H G Wells Omnibus, page 307
It came to him abruptly one night that he didn’t care a damn now if nothing was done. The affair had evaporated. If nobody cared to stir a finger, the whole silly business might slide. The Martians might eat the world now so far as he was concerned. It would last his time—anyhow. What was the sense of being the one earnest energetic man in a world of unresponsive fools?
He called Cotton-Jones into his presence. ‘You’ve been going too strong on this Martian stuff,’ he said, and Cotton-Jones knew at once that the brainstorm was over. ‘You’ve made it a bit too loud and brassy. The public doesn’t want to hear about them in this serious way you’ve been putting it. They want it guyed. What the public won’t hear about can’t exist really. Circulation dies down and then where are you? Ease off on it. Guy it.’
‘After all we have said!’ reflected Cotton-Jones.
‘Ease off on it. Make it kind of semi-symbolical—humorous and all that.’
‘I get you,’ said Cotton-Jones, trying not to look too glad. ‘I think I can manage to ease it off. Yes, it’s a damned good political nickname, Chief, whatever you like to say. You’ve never thought of anything better. Give “Highbrow” and “Brain Trust” a holiday for the next ten years. Let the Reds fade out. Martians! People will hate them from the word Go!’
4.
Mr. Joseph Davis stood at the upper corner of Trafalgar Square watching the westward flow of buses below. A number of them were carrying huge starry advertisement boards with a new inscription. He could make out three capital M’s but he had to look hard before he could read the intervening letters. They spelled out ‘Musical Martian Midgets.’
‘That’s how they see it,’ said Mr. Davis. ‘H’m.’
His eyes were lifted sharply by a challenging flash across the twilight blue. A sky sign took up the words in letters of raw red fire, ‘Musical Martian Midgets’… .
‘And all the same,’ whispered Mr. Davis after some moments of silent reflection, ‘they are here.’
Chapter 8
How These Star-Begotten People May Presently Get Together
1.
‘So your Martians are coming after all, Davis,’ said Dr. Holdman Stedding.
‘I’ve given you my facts,’ said Mr. Davis, ‘a new sort of human being is appearing. Of that I am convinced… . I never said they were Martians.’
‘The name’s got into the story. And after all, you know—they may be.’
‘Why not the star-men?’ said Keppel. ‘Homosideralis? How would one say Star-Begotten as a specific adjective?’
‘One name seems to be as good as another,’ said Davis, affecting indifference. ‘Until we know better what they are, why trouble about the name? Let us stick to Martians.’
‘The newspapers have no doubt about it. Either there are Martians, they insist, or there is nothing.’
Davis shrugged his shoulders.
‘On the whole I wish this hadn’t leaked out to the press,’ said Keppel, crouching upon his arms over his mahogany and looking malignantly intelligent. ‘Marvellous how the press can make almost anything—unbelievable. What has the press made of it? First this Thunderclap boom. Then general derison. Then general disregard. Nothing stales so rapidly as a new popular idea. What have we now? General indifference. A few pathetic believers run about, half ashamed of themselves, and assert their faith by starting silly-looking little special periodicals and societies. I am told there are at least two pro-Martian societies in London, and three against. The people who produce that pink-covered journal called Welcome seem to be the chief. In America there are quite a lot of associations, I’m told, but all small. Most of them have a tendency to amalgamate with occultists and mix up Mars with Tibet. Then a new type of delusional insanity has appeared. God Almighty, it seems, is out of fashion among our lunatics. They are all Martians nowadays and most of them are Kings or Emperors of Mars. What else has come out of your great disclosure? Ourselves—we toughs, who knew all along just how much there was in it, and were too wise to shout.’
He looked sideways at Davis from under his overhanging brow.
‘You believe really—?’ asked Davis.
Keppel would neither assent nor deny.
‘No one would believe what we in our bones feel to be the reality. We’re not quite sure—but we feel it. We’re not quite definite but a reality is there. It is unbelievable. So why incur suspicion and contempt by talking about it? Nothing is to be done. We cannot control what is happening. We cannot avert it. Here they come. Here we are.’
‘I want to talk about it,’ said Keppel. ‘I want badly to talk about it.’
‘I find myself thinking about it a lot,’ said Dr. Holdman Stedding.
‘I think now of nothing else,’ said Davis.
It seemed to him that Keppel had got this Martian fever now almost as badly as himself. That grotesque, distorted dark face was flushed, and every gesture suggested the repression of a profound excitement But Keppel’s resolve to control the stir in his imagination and to keep things as matter-of-fact as possible was very evident.
The three men were dining at Keppel’s house for the express purpose of receiving and discussing the first results of Davis’s investigations.
‘Let’s see how far we have got,’ said Keppel. ‘Let us try to disentangle as far as we can the pure guess-fantasy of an extra-terrestrial intervention, from the established realities that Davis has been elucidating. A new sort of mind is coming into the world, with a new, simpler, clearer, and more powerful way of thinking. That I think is manifest. It has already got into operation individually here and there and produced a sort of disorder of innovation in human affairs. But so far these new minds haven’t got together for any sort of associated living. So far. They are hardly aware of themselves, much less of each other. They are scattered about anyhow. All that, I think, seems to be established?’
Mr. Davis nodded assent.
These new types have made their presence felt, as yet, chiefly through discoveries in material science and mechanical invention. At this present stage they are too scattered and isolated for novel social inventions. That sort of thing requires extensive co-operations. It is on a different plane. These newcomers are dispersed; they are not appearing in bunches; they do not even know that they are a peculiar people; each one of them has been deeply embedded, so to speak, in the circumstances of his or her own birth. From birth they have all been presented with established views of the world and compelled to adjust their social behaviour to established institutions. Many no doubt have been completely baffled by the dogmatic unreason of the normal human arrangements in which they found themselves set. In—what shall I say?—in human affairs, they’ve never had a chance so far. But in regard to things, bits of glass, scraps of metal, springs and balances, they have not been encumbered to the same extent. There they have been able to think freely almost from the outset.
‘That has been the opening phase. Nobody has ever tried to explain the immense advance in scientific knowledge in the past century and a half—but this does explain it. There has been a great outbreak of precise mechanical discovery and invention. That meant—that means—a necessary discordance in human affairs—scattered inventions everywhere, a great forward drive, a revolutionary drive in mechanical science and a relative lag in social understanding. There is an almost complete inability to make new ideas in the latter field real. That is a tougher proposition altogether. I think it is easy to explain why that should be so. But there is the reason why every one nowadays is contrasting our material progress with what is called—how do the bishops put it?—our ethical and social backwardness. A temporary phase.’
‘But a damned unpleasant one,’ said Dr. Holdman Stedding. ‘When the superman makes an aeroplane and the ape gets hold of it.’
‘Nevertheless—a temporary phase,’ continued Keppel, holding to his argument with resolute tenacity. ‘Because, as I say, to begin with, these Martians have been rare and scattered. But as they become more numerous—and I assume that there is no reason whatever why they should not become more and more numerous—they will necessarily become aware of one another, and get into touch with one another. Such minds, following the line of least resistence, will gravitate to scientific work. They will note and classify mental types. This must lead almost directly to self-discovery. They will observe how they resemble each other and how they differ from the wimble-wamble of the common world. They will begin to know themselves for what they are.’
‘A new chapter in history,’ said Mr. Davis, contemplating it. ‘And then?’
‘Let us think this out for a bit,’ said Keppel. ‘I believe a considerable amount of analysis of what is coming is possible. I think myself we can already make a rough forecast, but I shall feel much more certain about that when I have put what I have in mind before you two. If I get away with it. It does seem worth while to ask a few fairly obvious questions.. What is going to be the next phase in this invasion? As these Martians multiply among us, they will, I assume, tend to crystallize out in some such way as I have indicated. They will develop a distinctively Martian view of life. They will begin to realize themselves for what they are, look for their own sort, feel their way towards a common understanding. They will emerge to social action in some fashion… . In what fashion?’
2.
‘But first of all,’ he said, ‘I want to clear up a preliminary matter—of some practical importance.’
He concentrated on his hands spread out on the table before him. ‘I’d like to put it to Davis. Here we have he says, a new kind of mind appearing in the world, a hard, clear, insistent mind. It used to appear at uncertain intervals. Rarely. It said: “Why not?” and it made discoveries. Now apparently it is becoming—frequent. Not abundant as yet but frequent. Well, what I want to know is, is this new kind of mind when it appears complete? Let me be perfectly plain about that. Certain genes making up the human mentality, we agree, have been altered in this new type. These new minds are harder, clearer, more essentially honest—yes. But are they completely detached from the old stuff or are they in many cases a sort of half-breed and all mixed up with it?’
‘I want to stress that half-breed idea. Are they so much human, human of the old pattern still, and so much—and only so much—clean Martian? So that one side of them is just the old system of self-regarding complexes, vanities, dear delusions—while the other side is like a crystal growing in mud? You see what I am after? It may not be true to talk as though we were dealing with human clay vis-à-vis with Martians. We are talking about human mud and against it we have to pit these partially liberated intelligences, still largely mixed with the old mud. All three of us have been in our various ways trying to get something like a real sense of what these new beings are. These new creatures—’
Keppel paused and looked at his hands. ‘They are going to be very tragic creatures… . In many cases… . What do you make of it, Davis? Of the half-breed idea?’
‘I haven’t seen it like that yet. You see, I have been going about trying to find certain lucid intractable types. That was your suggestion, Doctor. I’ve certainly found them. I’ve been looking for a sort of difference… .’
‘You haven’t thought of any other aspect?’
‘No… . I haven’t looked for resemblances, so to speak, in the difference,’ he added after a pause. ‘I’ve been looking for uncommon humanity; not for common humanity.’
‘Well,’ Keppel went on, talking chiefly to his intelligent-looking fingers, ‘that half-breed idea opens up a whole new world of considerations. It banishes Thunderclap’s nightmare of a lot of little active hobgoblins swarming and multiplying and desecrating our homes and everything that has made human life et cetera. In the place of that sort of thing we have to suppose an increasing number of individuals scattered about the world, who, so far at any rate, never seem to have had a suspicion that they are not just ordinary human stuff, but who find life tremendously puzzling, much more puzzling that other people do… . Now perhaps—it will be different… .
‘As children, like any other children, they will have begun by taking the world as they found it and believing everything they were told. Then as they grew up they will have found themselves mentally out of key. They will have found a disconcerting inconsistency about things in general. They will have thought at first that the abnormality was on the side of particular people about them and not on their own. They will have found themselves doubting whether their parents and teachers could possibly believe what they were saying. I think that among these Martians, that odd doubt—which many children nowadays certainly have—whether the whole world isn’t some queer sort of put-up job and that it will all turn out quite differendy presently-I think that streak of doubt would be an almost inevitable characteristic of them all.’
‘That doubt about the reality of what they are told?’ considered Davis. ‘Children certainly have it. Even I… .’
Keppel glanced at him for one half-instant.
‘Now,’ said Keppel, still addressing his hands, ‘before I go on with these problems of what these Martians are going to do to our world, I would like to put some rather penetrating questions to myself and—both of you. You don’t mind if I sort of lecture you? Or retail the obvious? I’m a professor in grain, you must remember.’
Dr. Holdman Stedding made assenting gestures and Davis remained obviously attentive.
‘Let us try and make this room an apartment in the palace of truth for the time being. About ourselves… . We are sane respectable citizens in a social order that gives us a fairly good return for the services we render it. We have adjusted ourselves—and pretty comfortably—to life as we know it… . Well… .
‘I will ask a question and answer for myself first. Am I as easy about the validity of my mental processes? As I was when I was rising twenty? No. Since then we have had our minds washed out by a real drench of psycho-analysis. We are beginning to realize the complex system of self-deception in which we live, our wilful blindness to humiliating and restraining things, our conscious acceptance of flattering and exalting things, our tortuous subconscious or half-conscious evasions and conformities to social pressures and menaces. We take everything ready-made that we can possibly find ready-made, and there are a thousand moral issues, public issues, customary imperatives, about which—it isn’t so much that we conceal our thoughts and are hypocritical, as that we will not think about them at all. We will not have thoughts to conceal. We are shifty even with ourselves. Am I overstating our subservience to the world about us?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Dr. Holdman Stedding. ‘No’.
Davis said nothing.
‘We have been born and brought up in a social order that is now obviously a failure in quite primary respects. Our social order is bankrupt. It is not delivering the goods. It is defaulting and breaking up. War, pervading and increasing brutality, lack of any real liberty, economic mismanagement, frightful insufficiency in the midst of possible super-abundance—am I overstating the indictment?’
‘No,’ said Dr. Holdman Stedding with a sigh. ‘No.’
‘Quite a lot of highly intelligent people seem to be persuaded that we are heading for a world-wide war-smash—a smash-up of civilization they call it, and all that. You have denounced all that as blank pessimism, Mr. Davis.’
‘Never mind what I have written,’ said Davis. ‘Sufficient for the present discussion—is the present discussion.’
‘Well, then, I may say the outlook for our world is, to put it mildly, menacing and disappointing.’
Dr. Holdman Stedding put both his elbows on the table. ‘For any farsighted people the output for humanity has always been menacing,’
‘And not particularly now? Air warfare, germs in warfare, the entire aimlessness of the unemployed, dissolving social cohesion, the rapid disappearance of mental freedom?’
‘Yes,’ said Dr. Holdman Stedding. ‘Yes. Perhaps—particularly now. For the things we value it is an exceptionally bad outlook.’
‘A general effect of things going to pieces—of large lumps falling down. Subsidences. And what I find most terrifying of all—and that is where the grim outlook for these Martians of ours comes—the increasing ineffectiveness of any fine, clear thinking in the world. I don’t know if things have shown themselves to you in the same light, but what impresses me most about the present state of the world is the entire dominance of the violent, common mind, the base mind. It brutalizes. It brutalizes everything new and fine. Inventions. Our children. Either it expresses itself in stampeding mob action, revolutionary or reactionary—it is all the same in the long run—or else it embodies itself in some Hero—like this fellow Hitler—identifies itself with him and so achieves its vehement releases. Assertive patriotism, mass fear, and impulse to persecute—particularly the impulse to persecute—seem to be more dreadfully in evidence today than ever before in human affairs. Dreadfully and hideously. That’s a question in your line, Davis. A question of historical estimates. Anyhow it is glaringly in evidence.
