9 Tales of Space and Time Page 19

  “I have been teaching the most influential man on these islands to read and write!” she went on. “Both Dr. Murdock and I feel that the conversion of the Mantus can best be accomplished through adult education. If,” she paused and x-ed out the ‘if’! “After we convert the adults, they can cooperate with us in teaching the children.”

  She then typewrote a list of titles of books to be sent to her. They included such subjects as philosophy, art, and fictional literature.

  “Their conversion!” she went on, “depends upon their acceptance of Western ideas. Their religion makes it impossible for them to accept the blessings of modern medicine. This religion is a kind of ethical spiritism. They believe that all disease is a punishment visited upon them by their recently deceased relatives because of some transgression of their moral code. Cure of disease is in the hands of these spirits, whose favor depends upon their confessing their sins and turning away from evil. All good that comes to them they attribute to these spirits who reward the living for having followed in the path of virtue.

  “Until they realize that modern medicine and not virtue can cure disease and that modern science rather than their virtues can bring them wealth, we cannot teach them to be Christians.”

  She typed on, “You can have no idea of the hold their religion has upon them. They do not steal, they pay their debts, they work hard and save and live pure lives. Girls and boys do not speak to each other after the age of puberty and married women never speak to men other than their husbands— all because of fear of offending their recently dead relatives. However, we’ll change all that after we educate them.”

  She rested for a minute and added, “Dr. Murdock keeps busy with his scientific research and medicine. He seems much happier here doing God’s work than he was when he practiced medicine in Los Angeles.”

  She ended her letter with a sigh of relief. It was almost time for Paytone to come for his lessons. He had already mastered reading and writing and a course in bookkeeping. They were now studying a college text book titled, Modern Banking and Finance, and both were finding the work exhilarating and exciting.

  When Paytone came to discuss modern banking and finance with Mrs. Murdock, her husband was working in his laboratory with his assistant, Hargo, a Melanesian lad whom he had trained to help him. He had given the boy the purple solution and so had nothing to complain of in regard to Hargo’s capacity to learn. Already he had taught the black boy the equivalent of two years of college work in mathematics and chemistry. Hargo was now ready to study calculus, the theory of least squares, and physical chemistry. Dr. Murdock felt himself being crowded by the boy’s eagerness.

  When the doctor heard Paytone’s voice, he went out to the veranda to greet him. He always felt that Paytone treated him with ill-concealed, amused contempt, but he was used to such treatment at the hands of his wife’s friends, so while inwardly cursing himself for his awkward stiffness, he made his usual attempt to appear friendly. He envied Paytone’s urbanity and social ease.

  “I see you’re hard at work,” Paytone observed. “You are really one of us at heart. We have a saying, ‘The departed spirit will always reward a hard worker.’ ”

  When Dr. Murdock only nodded his head in reply, Paytone went on, “What are you working at?”

  For reasons of his own, Dr. Murdock had kept the object of his research a secret. He was secretive by nature, because he was the type who loses interest in a project once he has talked about it; besides, his training in research chemistry had taught him never to share an idea until it was ready for the scientific journals. Sad experience had shown him that other research scientists are always ready to pounce upon any discovery to claim it for their own. Secrecy, or perhaps the need for secrecy, was the principal social disease of the twentieth century. Now, of course, such secrecy is unthinkable. So, at Paytone’s question, Dr. Murdock felt himself tighten up and draw within himself like a snail curling up in its shell.

  “It’s just a research project,” he replied while he shot a meaningful look at his wife, warning her not to talk. Then he said, “Well, I’ll leave you two alone now; I’ve got to get back to work.”

  As he left he heard Paytone’s low voice, saying, “The doctor keeps pretty busy. My people keep asking me why he takes their blood. They wonder just what he’s up to.” Dr. Murdock did not catch his wife’s reply.

  That afternoon Hargo noticed that the doctor was absent-minded; and, with cause. Dr. Murdock had only half his mind on his work for he could not ignore the recurrent thought that something important in his life was being discussed on the veranda. He was relieved, therefore, when after two hours he heard Paytone shout, “Good-by, Doctor.” He dismissed Hargo hurriedly and, still wearing his laboratory coat, he went to the kitchen where Mrs. Murdock was getting ready to prepare their dinner.

  “What’s the score?” he asked. “When is Mr. Mantu going to let us set up our clinic and school?”

  “Never,” she snapped. “You and your damned Compound B. You and your mysterious element in the Melanesian blood, your x-factor. Do you know that we’re practically prisoners?”

  “How are we prisoners? We can leave on the Dutch steamer any time we want. That is,” he added, “any time it lands here.”

  “It won’t land here. Paytone has moved his warehouse to another island. He took my letter to give to the captain. And he made me order a lot of books and magazines on physics, chemistry, and mathematics. He’s using us, that’s what he’s doing. And when he has no more use for us, it’s curtains for us both. Now you know the score.”

  “But why?”

  She sat down at her kitchen table. “I’ll tell you why. It’s because of the books I taught him to read. They’ve upset his mind. He told me all about it. Bitter? You’d have thought I poisoned him. And I taught him arithmetic and accounting, the damned black heathen. God, how I hate Negroes.”

  Dr. Murdock sat down at the table. “It just doesn’t add up,” he said. “Can you tell me what it’s all about without getting so emotional about it all? And please make it short.”

  “He told me the story of his life, practically,” she said. “Paytone’s a money-lender, a banker, but he charges only about three hundred per cent. He finances young couples who want to marry. They spend five years working to pay him back. And he doesn’t need collateral, either. On these islands, when a man and woman go into debt to marry, their families, including uncles and aunts and cousins, even, are obliged to pay off that debt. It’s part of their silly religion. They believe that even their dead ancestors, spirits, are interested or involved in payment of their debts. With a religion like that, they don’t need courts and judges and sheriffs and lawyers and police. So you see why he doesn’t want us to influence their religion. If his people lost their religion, there would be anarchy unless he organized a government to control the people by force. And that he doesn’t want. It’s wasteful, he says. So there goes our mission. He is going to keep these heathens ignorant and superstitious. He won’t let us preach the truth.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Dr. Murdock said.

  “How? Swim to Australia? And he took all my books. He doesn’t want the people to read books. Only technical books. And those are only for the few whom he selects.”

  “Well, those few will be educated,” observed the doctor. “He won’t have power over them.”

  “That’s what I told him. But he’s a slick one. You never should have given him that purple medicine. You sure cooked our goose.”

  “And what else did this usurer have to say?”

  “He told me that he would allow mathematicians to read books on mathematics; the physicists books on physics, the chemists books on chemistry. In that way they will all be such specialists that their science won’t conflict with their religion. Why, do you know what he’s done? He has a chain of sixty-two stores. Each storekeeper thinks he owns his own store, but all of them are so much in debt to him that it will take generations to pay him off. Well, he’
s taught all these storekeepers to add and subtract and to write about twenty words, like yams, coconuts, pigs, and so forth. He had the nerve to say that all they needed to know was the three R’s and bookkeeping; that frills in education would unsettle their minds. So there goes our school. He took away all my books. He called them foreign ‘isms’—‘not for my people,’ he said.”

  Dr. Murdock shook his head. “I still don’t get it,” he said. “If he feels that way about us, why doesn’t he kill us and be done with it?”

  “Because he needs your Compound A medicine. It wears off in two weeks, you know that. So he has to depend on you to refill his empty think-tank. And he wants you to develop a few more geniuses he can control. He wants me to teach them to read their scientific books and he wants you to set up their laboratories. If they ever catch on to how you make Compound A, we’re through. Now do you understand?”

  Dr. Murdock thought his wife had never looked so hateful as at this moment.

  “I suppose you’ve blabbed your big mouth to Hargo about Compound A,” she said.

  The doctor shook his head slowly. “No,” he replied. “He isn’t ready yet.” He nodded his head slowly again. “Look, all isn’t lost. As long as I have Compound A, they need me, as you say, to refill their think-tanks. And Hargo will never learn how I put it together. I’ll see to that. Meanwhile, we’ll figure out a way to get away from here.” He paused. “We must get out of here. The very existence of mankind depends on us. Society is running a race between destruction and the acquisition of intelligence. We’ll figure out a way to escape. We must.”

  “Yes, we’ll figure out a way. Well, you do your figuring and I’ll do mine. And you’d better hurry up with your Compound B and get some brains for yourself or we’ll never escape from this damn island.”

  Paytone had made one remark that Mrs. Murdock did not relay to her husband. He had said, “You destroyed my faith, my belief in my religion when you gave me your purple medicine and your books. You changed me. Now I hardly know what to believe. I no longer believe that the spirits of my ancestors are watching me to punish or reward. Spirits do not exist. But what is left for me to believe in? Only myself. Yes, I believe in myself, in my own power to get things done. Personal power, that’s all that remains that is worth anything to me. I can’t enjoy anything else—only power. And power is what I’m going to get, more and more and more power.” He had turned on her with ferocity and added, “But don’t touch the faith of my people. Religion is good for them, it’s good for me to have them steeped in tradition. The more firmly they believe, the better it will be for them—and for me.”

  Somehow Mrs. Murdock sensed that he had given her a hold over him, but how she could use that hold, she did not know. She must think about it. Meanwhile, she felt it best not to mention this to her husband. She knew that somehow she could turn this knowledge to her advantage; just how would have to wait upon future events. But that she would find a way to escape from her prison, she had no doubt. As for Dr. Murdock, well, she thought, let him look out for himself.

  She had to wait five months for her opportunity to talk to Paytone at any length. She continued to teach scientific English to the group of eight young men whom Paytone had selected to receive Compound A, but only occasionally did she see him, and then only briefly, when he came for his bimonthly medication or stopped to talk with her about the progress of her students. Aside from her teaching and the little housework required to maintain their home, she had little to do to occupy her time, and she found it hard to control her impatience and frustration.

  At last, however, she had her chance. After avoiding her for five months, Paytone called upon her after receiving his teaspoonful of the purple Compound A. As he dropped into a chair on the veranda, she noted with satisfaction that he seemed to be prepared to talk with her at length. It was at this time that she learned why he wanted power and what he intended to do with it.

  Paytone began with his customary bluntness. “I need American dollars.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Dollars. You Americans know what dollars are. It’s all you live for.”

  “You Mantus seem to have a fairly acute sense of property.”

  “With us it’s different. With us, property has only spiritual significance. We save and invest to please the spirits who want our children to have it better than they did. We do not dissipate wealth in pleasure and display. I’ve read about you Americans, with your thousand-dollar dinners and the like.”

  “But you told me you no longer believe in spirits. They’re a myth.”

  “I want dollars because I want power. Once I was powerless, defenseless. Now things are different. I have a few scores to settle with those whites who ground me down. But I need more power and that means more dollars. With enough dollars, I’ll get even with a few white people. I owe it to them.”

  He went on to tell her how at the age of fourteen he had shipped on an English pearler.

  “Pearler?” she interrupted.

  “Diving for pearls,” he explained. He described the wormy food, the vermin-infested sleeping quarters, the brutal treatment he had received. “When I jumped ship in Port Moresby in New Guinea, it was no better,” he went on. “The English are all alike. And in Australia, no better. They think a black man is someone they are entitled to enslave. Look at South Africa. When I read Cry, the Beloved Country, my blood boiled. And I understand you have a black minority in your country. How are they treated?”

  Her mind traveled back to the day when her husband refused to make Compound A available to all Negroes and she kept silent.

  “So I’ll show them. I’ll even things up. But first, I need dollars. And you are the only one who can help me. You know the ropes, as we sailors say.”

  Mrs. Murdock felt that at last her moment had come. She was not disturbed in the least by Pay tone’s revengeful purposes; in fact, with an indifferent kind of understanding, she felt somewhat in sympathy with his purpose. But his feelings did not particularly interest her. What was exciting her was the prospect of getting money and the opportunity to use it. Suddenly she found herself having difficulty with her breathing. She wiped her forehead with her handkerchief and then she dried her sweating palms. This was it, the moment she had long waited for. She asked herself how much dare she ask. She pulled herself together with effort and tried to control the tremor in her voice.

  “How much is there in it for me?” she asked.

  “How much do you want?” Paytone countered.

  How much dare she ask? She hesitated a moment and then took confidence from the fact that she was in the driver’s seat. He needed her. Drawing a deep breath, she said, “How about thirty per cent?”

  “I was planning on offering you ten per cent,” Paytone replied. “This thing I have in mind will run into millions. Ten millions or thirty millions—what difference can it make to you? You white Americans think of nothing but your comfort, pleasure, and ostentation. Ten million dollars will get you more than you can use. You can’t spend it all. You love money for what you can spend on yourself. For my purposes, every penny counts.”

  “And another thing,” Mrs. Murdock added. “Safe-conduct to any part of the world where I may choose to go.”

  Paytone nodded his head. “Of course,” he agreed. “A oneway ticket to any port you choose. It’s ten per cent, then, up to but not more than ten million dollars?”

  Mrs. Murdock put out her hand. “It’s a deal,” she said. “And not a word about this to Dr. Murdock. He doesn’t understand these things.”

  Paytone grinned. He understood Mrs. Murdock.

  “Now,” she said briskly, “let’s see the books. What have you been up to?”

  Paytone told her what he had done to date. “I’ve settled two thousand Mantus in New Guinea,” he said. “There were Melanesians there, primitive peoples, but we displaced them. No violence. We just resettled them on our own islands.”

  He chuckled, “Right under the noses of the English and t
he Dutch. To them, one Melanesian is the same as another. We’re all black trash. But someday they’ll find out otherwise. I’ll show them who’s trash.”

  He went on to tell her how he had imported some modern farm equipment which had greatly increased the productivity of his people. They now had more copra for export. “Another thing,” he added. “It isn’t good for people to live in luxury. So we have lowered the age of marriage to twelve for girls and fourteen for young men. When people marry young, they don’t learn so much and they are happier. It’s better so.” He went on, “So our agriculture now supports a larger population. But farming does not bring in enough dollars. Our population grows with modern agricultural methods, but dollars come in too slowly. What can we do?”

  Mrs. Murdock thought for a moment. “We must manufacture,” she said. “Look. The Western world uses pearl buttons. You people are all sailors; you swim like fish. Can’t you get mother-of-pearl?”

  “Too slow,” Paytone replied. “We are mining mother-of-pearl and I’ve wanted to build two factories, one in British and one in Dutch New Guinea. But it will be years before these operations pay off in the kind of money I’m thinking about.”

  “But all business enterprises have to start on a small scale.”

  “Not mine. I don’t think in terms of nickels and dimes.” He looked at her searchingly. “Are you sure you can’t think of anything that will be faster and bigger?”

  She shook her head.

  “There are fifteen million Negroes in the United States,” he said musingly. “Couldn’t we find something they would buy?”

  Light dawned on Mrs. Murdock. It was Compound A that he wanted.

  “There’s that purple medicine you take,” she said.

  “Yes,” Paytone replied. “That might do. We could mix it with alcohol and export it as wine. At a profit, say, of one dollar a pint, to begin with. Later, we’ll double the price. Fifteen million customers, fifty dollars apiece—yes, four hundred and fifty million dollars a year would be a good start. Do you have the formula?”