6

Chiffan found it more difficult even than he had expected to get an audience with Rud. He had to apply, he had to wait, he was kept waiting in an ante–chamber for three–quarters of an hour. When at last he was admitted to the Presence, he found himself in a long room with a polished floor that slanted upward to the dais that carried Rud's desk. Half–way there was a flight of seven shallow steps, too wide to be taken two at a time and only about five inches high. They would have reduced the most confident stride to a totter. He thought how much Rud had improved upon the crude methods of Bohun's reception room, and the reminiscence served to sharpen the blade of hard derision in his make–up, already whetted by his unnecessary wait outside. He was no longer the affectionate and persuasive Chiffan he might have been.

Rud sat at the desk pretending to be occupied by some papers and peering under his shaded desk lamp at the approach of his old friend. Chiffan, entering, and seeing this pose of preoccupation, advanced at a leisurely stroll, hands in pockets, and realising the difficulty of the shallow steps, halted there, turned his profile to the Dictator and professed to consult some memoranda, humming and—as Rud seemed still occupied—producing a pocket pencil and making corrections. Rud decided to conclude his sham work with a sigh and turned his face towards his visitor.

Chiffan packed up his memoranda, clicked his pencil together, pocketed it and strolled up to the desk. "Hope I don't interrupt your—annotations," he said.

Rud stood up, came to the corner of his bureau, and stared at Chiffan in silence.

Chiffan's first impression was that the lop–sided scowl had become intenser and then that Rud looked overstrained and ill. His face was a deader white than ever and his eyes burnt with an unwonted fever. It was going to be harder to bring this Rudlike creature back to the Rud of the summer school and Camborne Square than Chiffan had anticipated. But there was no time now to alter what he had in his mind to say.

"Hello, Rud," he said. "How goes it with the Representative Common Man?"

"You wanted to talk to me?" said Rud.

"As one common man to another."

The malignity of the scowl increased. "About what?"

"About that idea of your being the supreme embodiment of the common man and the effect that it is having upon the world."

"Well, what effect?" asked Rud.

Chiffan had meant his talk to develop gradually, but this compact answer spoilt his approach. He felt himself blundering directly into the gist of what he had to say. "There is a feeling abroad," he said, "that your role of being a sort of incarnation of humanity is being—to put it bluntly, Rud overplayed. It was, you know, one of the greatest of your inspirations to make our Revolution the Revolution of the Common Man, not to set up yourself or the Gang or anybody as the Heaven–sent leader of mankind. It was a great phrase to call you the World Trustee and make you, so to speak, the Commonest of the Common, in the common interest…You were the common man, yes. The common man. On those terms we won the World Revolution. But now the job's done and finished, and I take it you have to be a common man again. Because if you don't, you will come to be in a sort of way a new Caesar, a new Imperator, Boss of the World, a tyrant, traitor to the Revolution."

"Well," said Rud. "That is plain enough, anyhow." "I didn't mean to begin as bluntly as this with what I have to say."

"But you meant to say it?"

"Yes."

"A sort of Message, eh?" said Rud. "Telling me my times are at an end and that I have to go. Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. Eh?"

"Don't make me feel like a Prophet of the Lord rebuking a wicked King of Israel," said Chiffan.

"And what in the name of the Lord," said Rud, "is this message you bring me if it is not that?"

"Well," said Chiffan, "if that is the tone we are to adopt, then let us speak plainly; the time has come for you yourself, as the last crowning service you can render to mankind, to prepare for the liquidation of your trust."

"The liquidation of my trust?"

"The restoration of the world to the heir."

"Who is?"

"The common man—the common–sense of mankind." "Go on," said Rud darkly. "Go on. Tell me more of what you have in mind."

"I came to tell you—plainly—as no one else will dare to do—that you are hanging on to power too long. You know how to overthrow, Rud, you know how to destroy and how to grasp, but you don't know how to guide and you don't know how to let go."

"And you—on behalf of yourself and friends—I suppose you have come to tell me to let go."

"I came of my own accord."

Rud tried to look penetrating, but he merely looked cunningly sceptical. "Assuming that is true," he said, "go on. I am to let go. Well? I want to hear all you have to say against me."

It appeared to Chiffan that Rud had become endowed with a new defensive obduracy.

"It's not against you," he said.

"Go on," said the Dictator. "Now you are here."

"Well, Rud, in the old days you used to face up to facts. I ask you not to think of me as an antagonist. Why should you? You never did that in the old days. Hear me out. You have played a great part in this change–over of the world. You have been the star in the limelight, but—

"Yes—but? Go on. Go on."

"You are not the whole play. Damn it, Rud, you must face up to that? This new world didn't begin, and it won't end, with you. You have wiped out finance, which had grown like a cancer in the interstices of business, and you have wiped out every sort of sovereignty, public or private. There is no sovereign state and no sovereign owner any more. You exorcised them both. And the world now is full of able people setting about the complex—the very complex―readjustment of social life to its new physical conditions."

"You are telling me this? You are coming into my remote, secluded life to tell me this?"

"This new world isn't your making, Rud. That is what I am telling you. All you have done is to release it. It was struggling into existence before we were born. It was dawning on men's imaginations already in the eighteenth century—if not before."

"You make me feel as though I was in the history schools again," said Rud.

"But look at the facts !"

"And to whom am I to give way? Tell me that. Who is to make the new directorate? You and these friends you speak for?"

"Rud, again I tell you, I have no friends behind me in this. There is no conspiracy or movement or revolt against you. None at all. But I want to warn you. It will come, Rud. Unless you relax this grip you have taken upon the world movement. Men will not stand it. Rud, I implore you, listen to me. I have always done my best to stand at you: elbow, warn you and supplement you."

Rud was nodding his head in silence. He regarded Chiffan with a faint, derisive grin, and there was hatred in his eyes.

"Who is to make the new directorate? When you have got rid of me?"

"There is no need of a directorate. We did need a destroyer, we did need some one to break up the old system, and that is done. There are no States now; there are Services. There is a new sort of man taking charge of things. The mentality of men of science, of technicians, of responsible critics and functionaries, is spreading through the whole race. The old struggle for power is over."

"Men of science!" said Rud with bitter scorn. "Technicians! I can make 'em and break 'em."

"You can break them," said Chiffan.

"But not make them?"

"No. And you can't do without them."

"You are just a theorist, a constitution–monger, an ideologist."

"Gollys! Why! Who was it? Why!—Reedly used to abuse ideologists. You're not going the way of Reedly, Rud?"

A spasm of anger betrayed itself in Rud. He controlled himself.

"So I am to give way. I am to retire. I suppose I had better go off fishing, eh? And some sort of Royal Society and World Civil Service and new Universities and so on, what your friend Norvel—oh yes, he's your friend, I know—calls the Knowledge Organisation, My God! are going to take over the world that I—yes, I—have liberated and unified. Am I permitted to be sceptical? I tell you, Chiffan, I have had time for thought and experience since you and I talked nonsense together in those old days. And there is nothing whatever to override Will in human affairs. And like it or not—and you,—you know hardly anything of the burthen I carry—I am the Will."

Chiffan swung half round with a gesture of despair, took a step away from Rud and then turned upon him.

"Rud," he cried. "Don't be an idiot! What has come over you? Will is all about us, the collective will, guided by the free wisdom of thousands of brains. Will can never be concentrated in one individual. Power you can grab but will escapes you. You of all people understood that so well—once. Parallel co–operation! Your own phrase, man! And now, here you are, lonely, secretly wretched, implacable, trying to clutch everything. Why? Can you trust nothing free outside yourself? Come off it, Rud. Come off it."

He stopped short and began again on a less strident note.

"Why should I lecture you like this? Remember yourself, man. Remember your humanity. Remember how shabby we were when we met. Remember our long tramp together and how hungry we used to get in the afternoon. Remember that punt—the rabbit and onions—that visit to Jim Flab's headquarters at Balting—that stinking little major! What has happened to you to forget such things?"

"Yes, I remember all that. Yes."

Rud's pallor seemed to increase. He had something very urgent to say and he did not know how to begin. It looked almost as though he was going to be sick. He brought his face closer to Chiffan's. When at last he spoke, he spoke in a close undertone and a new bitterness had come into his voice.

"And I remember your bragging about that Lancashire girl's neck. I remember that too. You talked about having her and how easy she would have been. In the punt you talked. I remember every word of it. I remember you fleering and jeering at me about my having to give up all thought of sex. Afterwards on the road. After Balting. All through our lives you have relieved yourself about that. Always. Do I remember? Is there a thing I forget? Your ill–concealed envy of my—my genius, and your attempts to compensate your inferiority by all those petty triumphs over women—and me. Envy, incarnate envy: that is you, Chiffan. You, the cheerful friend with a sneer! And still you are unsatisfied. Now you would like to see all that I have done, undone. You want to see me and my Revolution—yes, my Revolution—prostrate and shattered. You would welcome back a thousand things I have dismissed, just to spite me, just for the satisfaction of seeing my name and my pictures taken out of the schools, just to stifle the love the people bear me all over the world. That's what you can't endure, Chiffan. That's why you come here spitting malice and venom at me. Taking the risk. What a long story it makes from first to last! Flaunting your mistresses under my nose! Always you have done that. Winding up with that painted wife of yours! You are virile, aren't you? You! I've had to be continent while you've had the fun. Chiffan the free–and–easy; Chiffan who says what he likes and does what he likes; Chiffan the gay smiler; Chiffan the debonair! The playboy of the revolution! While old friend Rud is the Power Grub. Poor old Rud. Shrunken old Rud. But now—and now—we come to a reckoning. Now the Power Grub has you."

Chiffan stood stunned in front of this fantastic outbreak of long–hidden resentment.

"Well," said Rud, "you chose to come to me and ask for it. It was only an anticipation—It wouldn't have been long before Thirp came for you. I know about you. You have been watched. You have been overheard."

He stopped short, resolute but unable to say clearly the purpose in his mind. The two old associates stared at one another.

"So it's like that," said Chiffan at last.

"How else can it be?"

Chiffan shrugged his shoulders.

"I have known—I have felt it coming. And yet—it's incredible."

"Inevitable. Incredible to you perhaps. While you have been dreaming, Chiffan, about this dear, dear old friendship of ours and how you could always win me over whenever you wanted to do so, I have kept wide awake. Wide awake. You come here to tell me all sorts of things, but now you have been told something, fair and square. Is there any need to say more?"

Chiffan stood still and silent for a long second or so. But Rud had finished. The audience was at an end. Then slowly and meditatively Chiffan spoke.

"I'm not sorry, Rud, for what I've done for you in the past. Whatever I have done for you. We've had a great time together with this little world."

"We!" said Rud.

"Yes—we. I taught you many things. At the start…And—like all pilots who're dropped, I don't like to think of you without me. Silly, isn't it?…"

Rud made no answer. He stood sullenly mulish. "Good–bye," said Chiffan.

And then: "Good–bye, Rud."

There was no answer.

He walked down the long slant slowly, resisting its urgency to quicken his steps—never once looking back.

Rud remained silent and motionless until the door had closed on Chiffan.

"He jeered at me," he whispered. "Always he jeered at me. Always. Him and his Bitches!…All those women…He was jeering at me right to the last. The pilot. Him! The pilot!"

He went to the great desk. There for a little space he was immobile. At last he pressed the telephone button and gave Thirp formal orders for Chiffan's arrest.

"Tell Rothberg to deal with him," he said.

"Do you mean this?" asked Thirp, and for once he sounded over–awed.

"Yes," said Rud, "I mean it."

He held his telephone and there came no sound of replacement from the other end.

Perhaps Thirp would say something that would alter the situation. Nothing came. He must have put down his instrument noiselessly.

Something caught at Rud's throat. His indignation evaporated. He felt that Chiffan had dealt very badly with him and forced this tragic situation upon him. He had made Chiffan. Yes, Chiffan was his making. He had discovered him a tramp on the roadside. He had liked his freakish humour. And—it was true—they had had good times together. They had been young together, and that in itself is to have a good time. Before the terrible responsibilities of power forced them apart. There had been a sort of friendship. Even if it was a mistaken friendship…

He stood telephone in hand. He raised it to recall Thirp, but Thirp was still waiting there in silence.

"Yes?" said Thirp at once, receptive and colourless. Rud hesitated.

"Let everything be done—with the utmost consideration," he said, and then slowly replaced the instrument.

He addressed the empty room. "No," he said. "No man shall undermine me. My Empire before all other conditions. Even my dearest friend…"

A wave of self–pity submerged him. In his emotion he relapsed into temporary Deism.

"My God up there—you! I am as lonely as you are. Yes. As lonely as you, the everlasting God. Was there ever anyone human—as alone as I? Deserted by my last friend! And now—nobody knows it, but I am getting ill…I feel ill…

"I must have strength. I must keep fit. My task is not yet done."

Then as if some contrary consideration was attempting to assert itself: "My task is not yet done. While I live I must guard this new life I have given mankind. It is my Revolution. My duty…"