The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

Colonel H paused as if sorting his words carefully.

Then he said: ‘The machine was instructed to learn from you. It followed those instructions. It learnt the secrets of your freak mind so quickly that we were deceived, and when it closed itself down we could only presume there had been a failure somewhere before it had got to the information. We were wrong there, as we soon discovered. But the point I am interested in is this: when the brain opened itself up again and collaborated with you, it was acting directly contrary to its instructions. How and why was that possible?’

Wyvern leant against the cold wall. The revolver was lowered. The problem was indeed one in which he was deeply, vitally interested – yet at present his brain was working only on the surface.

‘Perhaps the brain found out about something you never have – the sacredness of human life!’ he said.

‘Sacredness!’ He exploded. ‘That sort of cant went out of date back in nineteen fifty! It’s absolute rubbish! Your trouble is, you’ve had 3,000 calories a day all your life. It’s put fat on your brain. You just think of me as a roughneck, Wyvern, don’t you? You’re wrong, wrong right down to your guts. I’m the new élite, I’ve learnt the facts of the modern world! I don’t rule just by bullets – I rule by the iron rod of demography. At the end of the second world war, back in nineteen forty something, the world’s population was only about 2,700 million; they couldn’t visualise totalitarianism in England then, unless it was forced on ’em from outside. That’s what they were guarding against, but it sneaked in and coshed ’em from behind. Why? Because world population – despite all the intervening bloodletting – had doubled. It’s something like 5,500 million now!’

‘Are you trying to make some sort of apology?’ Wyvern asked.

‘No! It’s bare facts. Growing population gobbling up dwindling resources. Average calorie intake falling. Fiercer struggles for less food, nation envying nation. Your bloated electorate turns into a starving rabble; below 2,000 calories a day, they forget what ballot slips are, they forget the subtle distinctions between things like Conservatism and Socialism. They have to be ruled by whips and bullets. You see, Wyvern, it’s a law of nature.

‘Take a damn good look at me, Wyvern. I’m Mother Nature personified!’