Famine Read online

  “That’s the horror of it,” said the Prime Minister. “Who can take such a responsibility ? Some means of natural selection would be essential.”

  Into a tense silence Andromovitch said: “There is no natural selection except the survival of the fittest, and unless we make an arbitrary choice even the fittest will have little chance of surviving. That much is obvious. A selection must be imposed.”

  “You haven’t answered my questions: by whom?” The Prime Minister’s eyes were so heavy with pain it was hurtful even to look at him. “Have you worked that out, Palfrey?”

  “Yes,” said Palfrey quietly.

  “Tell us.”

  “Every city and centre has its administrative leaders, its Emergency Committee,” Palfrey said. “Each leader will have to make its own selection. It cannot be done by debate or discussion in committee. Stefan is quite right when he says that it must be an arbitrary choice. The chairmen have all been carefully chosen and appointed because of their especial qualifications to lead in an emergency. Every one of them must be visited, or sent a coded cable. That can be done by each country from its capital.”

  “How can you be sure all governments will agree?”

  “We can’t,” Palfrey admitted. “But when they face the facts of the situation, I think they will. First, we need another meeting of ambassadors. If you three gentlemen will support my recommendations I will brief each one, who will in turn return to his capital to brief his own government. Each capital will then call an emergency meeting of military and civil leaders in the various centres. There will be at least one such meeting in each State of America, for instance, and in each Russian Republic. The military and civil leaders will be carefully briefed, and it is they who will call a meeting of all the leaders of the centres, large and small.”

  “But this will take weeks!” protested the Prime Minister.

  “I think two weeks,” answered Palfrey. “And another two will be needed to organise the exodus from each centre.”

  “You’ve forgotten one vital thing,” Halik declared.

  “Have I, sir?”

  “Yes. The people won’t leave the centres.”

  “They will if they are persuaded that they are migrating to an area free from the Lozi” Palfrey said.

  “How can one—”

  Andromovitch stood up abruptly, moved across to the desk and stood behind Palfrey’s chair. He towered above them all, and there was nothing saint-like, now, in his expression, only anger and strength.

  “Do what you wish,” he said roughly. “Go and pretend the Lozi don’t exist. Wait until the world is dead around you, and death takes you yourselves.”

  “Now, Andromovitch—” Halik began.

  “All my life I have been working with Palfrey to try to make politicians and statesmen see the elementary truths,” Andromovitch went on, “and the result is always the same. Obstruction, obstruction, obstruction. ‘Let everyone else do his duty, don’t expect it of me.’ For three thousand years men have strangled one another because they haven’t had the sense to see the obvious. We have had war after war, emergency after emergency because politicians stick their heads in the sand. My God, I am sick of it, sick of you. Palfrey and I and a few hundred others have worked ceaselessly trying to reason with fools who will not see what they don’t want to see. But for him, but for us, there would be no world left. Have you ever paused to think about that? Have you ever stopped thinking about yourselves and your nation’s problems, to consider what would have happened if a few disinterested, selfless individuals, had not sacrificed everything, to make you come to terms with reason? I know one thing. If you are truly representative, the world doesn’t deserve to survive. We would be better if mankind was wiped off the face of the earth.”

  He stopped abruptly. He was quivering with the nervous energy expended in the outburst and the attempt to control his anger. He put a hand on Palfrey’s shoulder as he went on: “This man has wisdom, compassion, courage and intelligence. Do what he says and you will preserve the world, and our civilisation, our cultures, everything we have won in these thousands of years. Ignore him, argue and delay, and it will all be gone.”

  He took his hand from Palfrey’s shoulder, glared at the diplomats, then crossed the room and stalked out.

  Into the hushed silence which followed, Conlon said: “I think you should call the meeting of ambassadors, Palfrey.”

  “Quickly,” said Halik.

  “I can arrange it,” the Prime Minister promised. “It is eleven o’clock now. I will have them at the Assembly Room by four o’clock this afternoon.”

  “Can you have the briefing ready by then?” asked Conlon.

  “It is ready,” Palfrey said.

  One after another, they went out, leaving Palfrey with Beth and Joyce. He had hardly stirred since Andromovitch had started on his harangue, and there was a shocked expression on his face, as if he could not believe what he had heard. Joyce stood up, and moved to him; he looked up at her.

  “Stefan was right,” she said. “Absolutely right.” She bent down and touched his forehead with her lips, then turned and went out, without glancing at Beth.

  Palfrey stared straight ahead of him.

  Beth moved, so that she was in his line of vision. She smiled at him, and he looked up. She saw the pain, the anguish in his eyes. He wondered in a strange half-world of torment whether she even began to understand what he felt now.

  “Sap,” Beth said, “you’re looking at it in the wrong way.”

  His lips moved. “Am I?”

  “You are thinking of the millions you will send to their death.”

  He caught his breath.

  “But you should be thinking of the millions you are saving from the death which the folly of others brought near,” Beth said. “You aren’t sending or condemning anyone, the world has done that by its follies, you are saving millions. In a few short hours you can have the whole plan prepared, you can put it into immediate action. They will do it, Sap. They will have to because there is no other hope. And it will succeed.”

  He muttered: “I pray that it will.”

  “Many millions of lives will be saved, our civilisation will be preserved, and all the good things in it,” insisted Beth. “There’s even a possibility that many of the bad things and the folly will be purged. And all of this because of one man, because of you.” As she finished, he stood up.

  They moved together, and Palfrey felt a peace he had not known in many years, the peace only a woman he loved and who loved him could bring. Yet they did not speak of love.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Sacrifices

  The ambassadors foregathered.

  Outside, newspaper, radio and television reporters, recorders and cameras, were trained on the doorway of the great building in Whitehall. As the cars drew up, or the ambassadors arrived on foot, the silent crowd observed them with a resigned hopelessness. Policemen were mixing freely with the crowd, and dozens of Palfrey’s men were present, listening to rumours and talk. There was a spirit of defeatism. Now and again, Lozi streaked past, and no one took any notice of them; only the killer Lozi would attack humans, and none of those appeared.

  When the Prime Minister arrived, he mounted the steps and spoke into a B.B.C. microphone.

  “I will have a statement for you when I come out. At this stage I can say no more.”

  There was a faint stirring of interest, but no glimmer of excitement. Soon the ambassadors were behind locked doors. This time there was neither food nor drink for them.

  Palfrey began to talk, bringing his audience through an atmosphere of stunned horror, growing restlessness, and gradual hope. He outlined the plan anew, as he had outlined it to the three men in his office, then he said clearly and precisely: “We have made tape-recordings of these plans, two for each of you. I
t wouldn’t be wise to put them on paper. The stages are carefully graduated – if the instructions are carried out, there is little need to fear failure, because I have here—” he held a sheet of paper above his head—”a list of twenty-one proved instances of cannibalism among the Lozi. When they are starving, they will eat one another. We need time. We need preparation-and-food centres which are impregnable; and we need patience.”

  He paused but soon went on: “Before I invite your questioning, there is one matter of vital importance. That of the effect on the people whom we are going to sacrifice. They will be told, all of them, that they are heading for other food centres, where there is more chance of survival than in the one they leave. They will be given military protection – among those whom we shall send out will be many of military age. It will be like the Exodus from Egypt, for they will leave in hope. I believe you will understand that we are not dooming them, for the world as it stands is already doomed. We are snatching at the one slender chance of a future for mankind.”

  He stopped.

  For a while, no one spoke.

  Then one man began to pray, and others followed him.

  So complete was their agreement that no one argued, nor protested, nor demurred.

  Outside, in Whitehall, the Prime Minister put up the remarkable front which never seemed to desert him, and his voice was strong and sure as he lied.

  “We have realised that the cities and towns cannot be properly protected unless there are fewer people in them. And we realise also that the Lozi will invade the cities and the towns, and the disease of radiation will spread much more quickly along the sewers and the gutters of built-up areas. Safety, therefore, depends on an organised exodus to places in the country which have already been prepared, and there food supplies are being accumulated.

  “A selected few will stay behind in the cities and the towns, to protect the marching columns from attack from the rear.

  “There need be no panic. It must be an orderly exodus, we must not regard ourselves as refugees. Remember, this is the policy which will be applied throughout the world – the east and the west, the new world and the old.

  “And we begin tomorrow.”

  In his last remark the Prime Minister was wrong. They began within moments of the last words of his speech. In the homes throughout the land where they had heard him, many began to prepare. They collected oddments of clothing and furniture, their personal as well as their household treasures, and they started the trek out of the city.

  And others began throughout the world.

  There was no need to send military forces with them, no need to bribe or persuade. Enough of the refugees were on the way to make certain that the selected survivors would have no need to fear. Soon the streets were thronged. Every kind of wheeled vehicle which could be pushed or pulled was used, push-carts and hand-trucks, bicycles, tricycles and prams. And as the hordes moved out, the leaders of the Emergency Committees worked with desperate intensity to keep those whom they wanted behind, until Andromovitch said: “Those who wish to go should be allowed to, Sap. They haven’t the qualities which the survivors will need if we are to rebuild the world.”

  There was profound truth in that, and Palfrey sent out the message, and the leaders heeded.

  All day, all night, all day, all night, the people left the cities and the towns and spread over the countrysides of the world, while the Lozi watched, and the killer Lozi prowled, as puzzled by human behaviour as humans had been by theirs.

  Night followed night, and day followed day, until the city streets were deserted, and there were only the people of the future waiting.

  In West Pakistan, where the famine conditions had been among the most acute, there was nothing left for man or Lozi. In Lahore, in a corner of the Shalimar Gardens where the flowers were dead and the fountains idle, two packs of Lozi appeared, with killers at their heads. An old gardener, who had somehow survived, squatted cross-legged by a wall, his goat skin water carrier empty, his face that of a skeleton, his body skin and bones. He saw the killers of one side sidle up to the killers of another, heard the screeching and squawking and saw the furious fight to the death.

  From all over the world, the reports came in.

  As the great packs became hungry, they fought each other, and this happened time and time again outside the cities. The armies of human beings, without food, without water, were thinned out as first one and then another dropped in his tracks. The scarecrow millions, their sunken faces telling of the nearness of death, lost all hope, or desire for it. And as they came upon the places where the Lozi had fought, the sickness came upon them, and they died.

  The soil died too.

  In the cities and the towns, reports came in from sputniks and television, and from view reconnaissance rocket planes which were in continual flight, sending pictures back to earth.

  In all the capital cities, the leaders of nations saw what was happening, and were appalled.

  On the screen at the headquarters of Z5, Palfrey and Andromovitch, Joyce and Beth, saw how the hopeless masses dropped and starved and fell sick and died; saw how the Lozi fell upon one another, and when one pack emerged triumphant, how it ran over the earth in its never ending search for more food. And in some packs the young were born and so the population rate increased, but in other packs hunger reduced the number until it was clear at last that the Lozi population was declining all over the world.

  The time came when the Lozi protecting a pack turned on those it was protecting.

  That was the beginning of the end.

  For a long time after that the Lozi survived and in places thrived, but never for very long. Soon, the earth was running with the thin, watery blood which seeped into the soil, and killed all the vegetation that was left. Whole forests fell as disease struck at their roots. The sparse vegetation of the deserts faded, the more luxuriant vegetation of the jungle withered, and to the observers it began to look as if all growth was stunted by the bloodbath of the Lozi. No one stirred from the cities, where the food stocks fell lower and lower. Here and there the food was used up, and the hopelessness of famine drove the people away to scavenge over the poisoned earth for anything which might keep them alive.

  Few found it! Fewer survived.

  “One thing is certain,” Andromovitch said to Palfrey. “No one would be alive now, but for the centres. It was the only possible way, Sap, if there is to be a new world.”

  Palfrey felt Beth’s hand upon his arm, but the ache of guilt was acute in him. He could not forget that at his behest, the millions had gone to die, and that there was no certainty of survival for those that remained. Day after day the news was the same, and day after day some city fell to rioting, to looting, and some of those who had stayed behind broke out to seek nourishment which did not exist, and died.

  Each day, samples of the poisoned earth were brought into laboratories in all the big cities, and tests were run, in the desperate hope that the scope and malignancy of the disease were weakening; for the terror now was not whether they could grow food enough, but whether they could grow food at all.

  “How long will we survive in London?” Joyce asked, in the eleventh week.

  “Perhaps another four months.”

  “We can’t grow anything in four months.”

  “We could grow the simpler crops,” said Palfrey. “Most of the root vegetables, all the salad vegetables, beans and peas. We could survive if—”

  He broke off.

  That was how the conversation ran these days; in fits and starts. No discussion ever seemed to get anywhere, few sentences were finished. Of the little group of survivors at Z5, Beth was the least affected, having, perhaps, more spiritual stability.

  Each saw their physical strength dwindling.

  They began to lose the will to live.

  And then one day, there came a messen
ger from Lozania.

  The son of Clemente Taza came without warning to Z5. He was admitted by the guard at the main lift, and was conducted along the silent passages to meet Palfrey. Palfrey was with Andromovitch in the big office. He remembered, as from another life, the first time he had seen this man’s father at the early conference of ambassadors; and he remembered the shot with which President Montini had killed himself, unable to live with so deep a sense of guilt.

  Young Taza, however, appeared untouched by culpability.

  “Dr. Palfrey,” he said. “I have an eight millimetre film to show you, from the Isle of Lozan. Have you the facilities here?”

  “Of course.”

  Palfrey was not only too listless to think seriously, he was too listless to wonder what this was about. For days, now, it had been simply a matter of survival, of hanging on, without any sense of time or urgency.

  At last the room was darkened, and a picture appeared on the screen of the barren rocky soil of the island after the explosion which had created the Lozi. The whirring of the camera had a soporific effect; and Palfrey found himself drifting into a state of semi-consciousness.

  He was brought back to the scene by a change of picture. Over the dark barren sides of the island there appeared a faint green film. Gradually it darkened, and more vegetation appeared. As the projector whirred on, the son of Clemente Taza spoke: “These pictures were taken every twenty-four hours – one each day.”

  There was a break in the film, and then suddenly the screen showed vivid green and much more luxuriant growth.

  “That in one day?” demanded Andromovitch, incredulously.

  “That is so,” asserted Taza, “but I ask you to wait, please.”

  Now Palfrey was sitting upright, the blood running less feebly through his veins, and when the next picture flashed on, he exclaimed aloud, for now he could see the shape of trees as well as bushes, grass, and wheat, all mixed together. With increasing excitement still touched by disbelief, he saw crops grow as much in days as they had once grown in weeks. “You will see what has happened,” young Taza said, in a flat unemotional voice. The rate of reproduction was speeded up in animal life. The rate of germination and growth has speeded up in vegetable life. All of this land was fertilised by the blood of Lozi, Dr. Palfrey. The rest of the earth should begin to bear fruit. We know already that it is clean; no one has been attacked by the disease in more than a week.”