Yesterday's Revenge

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Comet January 41. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

War! Years and decades of slaughter and hate and retrogression, of men against men, machines against machines, machines against men, in an ever quickening tempo of destruction. The World War, the War of the Wings, the War of the Rockets, the Pacifist War, the World Revolution drowning in the sea of its own blood, and at last peace, the Peace of Fear.

And in this Peace cities rose again on the surface of the earth, roads found new ways across the blasted continents, great ships again safely plied the seas, the skies were burdened with commerce and everywhere the mighty deserts slowly shrank before the verdancy of nature and the genius of man.

But the ground was soaked with blood of the lost generations marching in endless columns to their sacrifice to hate. The vibrations of the hate were in the very ground beneath the cities. There was bitter hate in the hearts of the men who toiled to build the forms of civilization without its spirit, urged on by the lash, the torture chamber and the purge. And the focus of all this hatred was the Master, Protector of the Peace, betrayer and dictator of a world.

Once he had been the idol of the war-weary millions as he sent the robots of the Pacifist Democrats to victory after brilliant victory; as the regimented subjects of the brigand nations had broken their chains to fight under the banners of the great League of Scientists who promised peace and freedom and security; and as the League itself gave him complete control over the mighty armaments contrived for man's salvation.

By the time the last stubborn flame-fort had surrendered, he stood upon a dazzling pinnacle of glory such as men had only dreamed before, and he would not descend to be again a man among men. He refused to return his dread powers to the League. When they insisted, he imprisoned them, and they escaped to raise his armies and all peoples against him, shouting the war cries of freedom, so that the whole world seemed to batter against his citadel like a sea of thunder and flame. Yet he alone controlled the robots, and the robots went forth bringing darkness to the sky and fire to the earth. The armies of the people were defeated and scattered, only to fight again from buried strongholds and mountain fastnesses. Then again and again the robots went forth, until the continents were shattered deserts and the underground cities great smoking craters open to the sky.

While the Master's vengeance still flickered through the wastelands, his rebuilding had begun, and now he sat high and secure in his great Room of Power, that seemed to float as a miraculous campanulet of silver above the half mile peak of the Serene Tower. There was no sound in this room save the Master's breathing, but against its outer walls of glass lapped the purr and whisper and whine of millions of horsepower performing their appointed tasks. From the Southern Port came the drone of a great liner beating its way into the stratosphere, from where the thunder of its released rockets would come to him only as a faint orange streak is a dazzling sky. Through the air also came the hum of hovering taxicopters far below, the muted rumbling of the great moving streets and freightways and the mutter and crash and clang of building machines, all dying against this shell of glass. Through the mighty frame of the building itself quivered the vibrations of the giant factories, endlessly fabricating materials for more factories, more cities, more ships of the sky and sea, mere power and glory for the Master. But these vibrations, too, died in the protections of that tower top.

Here, the Master assured himself, he was safe, safe alike in his life and in his power. For here were the telepathic controls of the ingenious and terrible robots, that kept the world securely his. Here also were some of the robots themselves, resembling neither machines nor men as they waited in everlasting patience and vigilance for his activating thought. And lest some danger creep upon him unaware, there were the Guard, faithful in their unleashed cruelty and mindless worship; there were the ray screens and thought detectors; and primitive but reassuring, there was the electric lock upon the elevator that was the sole entrance to this room. Only the vibrations of hate beat in, beat past locks and screens and rays, beat through glass and steel and plastic, beat gently, tirelessly, like ripples on a rock.

Safe indeed was the Master, and powerful beyond all telling, but the Master was afraid.

On the Master's desk the visiscreen glowed softly into life, and from it his secretary spoke. "Technician Heidkamp, special director Capitol Mecho-lab 43, desires an audience in the Room of Power to demonstrate the Time Visor to your Excellency."

"Has it been inspected by the Director of Precautions?" The Master's fingers drummed nervously on his desk and he cast a sidelong glance behind him, although he knew that no human being could penetrate the Room of Power without his orders.

"No, your Excellency, it bears a waiver with your signature."

"No matter, have it inspected and report back at once."

The visiscreen faded into lifelessness, and the Master returned to his musing. "No one in all the history of the world has ever been so powerful as I," he muttered, and yet he knew that in his heart there was fear, a fear which he had not the courage to face.

Again the visiscreen glowed, this time with the image of the Director of Precautions, who reported, "I, Melsit, have inspected the Time Visor, Experimental Permit No. 445,826, and find it to contain no dangerous elements."

"It is well," said the Master, releasing the elevator lock, "Technician Heidkamp may bring it to my Presence, accompanied by two of the Guard. Remain in communication."

A bell rang softly as the elevator rose into view. Technician Heidkamp, a man whose gray, lined face and desolate eyes belied his middle-age, gave the salute, then entered wheeling before him a cabinet whose glass panels revealed an intricacy of tubes and wiring in interlacing spirals. Behind him came the giant Guards, watchful and impassive.

The Master watched, smiling secretly as he exulted in his power over Heidkamp. It was small pleasure to have the right of life and death over the workers who toiled in the depths of the city, but here was one of the great minds of all time, whom the Master could crush out of existence like an insect. The Master's eyes sparkled as he acknowledged the salute of the Technician.

From the top of the cabinet Heidkamp lifted the separate eyepiece, its control buttons showing white against the ruby case, and laid it on the Master's desk. Again he saluted.

"Your Excellency, a year ago you commanded me to construct a machine through which, for your amusement, you could view the past. Night and day I have labored, and now I offer to you the Time Visor through which you may view one small segment of the past--that time when the world, long tottering on the brink of disaster, spread too late the wings of war, and hurled itself to its long ruin. From this high place you may see the towers of Manhattan once more piled against the southern sky, in the midst of that vast ancient web of bridges, highways and villages, with its great harbor filled with the shipping that the War of the Wings has since destroyed. Look downward, and you may follow hour by hour the simple life of the old village of Nyack where our city now stands. Or you may carry it to the ends of the earth, and view the whole crowded world of those other days.

"The instrument is adjusted to your Excellency's eyes. The lower button regulates the magnification, now set at three diameters. Your Excellency, you have long possessed the present and the future. It is my honor now to offer you the past." Heidkamp paused, his face glowing with the impersonal exultation of the born scientist.

The Master lifted the instrument toward his eyes, and as he did so, saw on the southern horizon a small cloud, intensely black, and from some forgotten saying there flashed uneasily through his mind the phrase "no larger than a man's hand." But through the eye piece there was no cloud, but a dawn-cleared sky into which the haphazard towers of the now almost legendary Manhattan lifted their pinnacles, softened by plumes of drifting smoke and flattered by slanting bars of golden sunlight. Long the Master looked, and at length turned the visor directly downward, to look through half a mile of empty space at a village sprawled toylike on a green hill sloping upward from the river.

Interested in the town which had once occupied the land where the Serene Tower now soared aloft, the Master increased the magnification. He had a nightmare sensation of falling with rocket speed, snatched his eyes away, and saw that in the south the cloud towered over a third of the horizon, black and ominous. He barked to the watchful image in the visiscreen, "Tell those fools in the weather department to stop that storm!" and again looked down thru the visor. He seemed now to be a few feet above a green lawn fronting a trim white house, roofed with wooden shingles. On the gravel path stood a girl whose pure young beauty made him catch his breath. She threw back her golden hair and looked directly toward him, her blue eyes wide and fearless.

But suddenly the Master was jerked back to the present as the floor swayed beneath him, and a fearful crash of thunder entered his eyrie, where no outside sound had ever come unbidden. He looked up and saw the great cloud, now overhead, pouring forth torrents of rain which made the campanulet seem like a diving bell in a cataract. On the outer surface of the glass was an incessant race of lightning, flashing over the surface in zigzags and spirals, seeking angrily to penetrate the Room of Power. The visiscreen was blank and rimmed with fire, blue flames and crackling sparks flickered from the machines and the robots, and it seemed to the Master that at last his defenses had failed.

Now the secret fear which lay hidden at the Master's heart grew in power, and he shrank back into his chair, while the great Negro guards stood like statues of fear, their hair erect and snapping. The elements, then, were not wholly under control of the Master's mighty science! Nature had broken the chains with which he had thought to bind her. And if the weather control could fail, could not something go wrong, too, with all the Master's power and authority?

Heidkamp, immobile, watched the Master and seemed to guess at his thoughts. Only his eyes betrayed his exultation at the fury of the storm. Only a flicker of the lids, when he looked at the Master, shadowed forth a hatred of the man in whose war his only brother had fallen, the man who had negligently said to Heidkamp, "Well, give her to him, man! What's a brown-haired girl?" when the Master's current favorite had coveted Heidkamp's only daughter. The favorite was dead now, executed at one of the Master's whims, and the daughter too was dead, refusing to survive her shame and perishing by her own hand.