A Diversity of Creatures | Page 9

on Crowds!
De Forest waited till the last footstep had died away. Meantime the
prisoners at the base of the Statue shuffled, posed, and fidgeted, with
the shamelessness of quite little children. None of them were more than
six feet high, and many of them were as grey-haired as the ravaged,
harassed heads of old pictures. They huddled together in actual touch,
while the crowd, spaced at large intervals, looked at them with
congested eyes.
Suddenly a man among them began to talk. The Mayor had not in the
least exaggerated. It appeared that our Planet lay sunk in slavery
beneath the heel of the Aërial Board of Control. The orator urged us to
arise in our might, burst our prison doors and break our fetters (all his
metaphors, by the way, were of the most mediæval). Next he demanded
that every matter of daily life, including most of the physical functions,
should be submitted for decision at any time of the week, month, or
year to, I gathered, anybody who happened to be passing by or residing
within a certain radius, and that everybody should forthwith abandon
his concerns to settle the matter, first by crowd-making, next by talking
to the crowds made, and lastly by describing crosses on pieces of paper,
which rubbish should later be counted with certain mystic ceremonies
and oaths. Out of this amazing play, he assured us, would automatically
arise a higher, nobler, and kinder world, based--he demonstrated this
with the awful lucidity of the insane--based on the sanctity of the
Crowd and the villainy of the single person. In conclusion, he called
loudly upon God to testify to his personal merits and integrity. When
the flow ceased, I turned bewildered to Takahira, who was nodding
solemnly.
'Quite correct,' said he. 'It is all in the old books. He has left nothing out,
not even the war-talk.'
'But I don't see how this stuff can upset a child, much less a district,' I
replied.

'Ah, you are too young,' said Dragomiroff. 'For another thing, you are
not a mamma. Please look at the mammas.'
Ten or fifteen women who remained had separated themselves from the
silent men, and were drawing in towards the prisoners. It reminded one
of the stealthy encircling, before the rush in at the quarry, of wolves
round musk-oxen in the North. The prisoners saw, and drew together
more closely. The Mayor covered his face with his hands for an instant.
De Forest, bareheaded, stepped forward between the prisoners, and the
slowly, stiffly moving line.
'That's all very interesting,' he said to the dry-lipped orator. 'But the
point seems that you've been making crowds and invading privacy.'
A woman stepped forward, and would have spoken, but there was a
quick assenting murmur from the men, who realised that De Forest was
trying to pull the situation down to ground-line.
'Yes! Yes!' they cried. 'We cut out because they made crowds and
invaded privacy! Stick to that! Keep on that switch! Lift the Serviles
out of this! The Board's in charge! Hsh!'
'Yes, the Board's in charge,' said De Forest. 'I'll take formal evidence of
crowd-making if you like, but the Members of the Board can testify to
it. Will that do?'
The women had closed in another pace, with hands that clenched and
unclenched at their sides.
'Good! Good enough!' the men cried. 'We're content. Only take them
away quickly.'
'Come along up!' said De Forest to the captives, 'Breakfast is quite
ready.'
It appeared, however, that they did not wish to go. They intended to
remain in Chicago and make crowds. They pointed out that De Forest's
proposal was gross invasion of privacy.

'My dear fellow,' said Pirolo to the most voluble of the leaders, 'you
hurry, or your crowd that can't be wrong will kill you!'
'But that would be murder,' answered the believer in crowds; and there
was a roar of laughter from all sides that seemed to show the crisis had
broken.
A woman stepped forward from the line of women, laughing, I protest,
as merrily as any of the company. One hand, of course, shaded her eyes,
the other was at her throat.
'Oh, they needn't be afraid of being killed!' she called.
'Not in the least,' said De Forest. 'But don't you think that, now the
Board's in charge, you might go home while we get these people
away?'
'I shall be home long before that. It--it has been rather a trying day.'
She stood up to her full height, dwarfing even De Forest's six-foot-eight,
and smiled, with eyes closed against the fierce light.
'Yes, rather,' said De Forest. 'I'm afraid you feel the glare a little. We'll
have the ship down.'
He motioned to the Pirolo to drop between us and the sun, and at the