Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 10. Edward Bellamy

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the Patriarch of Constantinople declared, as head of the Eastern Church, the identity of the Absolute with the First Person of the Trinity, the Creator. This undeniably heretical teaching was espoused by the Old Catholics, the circumcised Christians of Abyssinia, the Evangelicals of the Helvetian Confession, the Nonconformists, and several of the larger American sects. This brought about a lively theological dispute. As for the Jews, a secret doctrine spread among them to the effect that the Absolute was Baal of old; the Liberal Jews announced that they would in that case recognize Baal.

      The Free Thought Society assembled in Basle. In the presence of two thousand delegates the Absolute was proclaimed as the God of the Freethinkers, and this was followed by an incredibly violent attack upon clerics of all denominations, who, in the terms of the resolution, “are eager to seek their own advantage with the one scientific God and to drag Him down into the filthy cage of ecclesiastical dogma and priestly deception, and leave Him there to starve.” But the God who has made Himself manifest to the eyes of every progressive modern thinker “has nothing to do with the mediæval traffic of these Pharisees; the Free Thought Association alone is His congregation, and only the Basle Congress has the right to set forth the doctrine and the ritual of the Free Religion.”

      At about the same time the German Monist Association laid in Leipzig, with great pomp and ceremony, the foundation-stone of the future Cathedral of the Atomic God. There was some disturbance, in which sixteen persons were injured and Lüttgen, the famous physicist, had his spectacles smashed.

      News was also received that autumn of some religious phenomena in the Belgian Congo and in French Senegambia. The negroes quite unexpectedly slaughtered and ate the missionaries and bowed down to a new idol which they called Ato or Alolto. It afterwards appeared that these idols were atomic motors, and that German officers and agents were in some way implicated in the matter. On the other hand, during the Moslem rising which broke out at Mecca in December of the same year, several French emissaries were found to have been present, who had concealed twelve light atomic motors of the Aero pattern in the neighbourhood of the Kaaba. The ensuing rebellion of the Mohammedans in Egypt and Tripoli, and the massacres in Arabia, cost the lives of about thirty thousand Europeans.

      The deification of the Absolute was at length accomplished in Rome on the twelfth of December.

      Seven thousand priests with lighted candles escorted the Holy Father to St. Peter’s, where the largest twelve-ton Karburator, a gift from the M.E.C. to the Holy See, had been erected behind the high altar. The ceremony lasted five hours, and twelve hundred of the faithful and the spectators were crushed to death. At the stroke of noon the Pope intoned the “In nomine Dei Deus,” and at the same moment the bells of all the Catholic churches in the world were set ringing as all the bishops and priests turned from the altars and announced to the world of believers: “Habemus Deum.”

      XX

      ST. KILDA

      St. Kilda is a little island, practically nothing more than a rock of pliocene tufa far to the west of the Hebrides. A few stunted birches, a handful of heather and dry grass, flocks of nesting seagulls and semi-arctic butterflies of the order Polyommatus are all that lives on this lost outpost of our hemisphere, out amid the endless beating of the seas and the equally endless procession of clouds for ever laden with rain. For that matter, St. Kilda has always been uninhabited, is now, and will for ever be so.

      Nevertheless it was there that His Majesty’s ship Dragon dropped anchor, towards the end of autumn. Carpenters came off the ship with timbers and planks, and by evening they had built a large, low wooden house. The next day upholsterers arrived, bringing with them the finest and most comfortable furniture. On the third day stewards, cooks, and waiters emerged from the depths of the ship and carried into the building crockery, wine, preserves, and everything that civilization has provided for rich, fastidious, and powerful men.

      On the morning of the fourth day there arrived on H.M.S. Edwin the English Premier, the Right Hon. Sir W. O’Patterney, half an hour later came the American Ambassador, Mr. Horatio Bumm; and there followed him, each on a warship, the Chinese plenipotentiary, Mr. Kei; the French Premier, Dudieu; the Imperial Russian General, Buchtin; the Imperial German Chancellor, Dr. Wurm; the Italian Minister, Prince Trivelino; and the Japanese Ambassador, Baron Yanato. Sixteen English torpedo-boats cruised around St. Kilda to prevent newspaper reporters from landing; for this Conference of the Supreme Council of the Great Powers, which had been summoned in great haste by the all-powerful Sir W. O’Patterney, was to take place under conditions of the strictest secrecy. In fact, the large Danish whaling schooner Nyls Hans was torpedoed while attempting to slip through the cordon of destroyers by night. The losses included, in addition to the twelve men of the crew, Mr. Joe Hashek, political correspondent of the Chicago Tribune. Nevertheless, the representative of the New York Herald, Mr. I. Sawitt, spent the whole time on St. Kilda disguised as a waiter, and we are indebted to his pen for the scanty accounts of that memorable assembly which survived even the subsequent historic catastrophes.

      Mr. I. Sawitt was of the opinion that this Conference on high politics was being held in this lonely spot in order to eliminate any direct influence of the Absolute on its decisions. In any other place the Absolute might well make its way into this gathering of serious statesmen in the guise of inspiration, enlightenment, or even miracle-working—which would certainly be something utterly unprecedented in high politics.

      The primary purpose of the Conference was ostensibly to reach an agreement on colonial policy. The States were to come to an agreement not to support or assist religious movements on the territory of other States. The incentive to this step was the German agitation in the Congo and Senegambia, as well as the subterranean French influence behind the outbreak of Mahdism in Moslem countries under British rule, and particularly the shipments of Karburators from Japan to Bengal, where a furious revolt of the most diverse sects was raging.

      The deliberations were held behind closed doors. The only news given out for publication was that spheres of interest had been allotted to Germany in Kurdistan and to Japan on certain Greek islands. It would seem that the Anglo-Japanese and the Franco-German-Russian alliances were on this occasion unusually cordial.

      In the afternoon Mr. G. H. Bondy arrived on a special torpedo-boat, and was received in audience by the Supreme Council.

      Not until about five o’clock (Greenwich time) did the illustrious diplomats sit down to luncheon, and it was here that I. Sawitt had the first opportunity of hearing with his own ears the representatives of the high contracting parties. After the meal they discussed sport and actresses. Sir W. O’Patterney, with his poet’s head with its white mane and soulful eyes, talked enthusiastically about salmon-fishing with His Excellency the French Premier, Dudieu, whose energetic gestures, loud voice, and a certain je ne sais quoi, revealed the former lawyer. Baron Yanato, refusing all liquid refreshment, listened silently and smiled as though his mouth were full of water. Dr. Wurm turned over his papers, General Buchtin walked up and down the room with Prince Trivelino, Horatio Bumm was making cannons all by himself on the billiard-table (I have myself seen his lovely overhand massé stroke, which would win the admiration of any expert), while Mr. Kei, looking like a very yellow and very withered old lady, fingered some kind of Buddhist rosary. He was a mandarin in his own Flowery Land.

      Suddenly all the diplomats grouped themselves round M. Dudieu, who was explaining: “Yes, gentlemen, c’est ça. We cannot remain indifferent to Him. We must either recognize Him or deny Him. We Frenchmen are in favour of the latter course!”

      “That’s because He’s showing himself such an anti-militarist in your country,” said Prince Trivelino with a certain malicious pleasure.

      “No, gentlemen,” cried Dudieu, “don’t deceive yourselves on that point. The French army is quite СКАЧАТЬ