The Warlord of the Air Read online

  I glanced out of the window as I dried my face. Not that Shaw had entirely failed. In the rose gardens I saw children of various ages and a variety of nationalities playing together, laughing joyfully as they ran about in the morning sunshine. And along the paths strolled men and women, chatting easily to each other and smiling frequently. Some were evidently married and not a few were members of the coloured races married to members of the white race. This did not shock me as it should have done. It all seemed natural to me. I remembered what Shaw had said the city was called—Democratic Dawn City—the City of Equality. But was such equality possible in the outside world? Was not Shaw’s dream city artificially conceived? I expressed this thought to Dutchke, who had opened his eyes again, and added: “It does look tranquil—but isn’t this place built on piracy and murder, just as you said London was built on injustice?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t much care to discuss Shaw’s ambitions.” Then he paused for a while. “But to be fair I think you could say that Dawn City is a beginning—it is conceived in terms of the future. London is an ending—the final conception of a dead ideology.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Europe has used up its dream. It has no future. The future lies here, in China, which has a new dream, a new future. It lies in Africa, India—throughout the Middle East and the Far East—perhaps in South America, too. Europe is dying. I, for one, regret it. But before she dies, she offers certain notions of what is possible to the countries she has dishonoured...”

  “You are saying we are decadent?”

  “If you like. It is not what I said.”

  I could not completely follow his argument so I let it drop. I found my clothes, newly cleaned and pressed, at the end of my bed, and put them on.

  A little later there was a tap at the door and an old, old man walked in. His hair was pure white and he had a long, white goatee beard after the Chinese fashion. He was dressed in simple cotton clothes and leaned on a stick. He looked as if he had lived a hundred years and seen a great deal of the world. When he spoke it was in a cracked, high-pitched voice with a thick accent I identified as Russian.

  “Good morning, young man. Good morning, Dutchke.”

  Dutchke straightened up on the bed, his gloom forgotten, his face brightening.

  “Uncle Vladimir! How are you?”

  “I’m well, but feeling my age a little these days.”

  Dutchke introduced us as the old man sat down in one of the easy chairs. “Mr Bastable, this is Vladimir Ilyitch Ulianov. He was a revolutionist before any of us were born!”

  I did not correct him on that point but shook hands with the old Russian.

  Dutchke laughed. “Mr Bastable is a confirmed capitalist, uncle. He disapproves of us all—calls us anarchists and murderers!”

  Ulianov chuckled without rancour. “It is always amusing to hear the mass-murderer accusing the man he seeks to destroy. I’ll not forget the thousand accusations made against me in Russia in the twenties, before I had to leave. Kerensky was President then—is he still?”

  “He died last year, uncle. They have elected a new President now. Prince Sukhanov is now leader of the Duma.”

  “And doubtless licks the spittle of the Romanovs as his predecessor did. Duma! A travesty of democracy. I was a fool even to let myself be elected to it. That is not the way to challenge injustice. The Tsar still rules Russia—even if it is nowadays through his so-called parliament.”

  “True, Vladimir Ilyitch,” murmured Dutchke and I got the impression he was humouring the man a little. There was no doubting his admiration of this ancient revolutionist—but now he was tolerating him as one would a man who had done great things in his day but had now turned a trifle senile.

  “Ah, if only I had had the opportunity,” Ulianov went on, “I would have shown Kerensky what democracy really meant. We should have chained the Tsar’s power—perhaps even kicked him out altogether. Yes—yes-it might have been possible, if all the people had risen up and opposed him. There must have been one moment in history when that could have happened, and I missed it. Perhaps I was sleeping, perhaps I was exiled in Germany at the time, perhaps I was” (he smiled fondly) “making love! Ha! But one day Russia will be free, eh, Rudolph? We shall make honest workers of the Romanovs and send Kerensky and his ‘Parliament’ to Siberia, just as they sent me there, eh? The revolution must come soon.”

  “Soon, uncle.”

  “Let the people starve a little longer. Let them be made to work a little harder. Let them know disease and fear and death a little better—then they will rise up. A tide of humanity which will sweep over the corrupt princes and merchants and drown them in their own blood!”

  “As you say, uncle.”

  “Oh! If only I had had my chance. If I could have controlled the Duma—but that weasel Kerensky tricked me, discredited me, chased me from my own homeland, my Russia.”

  “You will return some day.”

  Ulianov winked cunningly at Dutchke. “I have returned once or twice already. I have distributed a few pamphlets. I have visited my rich politician friend Bronstein and given him a fright in case the Okharna should discover me at his house and think him a revolutionist, too. He was once, of course, but he chose to modify his views and keep his place in the Duma. Jews! They are all the same.”

  Dutchke looked a little disapproving at this sudden outburst. “There are Jews and Jews, uncle.”

  “True. But Bronstein—ah, what is the use—he is ninety-seven years old. Soon he will be dead and I will be dead.”

  “But your writings, Vladimir Ilyitch, will always live. They will inspire each new generation of revolutionists—all those who learn to hate injustice.”

  Ulianov nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Let us hope so. But you will not remember...” And now he launched on a new series of repetitive anecdotes while Dutchke disguised his impatience and listened politely, even when the old man querulously attacked him, for a moment, as not following the True Way

  of the Revolution.

  In the meantime I uttered the magic word ‘Food’ and the Chinese girl appeared in the milky-blue oval again. I asked for breakfast for three and it was duly delivered. Dutchke and I ate heartily, but Ulianov was loathe to waste time eating. He continued to drone on as we enjoyed our breakfast. Ulianov reminded me somewhat of the old Holy Men, the lamas I had occasionally come across in my former life as an officer in the Indian Army. Often his conversation seemed as abstract as did theirs. And yet, as I had respected those lamas, I respected Ulianov—for his age, for his Faith, for the way in which he would repeat the articles of his creed over and over again. He seemed a kindly, harmless old man—very different from my earlier image of a confirmed revolutionist.

  The door opened as he launched into the phrase he had used earlier—“Let the people starve a little longer. Let them be made to work a little harder. Let them know disease and fear and death a little better—then they will rise up! A tide...” It was Shaw who stood in the doorway. He was dressed in a white linen suit and there was a panama hat on his head. He was smoking a cigar. “A tide of humanity which will sweep away injustice, eh, Vladimir Ilyitch?” He smiled. “But I disagree with you, as ever.”

  The old Russian looked up and wagged his finger. “You should not argue with one as old as me, Shuo Ho Ti. That is not the Chinese way. You should respect my words.” He smiled back.

  “What do you think, Mr Bastable?” Shaw asked banteringly. “Does despair breed revolution?”

  “I know nothing of revolutions,” I replied. “Though I might be induced to agree with you that a few reforms might be in order—in Russia, for instance.”

  Ulianov laughed. “A few reforms! Ho! That is what Kerensky wanted. But the reforms went by the board when it proved expedient to forget about them. It is always the same with ‘reforms’. The system must die!”

  “It is hope, Mr Bastable, not despair, which breeds revolution,” said Shaw. “Give the people hope—show them what might be p
ossible, what they can look forward to—then they might try to achieve something. Despair breeds only more despair—people lose heart and die in themselves. There is where Comrade Ulianov and those who follow him make a mistake. They think that people will rise up when their discomfort becomes unbearable. But that is not true. When their discomfort becomes totally unbearable—they give up. Offer them some extra comfort—and being human they will ask for more—and more—and more! Then comes revolution. Thus we of Dawn City work to distribute extra wealth among the coolies of China. We work to set an example in China which will encourage the oppressed peoples of the whole world.”

  Ulianov shook his head. “Bah! Bronstein had some such idea—but look what became of him!”

  “Bronstein? Ah—your old enemy.”

  “He was once my friend,” said Ulianov, suddenly sad. He got up with a sigh. “Still, we are all comrades here, even if we differ about methods.” He gave me a long, hard look. “Do not think we are divided because we argue, Mr Bastable.”

  I had thought exactly that.

  “We are human beings, you see,” Ulianov continued. “We have fantastic dreams—but what the human mind can conceive, it can make reality. For good or ill. For good or ill.”

  “Perhaps for good and ill,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every coin has two sides. Every dream of perfection contains a nightmare of imperfection.”

  Ulianov smiled slowly. “That is perhaps why we should not aim for absolutes, eh? Is it absolutes which destroy themselves as surely as they destroy us?”

  “Absolutes—and abstractions,” I said. “There are little acts of justice as well as large ones, Vladimir Ilyitch Ulianov.”

  “You think that we revolutionists forsake our humanity to follow fantasies of Utopia?”

  “Perhaps not you...”

  “You have voiced the eternal problem of the dedicated follower of any faith, Mr Bastable. There is never a resolution.”

  “Judging by my own experience,” I said, “there is never a resolution to any problem concerning human affairs. I suppose you could call that philosophy ‘British pragmatism’. Take it as it comes....”

  “The British certainly took it,” said Dutchke and laughed. “There is a particular joy, I am sure you will agree, in looking for alternatives and seeing whether those alternatives will work and if they are better.”

  “There must be a better alternative to this world,” said Ulianov feelingly. “There must be!”

  Shaw had come to take us on a tour of his city. The four of us—Captain Korzeniowski, now fully recovered and with not even a scar to show for his headwound, Una Persson, Count von Dutchke and myself—followed Shaw from the apartment house and down a wide, sunlit street.

  Dawn City continued to be an education for me, who had always seen revolutionists in terms of simple-minded nihilists, blowing up buildings, murdering people, with no idea of what they might want to build on the ruins of the world they were destroying. And here was their dream made reality.

  But wasn’t it a slightly spurious reality? I wondered. Could it actually be extended throughout the world?

  When I had first been hurled into the world of the 1970s I had thought I had found Utopia. And now I was discovering that it was only a Utopia for some. Shaw wanted a Utopia which would exist for all.

  I remembered the blood I had seen spread across the bridge of The Rover. Barry’s blood. It was hard to reconcile that image with the one before me now.

  Shaw took us to see schools, communal restaurants, workshops, laboratories, theatres, studios, all full of happy, relaxed people of a hundred different nationalities, races and creeds. I was impressed.

  “This is what the whole of the East—and Africa-might have been like by now if it had not been for the European’s greed,” Shaw told me. “By now we would be economically stronger than Europe. That would be a true balance of power. Then you would see what justice was all about!”

  “But it is a European ideal that you follow,” I pointed out. “If we had not brought it...”

  “We should have found it. People learn by example, Mr Bastable. They do not have to have ideas forced upon them.”

  We had entered a darkened hall. Before us was a large kinema screen. Shaw bade us be seated and then the screen flickered into life.

  I watched in horrified fascination as I saw pictures of Chinese men and women being decapitated in their scores.

  “The village of Shihnan in Japanese Manchuria,” said Shaw in a hard, flat voice. “The villagers failed to produce their annual quota of rice and are being punished. This happened last year.”

  I saw Japanese soldiers laughing as their long swords rose and fell.

  I was stunned. “But that is Japan....” was all I could say.

  A new series of pictures. Coolies working on a railway line. Uniformed men were using whips to force them to work harder. The uniforms were Russian.

  “Everyone knows the Russians are cruel in their treatment of subject peoples....”

  Shaw made no comment.

  A rabble of Chinese—many of them women and children—armed with farm implements were rushing towards a stone wall. The people were in rags and half-starved. Gunfire broke out from behind the wall and the people fell down, twisted, bleeding, shrieking in agony. I could hardly bear to look. The gunfire continued until all the people were dead.

  Men in brown uniforms with wide-brimmed hats appeared from behind the wall and moved amongst the corpses, checking that none lived.

  “Americans!”

  “To be fair,” General Shaw said tonelessly, “they were acting at the request of the Siam government. That scene took place a few miles from Bangkok. American troops are helping the government to keep order. There have been a number of minor rebellions in some parts of Siam recently.”

  The next scene was an Indian township. Concrete huts were arranged in neat rows for as far as the eye could see.

  “It’s deserted,” I said.

  “Wait.”

  The camera took us along the desolate streets until we were outside the township. Here were soldiers in British red. They, were wielding spades, heaping bodies into trenches filled with lime:

  “Cholera?”

  “There was cholera—typhoid—malaria—smallpox—but that was not why the whole village died. Look.”

  The camera moved in closer and I saw that there were many bullet wounds in the bodies.

  “They marched on Delhi without passes to enter the city limits,” said Shaw. “They refused to halt when ordered to do so. They were all shot down.”

  “But it could not have been an official decision,” I said. “An officer panicked. It sometimes happens.”

  “Were the Russians, the Japanese, the Americans panicking?”

  “No.”

  “This is how your kind of power is used when others threaten it,” said Shaw. I looked at his eyes. There were tears in them.

  I knew something of what he was feeling. There were tears in my eyes, too.

  I tried to tell myself that the films were counterfeit—played by actors to impress people like me. But I knew that they were not counterfeit.

  I left the kinema. I was shaking. I felt sick. And I was still weeping.

  We walked in silence through the tranquil City of the Dawn, none of us able to speak after what we had witnessed. We came to the edge of the settlement and looked out over the makeshift airpark. There were men there now, working on the girders for what was evidently to be a good-sized mooring mast. We saw The Rover still pegged to the ground in her spider-web of cables, but the bigger ship had gone.

  “Where is the Loch Etive?” It was Korzeniowski who spoke.

  Shaw looked up absently and then, as if remembering a duty, smiled “Oh, she is on her way back. I hope her second mission will be as successful as her first.”

  “Missions?” said Dutchke. “What missions?”

  “Her first was to shoot down the Imperial Japanes
e Airship Kanazawa. We have armed her with some experimental guns. They are excellent. No recoil at all. Always the problem with big guns aboard an airship, eh?”

  “True,” said Korzeniowski. He took out his pipe and began to light it. “True.”

  “And her second mission was to bomb a section of the Trans-Siberian railroad and steal the cargo of a certain Moscow-bound train. I recently heard that the cargo was stolen. If it is what I hope, we shall be able to speed up Project NFB.”

  “Just what is this mysterious project?” Una Persson asked.

  General O. T. Shaw gestured towards a large building like a factory which stood on the far side of the airpark. “Over there. A very expensive project, I don’t mind saying. But I can’t tell you any more, I’m afraid. I hardly understand it myself. Most of our German and Hungarian exiles are working on it. There are one or two Americans, too, and an Englishman—all political refugees. But brilliant and original scientists. Dawn City benefits by the tyranny imposed on curiosity in the West.”

  I could not believe that he had not considered the consequences of these actions. “You have now earned the wrath of three great powers,” I said. “You stole a British airship to destroy a Japanese man-o’-war and a Russian railway. They are bound to get together. Dawn City will be lucky if it lasts a day!”

  “We still have the hostages from the Loch Etive,” Shaw murmured serenely.

  “Will that knowledge stop the Japanese or the Russians from bombing you to bits?”

  “It offers a serious diplomatic problem. The three nations must argue it over for a while. In the meantime we are finishing off our defences.”

  “Even you can’t defend yourself against the combined aerial fleets of Britain, Japan and Russia!” I said.

  “We shall have to see,” said Shaw. “Now, Mr Bastable, what did you think of my magic lantern show?”

  “You convinced me that a closer watch should be kept on how the natives are treated,” I said.

  “And that is all?”

  “There are other ways of stopping injustice,” I said, “than revolution and bloody war.”