When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

“Swell,” said Tony. “The drink, the bath, the clothes! Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die. There’s something in it, Kyto.”

“I have become apprised of the Bronson circumstances in toto, and about your statement am agreement itself.”

Tony’s eyebrows raised. “Know all about it, hey?”

“I have a nice storehouse of information on same.”

“Good. How’s my mother?”

“Excellent as to health. Telephoning daily.”

“Maybe you’d better ring her up first. On second thought, that’s the thing to do. I telegraphed her occasionally, but heaven only knows when I’ll see her. She is a darn’ good sport.”

“A person of profound esteemableness.”

Tony looked with surprise at the back of the Jap as he started toward the telephone. The approach of the Bronson bodies had made his servant more loquacious than he had ever before been. Aside from that, no change in Kyto was discernible—nor did Tony anticipate any change. He began to remove his travel-worn clothes, and was in a bathrobe when Kyto succeeded in completing a telephone-connection with his mother’s house in Connecticut.

* * *

Tony moved with a feeling of incredulity. The Hendron apartment was exactly as it had been. Leighton approached stiffly with a cocktail on a small silver tray. There was even jazz emerging softly from the radio. He smiled faintly. Funny that a girl of Eve’s extraordinary education and taste should enjoy the monotonous rhythm of jazz coming over the radio, and yet she had always liked it.

Eve appeared—a new Eve who was a little different from the old Eve. She wore a green evening dress that he remembered from an hour spent long ago on the balcony.

“Hello, Tony.” In her eyes was the same wonderment, the same surprise and unbelief that he felt. She took the cocktail which Leighton had brought, and held it up to the light. A pink hemisphere, a few drops of something that belonged to a life in a world already as good as dead. “Happy days!”

Hendron appeared immediately after his daughter. “Drake! Evening, old man. No cocktail, thanks, Leighton. Well, this is odd. Here we stand, just as we did in the old days, eh?”

“Don’t say the old days, Father. We’ll be doing it all the rest of our lives.”

Hendron’s extravagantly blue eyes twinkled. “If you expect me to furnish you with cocktail glasses and smuggled Bacardi in the years that lie ahead on Bronson Beta, Eve, you vastly overrate my paternal generosity and thoughtfulness. Let’s have dinner. I want to get back to the laboratory for a conference at midnight.”

The dining-room doors were opened. White, silver and red glittered under the indirect lights. “I point with pride,” Eve said, “to the roses. It’s something of an achievement these days.”

They sat down. Leighton served consommé, and Tony picked up his silver spoon with a dreamy feeling of unreality which psychologists have noted and only badly explained.

Hendron brought him to his senses. “Tell us the news, Tony. We’ve been living down there at the laboratory ever since you left. This is Eve’s and my first night off. Eating there, sleeping there. We have dormitories now on the floor above. What’s going on in the world? You know, we even bar newspapers now. They’re too much of a distraction, and Dodson has instructions to keep track of the news but not to give us any, unless it will have an effect on our work.”

Tony sipped the consommé. “You mean to say you haven’t kept tabs on the effect of your own society’s bitter pill?”

Hendron shook his head. “Not anything to speak of. A word here and there in reference to something else, that’s all.”

Eve said eagerly: “Go ahead, Tony! Tell us everything. What do you know about the world? What’s it like in Boston? What do people think and say? What’s the news from abroad? All

we know is that the Government has at last done a little governing, and taken over the public utilities in order to keep them running.”

Tony began to talk. He took what opportunity their questions gave, to eat.

“It hasn’t made as much difference as you’d think. The Government at Washington is now less concerned with the fact that the populace should be moved away from the Coast, than it is with immediate problems. If you really have not read about them, I can give you some idea. There was a general strike in Chicago two weeks ago that tied up everything. No electric light and no water; nothing for a day. There was a terrific riot in Birmingham. The police forces in half a dozen cities walked out. The State governments weren’t able to cope with the situation. In some cases it was just that the people decided not to work any more, and in others it was pure mob uproar. The Federal Government stepped in everywhere. They took over blanket control of the utilities, saw to it that trains were kept running, powerhouses kept going, and so on. Nominally workers are jailed for dereliction, but actually I think they have found it necessary to execute them. Trouble began when I was in Boston, but in three days all the major functions of housing, food and transportation were working fairly well.

“I think the people looked first to the President, anyway; and the President had the good sense to kick politics in the face and take full authority upon himself to do anything and everything which he thought would keep the country in operation. There was some trouble in the Army and Navy, still more in the National Guard, especially with soldiers who were fathers and wanted to remain with their families. I suppose there are nearly half a million men doing police duty right now.”

“It’s strange,” Eve said, “but I realized things were functioning, without even having the time to investigate precisely why they were going.”

Her father looked keenly at Tony. “That’s all according to the plan that the League worked out before the news broke. A man named Carey is largely responsible for it. He’s an economist. I believe he’s a guest at the White House right now, and has been for ten days.”

“I’ve seen his name,” Tony said, and continued: “As I was saying, it hasn’t made as much difference as you would imagine. I saw one nasty riot in Baltimore between soldiers on one side and cops on the other, but in half an hour it was all over. I think that the work of keeping the public informed has been marvelous. The radio goes twenty-four hours a day, and the newspapers appear as often as they have anything fresh to print. People are kept encouraged and reassured and directed. Of course, part of the general calmness is due simply to mass inertia. For every person that will get hysterical or do something foolish, there are about ten who will not only fail to get hysterical, but who will not even recognize that their lives are presently going to be changed entirely. The whole city of Philadelphia, with the exception of the university, is almost unaltered. Anyway, that’s the impression you get of it.

“And the unemployed have been corraled en masse. There is a project to turn the entire basin of the Mississippi north and west of Kansas City into an abode for the Coast populations, and the unemployed are building there, I understand, quarters of sorts for ten million people. Most of them are temporary. They are also planting vast areas of land in crops. I imagine that they are going to compel the migration when the interior of the country is prepared as well as possible to receive it, and when the danger of tidal waves draws near. As a matter of fact, every industrial center is working at top speed, and Chicago is headquarters for their produce. I don’t just remember the figures, but an appalling quantity of canned goods, clothing, medical supplies and things like that are being prepared and distributed to bases in the Mississippi valley. Granted that the valley remains inhabitable, I really believe that a majority of our population will be successfully moved there and installed for an indefinite time.”