After Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 2)

“Safe. This is Lady Cynthia Cruikshank. She’ll tell you her story. I think we’d better move.”

“Right.”

Von Beitz was already in his seat. Tony vaulted aboard. The train started.

Lady Cynthia began a detailed account of the landing of the English ship. Tony moved over beside Eve.

“How’s your father?”

“You can’t tell. Oh—Tony—I was terrified!”

He took her hand.

“We could see it—up there in the dark, wabbling toward where we knew you were waiting.”

He nodded. “It was pretty sour. Listen to her, though—she’s got a story.”

They listened. When she had finished, long and dark miles had been put behind. The uncomfortable passengers had stood spellbound, chilly, swaying, listening to her narrative. Now they questioned her.

“Why did the Midianites seize you?” one asked.

“Midianites?”

“That’s what we call the ‘Asiatic Expedition.’”

The Englishwoman laughed softly. “Oh, Oh, I see. Joshua! Not inapt. Why—because they want to run everything and rule everything on this planet. And because their men greatly outnumber their women.” She spoke bitterly. “We’d chosen the pride of England. And pretty faces—”

“Why,” some one else asked, “did you wabble so horribly?”

“Wabble?”

“Weave, then. In that Bronson Beta van you drove?”

“Bronson Beta? Oh—you used the astronomical name for this planet. Why—I wabbled because I had to turn my lights out when I saw you coming, and I could only stay on the road by driving very slowly and letting the front wheels run off the edge. When they did, I yanked the car back onto the pavement.”

Several people laughed. The van bumbled on toward the promised land. Some one else asked: “What did you call this planet?”

Lady Cynthia replied: “We in our ship—thought— just Britannia. But the people who captured us called it Asiatica. You must realize that when I say captured, I don’t mean that in the sense that we were jailed. We lived among them—were part of them. Only—we weren’t allowed arms—and we were forced to live by their laws.”

“What laws?”

“German was to be their universal language. We had to learn it. Every woman was to be married. We had been given three months to choose mates. We were to bear children. There was no property. No God. No amusements or sports. No art—except for education—propaganda, you might call it. No love, no sentiment. We were being told to consider ourselves as ants, part of a colony. The colony was all-important, the individual ants—nothing.”

“Swell,” said one of the younger men from the dark.

Lady Cynthia nodded.

“How did you escape?”

“I’d elected to marry a leader. I was considering—seriously—jumping from a building in one of the cities. But I had a little more freedom than most. I was assigned to truck-driving. I went out every day to the gardens for vegetables. I befriended one of the guards there—I made rather deceitful promises to him; and he let me enjoy what I had told him was a craving of mine—going for a spin alone. I went—and I didn’t come back.”

Duquesne asked: “You knew where to find us?”

“Vaguely. In our city—the city was called Bergrad, by them—there had been discussions of you. Our captors called you American rabble. They are determined to subdue you.”

“Sweet!” said Williamson.

“Of course—in the last days on earth—I’d read about you. I knew two or three of your party. I knew Eliot James. He’d stayed once at our castle. Is he—”