CHAPTER 7

Mira Sandos

Not for an instant did Jeffrey reveal the fact that he had been fooled—for that was how he looked upon his association with Tanya Zharkov of Russia. Such was the measure of his bitterness he hardly gave her a thought once the funeral, in full state panoply, was over. The only remembrance of her lay in the amazing conceptions she had put forth—such as the space stations. But one man outside Jeffrey knew the truth and he was not slow to reveal the fact.

About a fortnight after the funeral, during the period when Jeffrey was trying to decide how to map out his future, Dr. Mathison, now the head scientist of London, was shown into the office.

“Well, Mathison?” Jeffrey asked, indicating a seat. “What is on your mind?”

“Mr. Collins,” Mathison said, “I’m here to ask you to call off this plan of your late wife’s. I have never approved of it, as I said at first. I still say it’s plain massacre.”

Jeffrey was silent. He had been trying for some time to make up his mind about the space stations.

“I know your wife was back of the idea,” Mathison went on, “but with her influence gone maybe you’ve changed your mind.”

“Why should I?”

“Because your wife had no reason to have an underlying kinship with the rest of our people. She was a foreign spy—a Russian.”

Jeffrey stared in wonder. “Who told you?”

“Nobody—though I am glad to have such ready verification. I went into the history of Virginia Fayne when I discovered that your wife had superlative scientific skill and uncommon ruthlessness. Records show that the real Virginia Fayne made many test flights, one of them carrying her over Russia, where she was shot down and crashed. Her subsequent escape from that country and finding her way back to the West was attributed at the time to her remarkable resourcefulness. I also found that the original Virginia was noted for her generosity, most of her hard-earned money being given away to those more in need of it than she was. This did not tie up with the Virginia Fayne you married. I jumped the gap in my speculations when I realized how it was possible for the Russians to have made a switch. Somehow, a Russian calling herself Virginia Fayne had penetrated our government and scientific establishments, and you had become her husband.”

“Yes.” Jeffrey’s voice was listless. “I haven’t made the information public and I rely on you to respect my confidence.”

“Upon one condition,” Mathison responded.

“Damn your conditions!” Jeffrey retorted. “If it comes out that I married a Russian spy there’s nothing anybody can do about it.”

“The public,” Mathison said, “will call it an unholy alliance when it becomes known that it was your wife’s idea to have the space stations built so that they can threaten every country but this one. Whatever you may say, Mr. Collins, your unfortunate marriage to a foreign spy can have tremendous repercussions. On the other hand, a good speaker could make you sound like a martyr.”

“I assume you wish to do the talking?”

“I will do so willingly—if you have the space stations modified and use them as communication relays or fuelling and observation posts only. Have the dangerous parts removed. I am referring to the lenses, which have every country up in arms.”

For Jeffrey everything seemed to explode at that moment. Still smarting from the deception ‘Virginia Fayne’ had played upon him, the death of his child, and now another Saunders-like blackmail from Mathison to try and make him change his course—

“No!” Jeffrey declared flatly, jumping up and slamming his fist on the desk. “If I keep pandering to every blackmailer who comes into this office I’ll never get what I want—world domination.”

Mathison got to his feet, his face grim, and without another word he left the office. Immediately Jeffrey switched on the private circuit of the interphone.

“Forbes?” he asked briefly. “Dr. Mathison is making himself a nuisance. See that he doesn’t get too far.”

“Very well, Mr. Collins.”

For Jeffrey a new way of life had begun at that moment. He had reached a mutational point in his career as a near-eternal man. The last vestiges of normal humanity had been pretty well blasted from him by his wife’s deception and Mathison’s attempt to make him call off his intended march to power, not to mention the medical curse stopping him from having any progeny. He felt he had been the victim of a vast deception and he blamed all humanity for it.

“Get me the chief engineer of the space stations,” he ordered, snapping another button of his switchboard, and in a moment the chief engineer came through, contacted by short wave at his headquarters in outer space.

“Yes, Mr. Collins?”

“If you need to use the space stations within twenty-four hours for the purposes of the master-plan we arranged, can you do it?”

Brief pause, then: “I think so, sir, though I had rather hoped you would reconsider your—”

“Your personal hopes are of no interest, chief. Just do as you’re told. Instruct all staff to stand by for further orders.”

“Very well, sir.”

Jeffrey switched over into the general microphone and said curtly, “Clear all waves. I have a world announcement to make.”

In another ten minutes he made it, his transmission station swamping all normal broadcasting bands so that everybody, everywhere, was forced to hear him. He left no doubt of what he intended. Control was to be handed over to him, otherwise the space stations would go into action, their dangerous powers already known to the scientists of every land. He gave no more than three hours for a decision to be made, and in that time the world became very much like an overturned anthill.

Government heads refused to heed such an impertinent demand, so the scientists stepped in with a warning of what was to come. Accordingly humanity scurried for shelter, most of it underground, already prepared by those governments who had foreseen that another, perhaps final war of the most terrifying kind was inevitable.

Dr. Mathison heard the broadcast whilst in his car on the Seventh Traffic Level, and he considered it his duty to rally the populace of London against Jeffrey. But for some reason, which the enigmatic Forbes and his agents could have explained, the power in Dr. Mathison’s car failed at a critical moment. In consequence it sailed over the edge of the Seventh Level with the scientist in it and crashed to the metal street three hundred feet below.

For Jeffrey, the three hours passed without any communication, which only served to infuriate him all the more. It took him all his time to keep his patience until the stipulated period had run out, but the instant it had he gave the order to the chief engineer out in space—and that commenced the most one-sided, brutal attack on undefended countries in the history of the world.

From the sky, striking down even through clouds, there descended the incinerating beams of the sun itself, brought into fine focus. Stone and metal melted into liquid under the inconceivable heat and wherever a luckless human chanced to be caught he or she vanished like a moth in a carbon arc... This could in no sense be called war. It had the incarnate fiendishness of super-science behind it. Jeffrey himself no longer cared what happened as long as he achieved his objective—which he did in a remarkably short space of time.

No air force commander could ask his men to fight a thing like this. No plane could grapple with it, and to blast Britain with H-bombs in reprisal, dropped from planes, would not stop the merciless rays probing from outer space. There was only one thing to do—capitulate, unconditionally. And so, by a monstrous irony, Jeffrey Collins became master of the world on Christmas Day, 3034.

Absolutely alone in his power—for even those who served him secretly hated him—he began in 2035 to lay his plans for the development of the world under his rule for thousands of years to come. He knew he could constantly tighten his hold, for as the existing generation died out the new one could be forced from birth to pay respectful homage to him. He was determined that it should. He had become an egomaniac, lost to everything except the acquisition of more power. He was an immeasurably powerful man, and without a friend.

Years fled by. Because he knew the people hated him he tightened up the rules and regulations day by day until his iron control was absolute around the world. And even here he could not rest.

His eyes began to look beyond the circle of inner worlds—all of them now colonized—to the ponderous giants beyond the Asteroid Belt.

Such was his mistake. He never looked on the ground, on the world from which he ruled. He never noticed the gathering hatred of the people for his domination. Yet at the moment revolt was impossible for a number of men and women were wholeheartedly behind Jeffrey, chiefly because they had powerful positions and wealth. These were the Faithful, and they saw to it that the masses were quelled on every planet.

2055 moved on to 2065 and in that time Jeffrey had almost forgotten ‘Virginia Fayne,’ or at least the hurt was not as intense as it had been. He still wanted a successor to his power, and so he had instructed medical scientists to find a cure for the development of the Scourge in his children. But so far he had not met a woman who appealed to his utterly unsentimental nature.

The ten years had also been filled with considerable scientific achievements. In consequence Earth now possessed many new amenities—weather control, cold light, and pure synthesis of matter, to mention only a few things. The space stations that had brought the world to its knees were used as deterrents to revolutionaries, and also for thawing out the frozen regions of Earth. By the year 3005 the. Arctic and Antarctic regions literally ‘blossomed as the rose.’

Gradually, as he consolidated his power over the colonized planets, the outer worlds still remaining to be conquered, Jeffrey forced the populations of Earth, Venus, and Mars into the category of slaves. They worked for the expansion of Jeffrey Collins’s dominion. With every year he became more versed in scientific things, and with every year he became more lonely. The men and women who worked around him were becoming older all the time, yet he remained at the apparent age of the mid-thirties, only his grey hair and a heavily lined face making him seem a good deal older.

In twenty more years, the year 2085, all the faces of his original supporters had vanished and younger ones had taken their place. They too seemed to rapidly grow old and left Jeffrey pondering on the evanescence of man’s span upon the Earth. Yet, deep down, he envied them. But for one thing he could even have wished to follow them into extinction, and that one thing was a beacon still thousands of years ahead …Mira Sandos!

In the year 2095 he launched his invasion towards the outer planets and for nearly ten years his legions of explorers were kept busy constructing habitable domes on the larger of the frozen satellites of Jupiter. Though the isolated colonists were not very useful from a slave point of view, their mining operations certainly were, since the moons were rich in minerals practically non-existent on Earth. With these minerals the power of weapons could be greatly increased and so the onward sweep could go on—and on.

To what end? Jeffrey did not know. He only realized that he must accomplish and never remain still. The years between had to be endured somehow until he arrived at the period where Mira Sandos came into the scheme of things.

In 4005, a thousand years after the colonization of Jupiter’s moons, Jeffrey still looked the same man, except that in his eyes there was unutterable boredom. Everything he had ever known in relation to his own time had vanished. The city of London covered nearly all England and was the ruling city of the world, and indeed the whole Solar System. New generations that had sprung up had never known anything else but subservience to the inconceivably wealthy man whose power was such that none dared speak against him.

Jeffrey knew something else now, too. He felt he had reached a milestone in his weird destiny. For his now vast grasp of things scientific and the accumulated wisdom of the years had earned him a single title…the Mind.

* * * *

To Jeffrey himself the extent of Time seemed frightening, yet his fear that another man might oust him was so intense he never made any other man eternal in order to have a companion. Ever and again a woman drifted into his orbit. If he liked her sufficiently his eminence was such that marriage was more or less compulsory, but every time the fates cheated him. Advances in medical science had led to a cure to prevent the Scourge from developing in his unborn children, but there was still a price. He never had a male successor, and he watched daughters grow and flourish around him, proud of their relationship to the master of the world and the System, for by this time all the planets were ruled by the Mind, and he had his eyes on the greater deeps, those vast unexplored areas beyond the First Galaxy where no space explorer had ever dared to venture.

In the year 6005 the aspect of the world was very much as Jeffrey had seen it in his fantastic time-flight from 2012. He had 907 years still to live before he came to the period when he must meet Mira Sandos, always providing that he would be the Mind at that period. Certainly he could not see how anybody else could assume his mantle.

As the years went by he now and again made medical tests of himself, but there was no sign yet of the age-neutraliser beginning to lose its efficiency. In some ways he was sorry; in others glad.

The 907 years seemed a trifle after the thousands he had already endured. He had arrived at the year 6975 with only 37 years to go before he crossed the point in Time he had once visited. He began to hear of certain familiar people and places. Arlin Jag, an up-and-coming lawyer for instance. Across the mighty street from his headquarters there stood the Temple of Justice, and not far away the Hall of Records. Yes, everything was fitting into place.

He knew something now, also, which had puzzled him thousands of years before—the reason why people had stared at him on that day when he had come out of Time. He must have looked exactly like the Mind, only younger. The bewilderment and sudden retreat from him was no longer a mystery.

That 37 years became 27 and Jeffrey became aware of a great impending change in himself. Analytical tests revealed that ketabolism was returning to him. Cells were commencing to break down. The first signs of his vast age were appearing.

He wondered if his prolonged extension of life would cause him to suddenly collapse, or whether it would be a slow, anguishing process towards inevitable doom. For a time he was alarmed that he might die before meeting Mira Sandos, then he realized this could not be because Time had already shown that she was alive when he was. Providing—always providing—that he was the Mind before whom she had been—and would be—brought. So he lived on through the dwindling years and watched himself losing his grip on eternity. He was so preoccupied with himself that he failed to notice certain changes amongst the people, until—when 27 more years had passed—he was visited by the Controller for London.

“I have to have your instructions, Supreme One,” the Controller said. “For the first time in your wise rule there are signs of revolution.”

“There are always signs of revolution,” answered the grey-haired, grey-faced man at the desk.

“True. Supreme One, but none so evident as these. I have investigated, and it seems that for some years now everything has been deliberately organised to overthrow you. The masses are weary of your domination and wish to exert their own individualities. They do not believe that, because you are eternal, they should work only for the extension of your power.”

“Behind such a movement there must be a master mind,” Jeffrey said deliberately. “Have you traced such a person?”

“Yes, Supreme One. Surprisingly, it is a woman. Gifted, intelligent, and descended from a race of scientists. I think she is a real danger.”

“And her name is Mira Sandos?” Jeffrey asked, with a glance at the calendar.

The Controller bowed. “The Supreme One knows all things.”

“Arrest her on a charge of treason,” Jeffrey ordered. “I will question her in the Temple of Justice.”

“So be it, Supreme One.”

Jeffrey watched the Controller depart and then he frowned to himself. He had not really intended to order an arrest: it had almost been said for him. Time had already written what must happen and nothing of his devising could alter it.

And so he came to the day and the hour when he took his seat amongst the Elders of the Ruling Clique and gazed about him on the serried rows assembled in the Temple of Justice. It gave him a queer feeling to think that beyond a shadowed alcove to his right he ought to be a lurking visitor out of Time, just beyond seeing himself across the barrier of years. Or was Nature so interwoven into a mathematical puzzle that her laws denied the possibility of two men seeing each other as one man for even an instant?

Jeffrey did not know. Here he was up against the unknown factor in the Time problem. Instead he turned his attention to the woman being led into view by the guards.

Yes, it was she! Lightly clad, her hair the colour of rich copper, her features emphasizing perfection. From his high perch Jeffrey drank in her beauty. It had been worth living the thousands of years to have such a woman completely in his power. By union with her he might at last find the successor he so desperately craved.

“Mira Sandos...” Jeffrey began speaking. “You stand accused before your ruler and his dignitaries of high treason. What have you to say?”

There was silence for a moment and Jeffrey remembered that when he had come out of Time he had heard Mira Sandos just commencing to answer the charge when he had slipped out of the Temple. Now perhaps he would hear what she really had said.

“I have this to say, Supreme One. I admit my guilt in every particular and do not regret one single action that I have performed in my endeavours to release the people from your inhuman bondage. For thousands of years you have held the men and women of this planet and the neighbour worlds in subjection to your own senseless greed. That I have failed in my efforts and will die because of it is of no consequence because I have sown the seeds of a revolution which in a few years will level you in the dust.”

As the girl finished speaking there was a murmuring amongst the people and the dignitaries looked at each other in amazement. Never in the history of the Temple of Justice had any prisoner dared to be so outspoken. Jeffrey himself did not say anything. He was peering across the great space, wondering what colour the girl’s eyes were. He was in a particularly difficult position. The desperate love he had for the girl, a love that had hurled him across the ages, was such that he dare not now mention it. If he did his impartial position as ruler would be gone forever.

A dignitary on his right nudged him. “The Court grows restive, Supreme One. It is for you to speak and condemn this creature. She has dared to plot against you, and admits it openly.”

“Yes... Yes, of course.” Jeffrey straightened up. “Mira Sandos, in view of the extraordinary statement you have just made I do not feel, in the interests of justice, that I can pass sentence immediately. I would prefer to speak to you in my own chamber. Remove—”

“You can’t do that!” whispered the man on the right.

Jeffrey glared. “You dare question my authority?”

“That, Supreme One, has nothing to do with it. Though you are the ruler we are responsible for the decisions that are taken. You cannot hold that against me since you made the order yourself.”

Jeffrey compressed his lips and looked down again towards Mira Sandos. She was gazing at him steadily, the absolute perfection of young womanhood, defiance in every line of her superb figure.

“Speak! Condemn her!” breathed the man on the left.

“And quickly!” added the man on the right—for never before had the Supreme One taken so long to make a decision, and never before had a prisoner been so palpably guilty.

“I refuse to condemn this woman,” Jeffrey said suddenly, leaping to his feet. “I am the law: I rule every world in the Solar System, and I shall always make the decisions. I repeat my statement: I shall not condemn this woman!”

Aghast silence; then from one of the dignitaries: “Why?”

“Because she is right! For untold centuries I have held men and women in subjection. I have been afraid to lose my power. I have been afraid of everything—even of myself! But there must come a time when the breaking point is reached, and that time is now. For thousands of years I have carried the colossal responsibility of ruler, with only one aim—that I might live long enough, and be powerful enough, to come face to face with the one living being strong enough to defy me! That being is Mira Sandos! For the rest of you I have nothing but the utmost contempt. I have crushed you with superlative ease—but here in this woman, still so young, there is a defiance that restores my faith in mankind. She has shown that the spirit of freedom still exists, and is prepared to die for it. For that I refuse to condemn her... Give this woman her freedom!”

“What!” shrieked the man on the right, livid. “Supreme One, you cannot possibly—”

“Give her freedom!” Jeffrey shouted.

The guards did not move. The man on the left jumped up, his position secure only as long as the Supreme One ran true to type. But now he had stepped out of line.

“If this woman goes free she will destroy all that you have built up!” he cried. “The masses will take control. They will put Mira Sandos at the head and you, all of us, will be swept out of existence.”

“In the destiny of a living race change is essential,” Jeffrey retorted. “I refuse to pass sentence on this woman. Do as you will.”

He turned away angrily and strode from the midst of his astounded contemporaries. Blurred with fury and inexplicable emotions he reached his private chamber off the main corridor and went within, slamming the door on the sound of confused murmuring that followed him from the Temple’s main hall.

Going to the window he sat down heavily and dropped his head onto his hands. He had no idea how long he sat there, fighting with himself, but presently he was stirred to alertness again by the click of the door latch.

He turned sharply as the door closed. Mira Sandos was standing there, the chains removed from her wrists, her clear blue eyes looking at him fixedly.

“Mira Sandos,” he whispered, getting to his feet. “Then they obeyed the order and released you?”

She shook her head and the light caught the copper waves in her hair. Coming forward she studied Jeffrey intently.

“Your contemporaries did their best to have me returned to the cells for the death sentence,” she responded, “but the assembled people would not allow it. It was they who released me—the great masses who are behind me. They destroyed your contemporaries, but they will not destroy you. My people are just. They will remember that you refused to condemn me. But of course they will also remember the thousands of years you have exercised a merciless domination.”

Jeffrey did not speak. He was drinking in the beauty of the girl. First it had been a vision seen across Time, the merest glimpse, which had impelled him upon his fantastic course. Yet it had been worth it. She was lovely, soft-spoken, with gentleness in every movement.

“I know why you released me,” she said.

“That is not possible, Mira Sandos. You have not the power to read thoughts, any more than I have, though I do claim to be above the normal person.”

“You are not above the normal, because you are capable of falling in love. You fell in love with me thousands of years ago when a machine crossed Time, and for that you have flogged yourself through the centuries, stamped upon human beings, conquered worlds—all with the intention of giving them to me. In that you are no different from thousands of other men who are willing to give their all to gain the woman they desire.”

Jeffrey could not resist the impulse to grip the girl’s shoulders, and she made no attempt to draw away.

“How do you know?” he asked slowly. “How can you know?”

“Because I can read thoughts. You have forgotten one thing, Supreme One. In thousands of years of evolution human beings develop their brains. In your day, the Twenty First Century, telepathy was an art that was just being discovered. You have not developed it because you have not evolved naturally: you have merely prolonged your original state. With other human beings, born and developing in the ordinary way, coupled with interplanetary travel and the free radiations of space causing mutations, evolution has followed normal lines. Natural telepathic power is possessed by many, and I am one of them. I know everything about you. Everything.”

“Which means,” Jeffrey said slowly, dropping his hands from her shoulders, “that you are greater than I am.”

“Yes,” she agreed simply.

Jeffrey moved to the window again and looked out upon the city. He felt indescribably tired. Old.

“For this I have crossed thousands of years,” he muttered. “I never realized that development would go on and that it is I who have been standing still. I am still back in 2012 but have acquired a lot of knowledge. Others have evolved thousands of years ahead. A grim, strange odyssey. Mira Sandos.”

“Your one desire has been to marry me in the hope that there might be a successor to your domination.” The girl’s voice was still quiet. “That cannot be because your domination ended when you refused to condemn me. I have stepped into your place. I am the successor!”

Jeffrey turned slowly, amazement in his eyes. “Why—of course you are! A successor, yet without any union between us. What kind of a Fate is it that permits a man to come within grasping distance of the one thing he wants only to lose it?”

“Have you asked yourself if you are worthy of reward?” the girl queried. “The years are strewn with the dead sacrificed to your ambition. You cannot expect to have the one thing you want with a past like yours.”

Jeffrey sighed. If only he did not feel so incredibly tired!

“I have found you, and lost you,” he said. “Out of the fact that you are my successor I can perhaps extract some consolation, bitter though it is. Positions are reversed. It is no longer for me to say what shall be done to you, but for you to say what shall be done to me.”

“I have no need to pass judgment,” Mira Sandos replied. “Nature is doing it for you at this moment. Look at yourself, Supreme One.”

She turned to the wall mirror, unhooked it, and handed it over. Jeffrey looked at his face in horrified wonder. It was grey as putty, and in it were traced a myriad lines growing gradually deeper. The thousands of years were commencing to make themselves noticeable as ketabolism returned to him like a consuming flame.

Mira Sandos looked upon the unguessably old man and smiled in sympathy.

“Poor Jeffrey Collins!” She shook her head. “You planned for so much and gained so little. Greatness does not come from ruthless persistency, but from gentleness and gratitude. That I have learned. And upon those lines I shall try and model this mighty civilization which you have built up.”

Jeffrey could not answer. Age, relentless, was streaming through him. The anteroom was blurring…

Mira Sandos stood motionless, erect as a queen in the golden gossamer garment she wore. In silent pity she surveyed the man upon whom clothes now clung in bagging folds, from whom the hair had gone to leave a wrinkled bald pate. His hands changed to claws, his mouth became toothless.

And the returned power of ketabolism and the restoration of the power of nature did not end there. He shrank. He became more wizened. He was not nothing but lines, creases and folds. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand years… An outraged nature was taking revenge.

At last the process was finished. Mira Sandos stirred a little and looked at the clothes lying on the floor. She sighed and the faint, pitying smile returned to her lips. Then she crossed to the huge window and opened it, to the sound of cheering in the streets below. She went out onto the balcony and raised her rounded arms in adulation.

“Mira Sandos!” came a mighty roar from the great assembly. “Mira Sandos…”

She threw kisses and behind her a brown dust stirred in the gentle wind.

* * * *

Mira Sandos faded out of Jeffrey’s dimming vision and, for some reason, she looked suddenly like Betty. Surely it was Betty with her dark hair and round, comfort-loving face.

“I said you can buy another car and have plenty left over,” Betty said. “Takes you long enough to answer, doesn’t it?”

Jeffrey gave a little start and then shook himself. He got to his feet.

“Sorry, Bet. Just doing a bit of thinking—sort of lost myself.”

“Thinking? About what?”

“Whittaker chiefly. I covered quite a lot of ground in those few moments.”

“No use thinking about him, is it? When he paid his cheque you kissed goodbye to everything connected with that car of yours. Or are you wondering about that man you picked up? The one whom you say vanished?”

“I’m wondering about lots of things,” Jeffrey replied absently. “I’m wondering about time and space, destiny and prediction. I begin to think I’ve had a glimpse of the future. Some people do now and again, you know.”

“Glimpse of the future? Go on with you!”

“I’m going to put it to the test,” Jeffrey decided. “Not just at present, but in about a fortnight’s time. I intend to call on Dr. Whittaker, and if his opening words are what I think they’ll be I’ll know then that the fates have given me a chance to see future events.”

Betty’s expression was one that came very close to contempt; but nevertheless Jeffrey put his intention into effect and, a fortnight later, duly called on Whittaker.

“Come into the laboratory,” Whittaker invited. “I’m busy.”

Jeffrey knew then. Whatever he did, no matter what struggle he made, he could not alter in the slightest degree the path he must now take. In his mind he had seen it all happen, and inevitably it must come to pass.