Chiffan."

"Sometimes I think you're inspired."

"Well, anyhow," said Rud, and stood for a moment like a drugged man. He pulled himself together. "Well, now we have it plain. Come down to hard tacks. How can we grapple him, Bodisham? How can I set about him? What men can we count upon? Who is with us? What sort of men are with us?

"I knew he had this sort of thing in mind. That talk of his about a United Command! That perpetual effort to get police control away from Thirp and to edge Bellacourt out of the air. Always he was against the embargo on bombing. He's a natural born bomber. Bombing makes him feel like a God throwing thunderbolts. Then his manceuvres to go behind the Allied Munition Board and have military instead of civil direction in the factories! His pick of officers! His idea of contacting our engineers…! Yes, but what we haven't realised up to now were all those forces scattered throughout the world, those multitudes of reasonably able, successful men who've 'got on,' as people say, w ho dread the Economic World State like the devil, to whom this loose Federation of Mankind they are talking about, without any world investigations, without common financial control, without human unity, will be reprieve, freedom, opportunity…

"We've got these National Dictators licked. They're all sheltering behind their soldiers now—and their soldiers are wondering how to dispose of them. It's like Kaiser Wilhelm in 1918. Grossberg is their Reedly. Old Marshal Grossberg is no fool. He knows where he stands. This last war is over. The situation on the European front isn't the deadlock it pretends to be. It's a sham fight waiting for a chosen umpire. Who won't be us. Grossberg means to surrender. His army is sulking. They sit in their dug–outs and their officers keep away from them. They've got to that. On the east and centre, anyhow. He may be shot in the back anywhen now. But he means to surrender to Reedly according to all the laws of war, and he doesn't mean to surrender to us. We might hand him back to his own people. We might do anything to him. He wants to capitulate while he still has an army to surrender. Reedly hasn't reported the state of affairs to us, because he is hesitating. Reedly is still funking Bellacourt. And he has a nasty feeling about Thirp and Thirp's police–net, and he feels I mean to shoot him at the first opportunity. As I certainly do. When the shooting begins it will have to be quick work. How are we going to set about it?"

"Whom can we count upon?" asked Bodisham.

"We must bring in Thirp. He's developing amazingly…He's not exactly omniscient—but he's sub–omniscient."

"There are enormous masses of indeterminate people just now in the world," said Bodisham. "A push will send them in any direction."

"What are we going to do?" said Rud.

His three familiars knew that he meant to answer that himself.

"I have ideas," said Rud. "I have some ideas."

He dropped into his seat and began to jot down the untidy intimations of notes on a strip of paper. He thought. He rang for his new secretary, Olders, and gave instructions for Thirp to be called to them at once.

"I had a sort of intimation," said Rud. "As you know, Bellacourt has been in America twice in the last fortnight. Didn't I tell you? He is there again. He's there with Holbank. After our talk with him—you remember that talk, Bodisham I had a talk to him myself. It was an afterthought. As a matter of fact, though I didn't bother you others with it, we've done a sort of mobilisation of the air forces. It was Bellacourt's own suggestion—after I talked to him. We've assembled material in Labrador ready to fly it over to Sweden, real war material, and we've been concentrating planes in Sweden. You remember how Reedly the other day objected to the planes flying over his blessed little war. What he didn't realise was that they were photographic planes and that every day for a month we've had a complete photographic record of every movement at the front, and in one or two districts behind. I don't think Reedly knows anything of these highly trained young men in Stockholm with their magnifying glasses, sitting over his little shifts of troops and transport and puzzling out what they signify. Of course, we may have missed one or two little things…

"Frankly, I expect a Reedly Putsch now within six weeks. Bellacourt ought to be coming over Greenland now and his fighting planes ought to be accumulating during the next fortnight. It has to be done quietly. We don't want to frighten the birds too soon. I want this Putsch to happen. I want Reedly to show his hand. That will bring world affairs to one plain issue."

"I didn't perhaps consult you as I ought to have done," he said. He turned to Bodisham with his notes. He was as near to being apologetic as he could be.

"How do you figure this out?" he began.

Steenhold looked at him. He liked this. This was his Rud at his best. It came into his head to say: "Do you remember, Rud, how you came into my flat that Sunday morning—not so many years ago? Just as you are now. 'This is the moment,' you said." And then it occurred to him that this remark might be unnecessary and inopportune, so that he did not make it.

Thirp appeared suddenly. "You're quick," said Rud. "I have to be," said Thirp.

"Olders had hardly gone out of the room five minutes ago to call you."

"He didn't call me. I came of my own accord. I have something very urgent to tell you."

Rud took him aside.

"If it could be just ourselves," said Thirp. "For a moment anyhow. I want to tell you something. It's something so queer—I don't want to argue. Do you mind?"

Chiffan and Steenhold intimated that they did not mind. Bodisham was expressionless. There was something feminine in the way that Thirp would always scheme to get Rud to himself if he could and have little special understandings with him, but it was a pity Rud fell in with this. Bodisham was a philosopher. He had to take Rud as he found him. Rud was essential to the Revolution and that was that. Rud expected to have everything told and explained to him and yet he was always going behind his organiser's back, with Norvel, with Bellacourt, with Thirp—with anyone. It was his way. Bodisham drummed with the fingers of one hand on the table and Steenhold understood how he felt and thought.

Rud led Thirp to an inner room.