A Diversity of Creatures | Page 4

with talking about privacy. They arrange to have it. And
now, where's your alleged fleet, Arnott? We must assert ourselves
against this wench.'
Arnott pointed to the black heavens.

'Waiting on--up there,' said he. 'Shall I give them the whole installation,
sir?'
'Oh, I don't think the young lady is quite worth that,' said De Forest.
'Get over Chicago, and perhaps we'll see something.'
In a few minutes we were hanging at two thousand feet over an oblong
block of incandescence in the centre of the little town.
'That looks like the old City Hall. Yes, there's Salati's Statue in front of
it,' said Takahira. 'But what on earth are they doing to the place? I
thought they used it for a market nowadays! Drop a little, please.'
We could hear the sputter and crackle of road-surfacing machines--the
cheap Western type which fuse stone and rubbish into lava-like ribbed
glass for their rough country roads. Three or four surfacers worked on
each side of a square of ruins. The brick and stone wreckage crumbled,
slid forward, and presently spread out into white-hot pools of sticky
slag, which the levelling-rods smoothed more or less flat. Already a
third of the big block had been so treated, and was cooling to dull red
before our astonished eyes.
'It is the Old Market,' said De Forest. 'Well, there's nothing to prevent
Illinois from making a road through a market. It doesn't interfere with
traffic, that I can see.'
'Hsh!' said Arnott, gripping me by the shoulder. 'Listen! They're singing.
Why on the earth are they singing?'
We dropped again till we could see the black fringe of people at the
edge of that glowing square.
At first they only roared against the roar of the surfacers and levellers.
Then the words came up clearly--the words of the Forbidden Song that
all men knew, and none let pass their lips--poor Pat MacDonough's
Song, made in the days of the Crowds and the Plague--every silly word
of it loaded to sparking-point with the Planet's inherited memories of
horror, panic, fear and cruelty. And Chicago--innocent, contented little

Chicago--was singing it aloud to the infernal tune that carried riot,
pestilence and lunacy round our Planet a few generations ago!
'Once there was The People--Terror gave it birth; Once there was The
People, and it made a hell of earth!'
(Then the stamp and pause):
'Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, oh, ye slain! Once there was The
People--it shall never be again!'
The levellers thrust in savagely against the ruins as the song renewed
itself again, again and again, louder than the crash of the melting walls.
De Forest frowned.
'I don't like that,' he said. 'They've broken back to the Old Days! They'll
be killing somebody soon. I think we'd better divert 'em, Arnott.'
'Ay, ay, sir.' Arnott's hand went to his cap, and we heard the hull of the
Victor Pirolo ring to the command: 'Lamps! Both watches stand by!
Lamps! Lamps! Lamps!'
'Keep still!' Takahira whispered to me. 'Blinkers, please, quartermaster.'
'It's all right--all right!' said Pirolo from behind, and to my horror
slipped over my head some sort of rubber helmet that locked with a
snap. I could feel thick colloid bosses before my eyes, but I stood in
absolute darkness.
'To save the sight,' he explained, and pushed me on to the chart-room
divan. 'You will see in a minute.'
As he spoke I became aware of a thin thread of almost intolerable light,
let down from heaven at an immense distance--one vertical
hairsbreadth of frozen lightning.
'Those are our flanking ships,' said Arnott at my elbow. 'That one is
over Galena. Look south--that other one's over Keithburg. Vincennes is

behind us, and north yonder is Winthrop Woods. The Fleet's in position,
sir'--this to De Forest. 'As soon as you give the word.'
'Ah no! No!' cried Dragomiroff at my side. I could feel the old man
tremble. 'I do not know all that you can do, but be kind! I ask you to be
a little kind to them below! This is horrible--horrible!'
'When a Woman kills a Chicken, Dynasties and Empires sicken,'
Takahira quoted. 'It is too late to be gentle now.'
'Then take off my helmet! Take off my helmet!' Dragomiroff began
hysterically.
Pirolo must have put his arm round him.
'Hush,' he said, 'I am here. It is all right, Ivan, my dear fellow.'
'I'll just send our little girl in Bureau County a warning,' said Arnott.
'She don't deserve it, but we'll allow her a minute or two to take
mamma to the cellar.'
In the utter hush that followed the growling spark after Arnott had
linked up his Service Communicator with the invisible Fleet, we heard
MacDonough's Song from the city beneath us grow fainter as we rose
to