A NEW WORLD

THE man's name proved to be Rhuh, which, in accordance with the new system of naming men, gave his vocation, his race, his town and his standing in the community.

Rhuh took Zulerich to his home and gave him clothes. He was invited to dinner and, being very hungry and without an idea where else to obtain food, Zulerich accepted.

The meal was almost wholly of synthetic foods, manufactured, so Rhuh stated, from sunlight, gases and minerals, without recourse to the slow growth of plant life. There were also fresh figs from Smyrna, grapes from California and a new tartly flavored fruit from southern Texas. Zulerich had seen no railways or freight planes and expressed a wonder how these fruits had come so fresh from so long a distance. Rhuh explained all food and other freight was sent into the cities through great tubes where compressed air shot the containers along at the rate of hundreds of miles an hour.

"The cities are much overcrowded," Rhuh complained. "Men pile upon each other like bees in a swarm. There has been no war for two hundred years and no pestilence in more than half a century.

"There are no longer guns or spears or lethal weapons of any kind. There are not even sporting arms for there has been no wild game for generations. The few animals left are in zoos or laboratories. Meat as diet is looked at as barbaric."

Rhuh made a pellet of a waxlike substance and rolled it between his finger and thumb, then dropped it into a little bronze vessel where glowed a jet of purple flame. Immediately there came an aroma which filled the whole room. The smell was rather heady but pleasant.

"Carteesh," Rhuh explained. "It has become a national habit, much like cigar and cigarette smoking in other days."

"Rather nice-smelling stuff," Zulerich commented.

They sat breathing the peculiar incense, relaxed, day dreaming. Finally Zulerich asked, "Is the whole earth as overpopulated as this city seems to be?"

Rhuh drew himself from his fancies, snapped a switch and pointed toward what before had been a tall white wall. Now it seemed a large window, looking out upon an untamed jungle. He touched another switch and the jungle seemed to flow back like fields beyond the window of a railway coach. Zulerich leaped to his feet. It seemed the whole house was in motion, flowing over a tropical jungle. He sat down again, slightly embarrassed, smiled and watched.

"Television, I suppose," he commented.

Rhuh nodded and said, "The foibles of human nature have always puzzled me but here is one which exceeds all the rest for lack of explanation. Men are packed in our cities until the subways are cleared by oxygenized air and yet the most fertile and picturesque sections of our globe are totally uninhabited. "This would not seem queer were transportation a matter of discomfort. There is absolutely no reason why we should pack up in certain spots as though there were no standing room anywhere else.

"Yet ye do and were it not for our excellent medical service and our very efficient telecops we would be exterminated by our own gregariousness."

"But surely," Zulerich exclaimed, pointing to the intense tropical growth, "there are animals in these forests."

Rhuh twisted the little brass knob under his fingers. The forest seemed to rush closer until the long palmlike foliage spread thick and Jumbled before them. The tropics were there for all Zulerich could tell, dense, luxuriant and still.

He peered into the undergrowth and scrutinized the foliage and tree trunks, as they passed very slowly now. He could not find a bug, or a bird, an animal or a snake.

"Why?" he asked.

"It was not always that men were lazy as they are now. There was a time, nearly a century ago, when everyone, male and female, vied with others in activity of brain and body. At that time scientists had learned that disease was due almost entirely to parasitic life and parasitic life was fostered mainly by the lower animals. That was the age of gas.

"The age of electricity had just passed and men having exhausted its resources were turning to gas for study and accomplishment. New gases were found almost daily and new uses for gases. Gas carried men about, composed more than half their foods, heated them, cooled their cities and their foods, healed them, entertained them.

"Acting upon the common impulse to rid life of disease a great student of gas discovered tertopelium. It was brought from far above the earth by suction to the cylinders and forced into tanks by compression. It is still the lightest known gas, being found high above the earth's atmosphere.

"This student found that tertopelium would destroy all lower animal and microsopic life but would not harm man at all. I believe even as far back as the twentieth century of the old Julian calendar chemists had discovered powders that were poisonous to insects but entirely harmless to man.

"Not to bore you with details tertopelium was condensed and mixed with a heavier gas to give it weight. Then the entire surface of the earth was flooded with it from planes. Since that time there has been no parasitic or animal life in our forests.

"Tertopelium did a very efficient job. Whether nature will evolve the like again can not be proved or even guessed for a good many thousands of years."

WHILE the topic of conversation was life and death Zulerich asked Rhuh what ideas prevailed as to the ultimate future. It seemed that man had abandoned hope of eternal life upon this planet or any other, though the very fact that progress had always been toward perfection should have strengthened rather than weakened faith in future life. And because of this doubt as to life beyond the grave Rhuh was all the more eager to prove the hope Zulerich now dangled before him. But as Zulerich questioned and studied he was not so enthusiastic about his promise to give life to the people. He was a man of deep faith. He knew that faith had fostered and mothered every accomplishment and he doubted the wisdom of giving men eternal life when they had no faith and no vision. So he talked on, letting his mind run along one channel and his words another.

He told how he had discovered the secret of the mangled rat which had so upset him with the pain in its eyes, of the scientists who had studied him and of the sentiment which had buried him. And Rhuh in turn told of many new and incredible marvels which Zulerich had never thought to be possible. Rhuh finally seemed convinced that after all he was talking with a very old and very remarkable man and admitted that he really believed that Zulerich might have discovered the elixir of life. In those days there were so many new and wonderful things that men had long since ceased to hoot at anything. Zulerich commended the spirit of progress so evident all about but Rhuh did not seem to possess any of his enthusiasm.

"Yes," he admitted, "we have made incredible progress over the old age of invention of two hundred and more years ago. There is no need now that anyone should be in want or be denied the luxuries of life." But in the days that followed Zulerich found that the masses were in want. The Rulers had become insane with power, and ridden with a lust for accumulation of wealth. They took with a greedy hand for they no longer feared any uprising of the people or any embezzlement by employees. The telecops, which guarded their treasure and maintained their power, were strictly mechanical and operated by a secret code that was known only to the owners. Political and social relations had in no wise kept pace with the progress of mechanical invention.

All advancement had been material. Politicians openly abused their government. Humility, charity, idealism, self-sacrifice—these were traits unknown. Love had a new definition and the new life beneath its mechanical perfection was a hollow thing.

So Zulerich told Rhuh finally that he would not give the secret of life to the people or to any one until some semblance of justice was done, man to man.

Rhuh stared at him for a moment with the corners of his mouth drawn awry. Then he grasped his guest's arm and snarled, "Old man, you make good. If you've been lying to me, dangling a hope before me that is a hoax, if—" His lips twitched and jerked but no sound passed them for awhile. He was too angry and disappointed to complete his threat. Instead he jabbed at a button beside the table. There came a hum above the house. A big plane dropped past the window. Zulerich looked out as it landed, light as a bird upon a twig. Its door opened. Three grotesque imitations of men got out. They were giant fellows. They must have been ten feet tall with angular arms as thick as a man's thigh, legs in proportion with the arms. They walked forward with a stiff mechanical lockstep. They reached the door, wheeled in perfect unison and came tramping in, bowing their heads to clear the doors. The whole inside of the house reverberated with the pulse of their measured tread. They filed in and Zulerich shrank involuntarily from them as they marched to where he sat. Their heads were not round but boxlike and to make them more horrible they were fitted with great glass eyes which stared at one with wide greenish pupils as though they were dead. Of course they could not see for they were not live things, just mechanical police, but Zulerich learned later that they sensed a man or an object by the shadow thrown upon their eyes.

This operated an electrical device which guided them. In the back of each steel body was a hinged door, which looked to be a way of entering the mechanical chamber to mend any defects. One of the telecops stood back at the door. The other two advanced and Zulerich sat as stiffly as if he were back in his glass case, wondering what they were about to do to him. Long stiff arms reached out with jerky moves and seized him with hard iron fingers.

"We arrest you in the name of the Rulers. Come!"

ZULERICH had thought the silent oncoming telecops were terrible enough but the mechanical voice had an impersonal tone which gave him a feeling of the utter futility of protesting or begging for consideration. He abandoned hope and made no resistance. He knew any protest or defense would be useless. He rose and followed the man who had seized his arms, running to keep up, but in spite of all he could do he could not hold pace with the long legs of the mechanical giant and was dragged towards the plane. He passed Rhuh at the door. There was neither pity nor leniency in the glare Rhuh gave him. He was taken out and placed in the rear cab of the large plane. It was indeed a large plane in comparison with the small ones which flew all about. Under its wings and upon its fuselage was the triangular insigne of the police.

They rose into the air. Through the glass of the cab he could see a real man at the wheel. The three telecops rode in the rear cab with him.

A thousand feet above the city their course was set toward the east. They traveled all day and shortly before dark they came to a very large city, which was the capital of the world. There he was placed in prison. The prison showed none of the advancement of the day, for the Rulers had little or no consideration for those who fell into their hands. The next day he was brought to trial. Rhuh appeared against him, testifying that Zulerich had told him of a secret elixir of eternal life and had promised it to him for a suit of clothes and that Zulerich had taken the clothes but had not disclosed the secret.

The Judge of the court was indignant that such a case should be brought before him. He dismissed Zulerich and lectured Rhuh for believing in such foolishness. But later in the night the Judge sought out Zulerich and talked with him and tried to bargain for a portion of the pale green drops. Zulerich was amazed at the cringing attitude of the Judge and said, "You ridicule me in your Court, yet you seek me in the night. Judges of even my day would not be so bold as this." So he refused to bargain with him and was called before a council of the high Rulers. They made much over him at first, inviting him to the palace as though he were a guest. They engaged him with sly questions and finally prepared a feast for him. Every one of the Council of Ten was there. He was a little awed as he ate and drank with them for Zulerich had always been an humble man, investigating for the sake of truth and not coveting honor.

When the feast was over every man sat a while in silence and watched him closely. Zulerich felt somewhat uncomfortable under their scrutiny and sat in silence, wondering just what their gravity could mean.

One of them finally asked, "Has there been time?"

A short dark man with a Vandyke, who had watched Zulerich even more closely and more carefully than the rest of them, nodded soberly.

Then he turned to those about the table and said, "There is something strange about this man Zulerich. He drank the poison. Each of you saw me pour it into his glass. Yet he seems entirely unharmed!"

"Do you think he is as he claims?" the Chairman asked.

"I do not know," the Vandyke answered, shaking his knotty head. "By all the laws of nature this man should be dead, yet he lives!"

Zulerich grew bolder then. They had tested the truth of his claim and were about convinced.

"I have the secret of eternal life," he vowed, "and I am one who loves his fellow man. When you shall do justice and be content one man to rule himself rather than another I will give it freely to you and to all the people."

They laughed at his speech, calling him sentimental and impractical. And when their ridicule had no effect they began to bargain with him for the secret.

But Zulerich in turn laughed at them, deriding them for offering so little for so great a thing as the secret of immortality.

FINDING they had made no headway they reduced their demands to one portion for each of the rulers but Zulerich shook his grizzled old head and muttered, "You are not fit for eternal life."

"We are nearly perfect," the Chairman insisted. "We lack but this one thing. We have subdued the earth. We have mastered all natural law except this law of life and death. Men and all of nature serve us.

"We will give you a place in our authority, allow you to share equally in our power, though we have bought this good thing with daring and danger and you have risked nothing at all. Give us so that we may live always and we will give you power over the earth."

Still Zulerich shook his head and speaking to the Chairman of the Council he said sternly:

"Your lack is greater than any of you know."

The trace of a fine sneer touched the Chairman's lips and he asked, "What is it, old man, that we lack except this secret of life and death? Tell us."

"Imagination," Zulerich said slowly, dwelling upon each syllable. "You cannot think beyond your own selves!"