Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 10. Edward Bellamy

counting the Chinese cook.”

      The Captain sighed and looked out to sea. His ship, the Papeete, lay there at anchor; but to get to her he would have to go along a narrow path between the mangroves, and this did not precisely seem advisable.

      “Look here, sir,” he said after a while, “what are they squabbling about over there, anyway? Some boundary or other?”

      “Less than that.”

      “Colonies?”

      “Even less than that.”

      “Commercial treaties?”

      “No. Only about the truth.”

      “What kind of truth?”

      “The absolute truth. You see, every nation insists that it has the absolute truth.”

      “Hm,” grunted the Captain. “What is it, anyway?”

      “Nothing. A sort of human passion. You’ve heard, haven’t you, that in Europe yonder, and everywhere in fact, a . . . a God, you know . . . came into the world.”

      “Yes, I did hear that.”

      “Well, that’s what it’s all about, don’t you understand?”

      “No, I don’t understand, old man. If you ask me, the true God would put things right in the world. The one they’ve got can’t be the true and proper God.”

      “On the contrary,” said G. H. Bondy (obviously pleased at being able to talk for once with an independent and experienced human being), “I assure you that it is the true God. But I’ll tell you something else. This true God is far too big.”

      “Do you think so?”

      “I do indeed. He is infinite. That’s just where the trouble lies. You see, everyone measures off a certain amount of Him and then thinks it is the entire God. Each one appropriates a little fringe or fragment of Him and then thinks he possesses the whole of Him. See?”

      “Aha,” said the Captain. “And then gets angry with everyone else who has a different bit of Him.”

      “Exactly. In order to convince himself that God is wholly his, he has to go and kill all the others. Just for that very reason, because it means so much to him to have the whole of God and the whole of the truth. That’s why he can’t bear anyone else to have any other God or any other truth. If he once allowed that, he would have to admit that he himself has only a few wretched metres or gallons or sackloads of divine truth. You see, suppose Dash were convinced that it was tremendously important that only Dash’s underwear should be the best on earth, he would have to burn his rival, Blank, and all Blank’s underwear. But Dash isn’t so silly as that in the matter of underwear; he is only as silly as that in the matter of religion or English politics. If he believed that God was something as substantial and essential as underwear, he would allow other people to provide themselves with Him just as they pleased. But he hasn’t sufficient commercial confidence in Him; and so he forces Dash’s God or Dash’s Truth on everybody with curses, wars, and other unreliable forms of advertisement. I am a business man and I understand competition, but this sort of . . .”

      “Wait a minute,” interrupted Captain Trouble, and aimed a shot into the mangrove thicket. “There, I think that’s one less of them.”

      “He died for his faith,” whispered Bondy dreamily. “You have forcibly restrained him from devouring me. He fell for the national ideal of cannibalism. In Europe people have been devouring each other from time immemorial out of idealism. You are a decent man, Captain, but it’s quite possible that you’d devour me on behalf of any fundamental principle of navigation. I’ve lost confidence even in you.”

      “You’re quite right,” the Captain grumbled. “When I look at you, I feel that I’m . . .”

      “. . . a violent anti-Semite. I know. That doesn’t matter, I had myself baptized. But do you know, Captain, what’s got hold of those black idiots? The night before last they fished out of the sea a Japanese atomic torpedo. They’ve set it up over there under the coco-nut palms, and now they are bowing down before it. Now they have a God of their own. That’s why they must devour us.”

      War-cries sounded from the mangrove thicket.

      “Do you hear them?” muttered the Captain. “On my soul, I’d rather . . . go through the geometry examination all over again. . . .”

      “Listen,” Bondy whispered. “Couldn’t we go over to their religion? As far as I’m concerned . . .”

      At that moment a gun boomed out from the Papeete.

      The Captain uttered a low cry of joy.

      XXVIII

      AT SEVEN COTTAGES

      And while the world shook with the clash of armies, while the boundaries of States writhed to and fro like earth-worms, and the whole earth was crumbling into a field of ruins, old Mrs. Blahous was peeling her potatoes in Seven Cottages, Grandfather Blahous was sitting on the doorstep smoking beech-leaves, and their neighbour, Mrs. Prouzova, was leaning on the fence, repeating meditatively, “Yes, yes.”

      “Aye, yes,” returned Blahous after a while.

      “My word, yes,” observed Mrs. Blahous.

      “That’s how ’tis,” Mrs. Prouzova answered.

      “Oh, what’s the use?” said Grandfather Blahous.

      “Yes, that’s it,” added Mrs. Blahous, peeling another potato.

      “They say the Italians got a good hiding,” Blahous announced.

      “Who from?”

      “From the Turks, I expect.”

      “Then I suppose that’ll be the end of the war?”

      “What d’you mean? The Prussians’ll start off now.”

      “What, against us?”

      “Against the French, they say.”

      “Good heavens above, everything will be dear again.”

      “Yes, yes.”

      “Aye, yes.”

      “What’s the use?”

      “They say that the Swiss wrote not long ago that the others might give it up soon.”

      “That’s what I say.”

      “Yes. Why, the day before yesterday I paid fifteen hundred crowns for a candle. I tell you, Blahous, it was one of those miserable things only fit for the stable.”

      “And you mean to say it cost you fifteen hundred?”

      “Not far off. There’s a rise for you, friends!”

      “Aye, yes.”

      “My word, yes.”

      “Who’d ever have thought it? Fifteen hundred!”

      “You could get a fine candle for two hundred at one time.”

      “Yes, auntie, but that’s years ago. Why, even an egg only cost five hundred in those days.”

      “And you could get a pound of butter for three thousand.”

      “And lovely butter, too!”

      “And boots for eight thousand.”

      “Yes, yes, Mrs. Blahous, things were cheap in those days.”

      “But now——”

      “Yes, yes.”

      “If only it was all over and done with!”