"S_Fowler_Wright_Brain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wright S Fowler)

S. Fowler Wright's Short Stories

Brain



Professor Brisket, President of the first Scientist government, sat in his new Studio of Contemplation, one morning in the early spring of 1990, considering the possibilities of the unprecedented power which the advance of knowledge, and the events of the last year, had placed in his somewhat bony hands.

It was six months since the suppression of the rebellion of 1989, in which the last traditions of barbarism had gone down, drowned in the blood of millions.

It was a crisis which had been inevitable for fifty years, though there were few who had foreseen, even a year ago, how near it was, and how decisive it must be.

A year ago, in spite of the changes and developments of half-a-century, the grotesque custom had persisted which decided the government of the country by the equal votes of its adult inhabitants, there being no distinction between youth and age, between folly and wisdom, between knowledge and ignorance - not even the simplest distinction between the cranial capacities of the voters, no disability being recognised except that of certified lunacy, or definite conviction of criminality. It was scarcely more than fifty years since there had been the grotesque spectacle of an eminent scientist being summoned before a magistrate, with no University qualifications whatever, to account for the possession of a stolen dog, and for the uses to which he had put it.

Since then, scientific knowledge had been powerful enough to influence successive governments, in spite of the comic method of their appointment, in ways which had brought incalculable benefits to mankind.

And then (as the obstinate mule had died just as it had been successfully reduced to the daily diet of a single straw), from one absurd triviality, the whole country had leapt into a sudden flame of war, with all its horrors.

It was a woman, as usual, who was the first cause of the crisis. A woman who had been fond of turnips. A woman with an infatuated husband, who had actually grown them for her, on a strip of hidden land behind his dwelling, in excess of the regulated dietary, and in contempt of the balance of vitamins on which their health, if not their lives, depended.

Worse than that, after the crime had been detected and punished, mildly enough, by the painless amputation of his left ear, he had contumaciously repeated the offence, attempting to grow the forbidden vegetable in an unoccupied cellar.

Being again detected, and knowing that he could hope for no further mercy, he had resisted arrest with such violence that his captors had brought him to the dock with broken heads, and one of them having a damaged mouth, and a denture smashed beyond remedy.

There had been no demonstration at the trial, of which there had been no public report (which was prohibited for certain of the grosser forms of obscenity), and there had been no sign of previous agitation to forecast the riot which had demolished the vehicle intended to convey him to the port of banishment, and rescued him from it.

A week later, the city of Nottingham, in which the incident had occurred, was in a state of open rebellion, refusing to surrender the culprit, and demanding repeal of the legislation which had occasioned the trouble.

And then, while the government hesitated and temporised, using such intermittent severities as exasperated without suppressing a revolt which threatened to spread from the midland to the northern counties, Professor Brisket, until then only known as holding the chair of Homology at the London University, had called a conference of twenty of the leading scientists, and, three days later, it was announced to an astounded world that the Government had resigned, and that the Council of Twenty-One had assumed responsibility for the control of the country.

Open war followed. War that was fierce, and short and sanguinary. The usurpation was resisted by nine-tenths of the population, including almost the whole of its (comparatively) illiterate, its political, its religious, and the majority of its literary and journalistic elements. But the scientists and their followers, banding in instant opposition to the forces of prejudice and reaction, opposed a hundred devices, secret, subtle, and deadly, to the crude violence of high-explosive, and the vain defences of trench and steel.

The proletariat fought with the obsolete weapons with which they had been furnished by the subservient scientists of an earlier century; the scientists retaliated with a variety of deaths, insanities and diseases, of which the origin was often indiscoverable, and from which there was no defence, nor any road of escape which would be found by those upon whom they fell.

Yet so bitter was the enmity which had leapt to light from the tiny spark which had kindled it, so hopeless did the rebels feel that their fate would be, should they resign themselves to submission; so sure, on the other hand, were the ranks of the scientists that they fought for all the possibilities of the mind of man, and that failure would frustrate all their work, and lead the world backward, even to the monkey-twilight of their aboriginal ancestors, that it seemed for a time that extermination only would be sufficient to decide its issue.

The rebels had been encouraged, almost at the first, by the defection of one of the leading scientists of the day, Dr. Shercliff Binyon, whose teaching had always been of a heretical kind, as he had held that while the pursuit of knowledge is among the noblest occupations of the

human mind, the idea that the created can be equal, by the application of such knowledge, to take the part of the Creator a presumptuous folly which could only end in such disaster as would revert the world to an elementary barbarism. He had even suggested that this result, and the recurrence of such results, might be the Divine method by which the earth was continually refitted for its purpose as a training-ground for the spirit of man.

But his support, however morally important, had had little practical result beyond the momentary heartening of the rebels, for his learning was not of a kind which could be used for the discomfiture of their enemies; and the scientists, infuriated by the unexpected stubbornness of the resistance which they encountered, and by the desertion of one of their own body, decided to strike with a severity which would end the conflict.

When Professor Brisket had given the members of the previous government an ultimatum of two hours to resign their offices, it had been with a warning that, should they refuse or hesitate, they would be smitten by a disease which would render them pestilent beyond endurance of any human associates.

Now he had warned the champions of ignorance and reaction that unless there should be surrender, absolute and abject, within twelve hours, they would learn, in the desolation of a city, the irresistible powers which they had defied so vainly.

The rebels had replied by marshalling a cloud of fighting planes which held the air from Southampton to Lowestoft in one unbroken line of heroic purpose, and by the up-thrown mouths of ten-thousand anti-aircraft guns. But the planes had held their line unchallenged, and the guns had remained silent. Only, when the next morning came Bristol had ceased to be. It had dissolved into air or ground before chemical agent so powerful, so silent, and so swift, that no sound disturbed the serenity of the surrounding country, no light of ruin flickered over the Channel waters. Simply, the city lights went out. Simply, the ground where once the city stood showed bare and burnt, and of a somewhat crocus aspect purple and yellow-streaked when the dawn found it. But of the city that had been, of life or building or garden, even of Clifton Bridge, there was no trace at all.

After that, there had been no more trouble.