The Death Instinct

'It's strange, Mademoiselle,' said Oktavian. 'All this time I've felt I knew you from somewhere else. A long time ago. You have no relatives in Austria?'

'Perhaps you knew my grandmother,' said Colette. 'She was Viennese.'

'That's it,' cried Oktavian. 'I must have met her. Yes, I can almost remember the event. I knew I had seen your face before. She was of noble birth, your grandmother?'

'Oh, no, she was very poor.'

'I would have sworn it was at some fine ball, and with some fine gentleman.'

'That can't have been my grandmother, Count Oktavian.'

'Well, it will come to me. But you mustn't call me Count. I don't count for anything.'

Taking off, the aircraft rolled alarmingly, but it achieved a semblance of stability on reaching altitude. They peered down at the blanket of snow beneath them – which was not snow, but clouds.

'I've never seen the top of a cloud before,' said Colette. 'Do you think God minds?'

'I doubt He'd begrudge us a view of His handiwork,' answered Younger. 'I'd be more worried about your toying with His atoms.'

'Why do you so mistrust radium?' she asked. 'You made me wear that absurd suit in Professor Boltwood's laboratory. Everyone else thought I looked like a sea diver.'

'Everyone else should have been wearing one too.'

'I wonder if it could explain radioactivity,' mused Colette. 'Dr Freud's death instinct. We don't have any idea why radium atoms split apart – but then we don't know why other atoms don't. Perhaps there is one force holding the particles together, and another one driving them apart. It would be just what Dr Freud described: two fundamental forces, one of attraction and one of repulsion.'

'Which is stronger?' asked Younger.

'I would say the force holding them together,' said Colette. 'That would explain why radioactivity releases so much energy.' A thought came to her: 'But that energy, when it's released – that could be the death force. Perhaps the splitting of the atom is death itself, in pure form. It could communicate the death force to other atoms, causing them to split apart.'

'And you wonder why I don't trust it,' said Younger.

'That could also explain radium's effect on cancer,' replied Colette with growing excitement. 'No one has ever explained how radium cures cancer. Even Madame doesn't know. But Dr Freud was right: cancer cells are cells that have stopped dying. When radium is placed inside a tumor, perhaps it releases the death force, spreading it out over the whole tumor, transmitting it to the cancer cells, which makes them begin dying again. What are you doing?'

As Colette spoke, Younger had become distracted by a separate train of thought until finally he had risen from his seat. 'Pilot,' he called out. 'You said this plane was supposed to fly to Paris?'

'Oui, Monsieur,' said the pilot.

'Take us there.'

'Paris?' asked Colette. 'Why?'

'To see one of your heroes.'

Chapter Seventeen

Under the headline 'Invited to Mexico,' Littlemore read the following front-page story:

An invitation to President-elect Harding to visit Mexico was extended at a conference last night between Senator A. B. Fall of New Mexico, and Elias L. Torres, envoy from President-elect Obregon of Mexico. The invitation contemplated Senator Harding's attendance at the inauguration of President-elect Obregon in Mexico City on the twenty-fifth of this month. Whether the invitation will be accepted seems very uncertain and tonight there was no official statement from the President-elect. Senator Harding is exceedingly anxious to restore amity between Mexico and the United States, but his close advisers doubt the propriety at this time of the President-elect going to foreign soil.

Littlemore was riding a train back down to Washington. He stared out the window for a long time.

On arriving in Washington, Littlemore took a taxi directly to the Library of Congress, just down the street from the United States Capitol. There he asked for some basic facts and history concerning the country of Mexico; the librarian directed him to the World Book of Organized Knowledge. A half-hour later, his pace quickening, Littlemore went to the Senate Office Building.

'What's the matter?' asked Fall when Littlemore was let in to see him.

'I read the Mexico story in the paper, Mr Senator.'

'Now that's something I'm proud of,' said the Senator, stretching his arms and leaning back in his chair. 'The two presidents-elect of the two largest democracies in the world. It'll be a first. Harding doesn't want to go, but I'll persuade him. Obregon will pull his troops out of the mines and let us keep our oil wells, and all will be right with the world.'

'I don't think Mr Harding should go, sir.'

'You're giving me advice on foreign policy?'

'What if it was Mexico, Mr Fall?'

'What if what was Mexico?'

'What if it was Mexico, not Russia?'

There was a long pause. 'You ain't talking about the bombing, are you, son?' asked Fall.

'Remember what you asked me the first time I met you? What country stood to gain from the bombing, what country had the motive, what country would have felt it had the right to attack us?'

'Sure I remember.'

'Nobody had a bigger motive to bomb J. P. Morgan than the Mexicans,' said Littlemore. 'Morgan's been bleeding them dry – keeping every banker in the world from lending to Mexico for six years. That's not the only motive either. From what I hear, they hate us pretty good down there, sir. Been looking to pay us back for a long time.'

'What for?'

'The Mexican-American War.'

'What kind of-? That's ancient history, boy. Nobody even remembers that war.'

'They remember it, sir. We took almost half their land. Invaded them. Occupied Mexico City. Killed a lot of people. There were some atrocities. I think they think we look down on them, Senator Fall. On top of which they think we're taking all their silver and oil, getting rich while they're dirt poor.'

Fall considered. 'I was going to say that's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard, but maybe it ain't. This new envoy Torres – I'll tell you the truth, he didn't rub me the right way. Like he was hiding something.'

'Let's say they were getting ready to nationalize our oil wells,' Littlemore went on. 'They'd have to show us that even though our army can lick theirs, they can hurt us in a different way – a new way – that an army can't stop. Hurt us badly enough so it wouldn't be worthwhile to invade.'

'You're saying the bombing was supposed to show us how they'd fight if we invaded?'

'I'm saying that if you look at it from Mexico's point of view, it starts to make sense. An attack on Morgan. Revenge for our invasion. And a warning of what kind of damage they can inflict on us if we move in with our army after they take back the oil. All three at once.'

'In that case they'd have to be first-class idiots,' said Fall, 'because they forgot to tell us they were the ones who did it.'

'They wouldn't want to say it right out,' answered Littlemore. 'Then we'd have to send the army in, which is what they don't want. So they'd leave us a sign showing they did it, without giving us any proof.'

'But they didn't leave a sign.'

'They did,' said Littlemore. 'Do you know when Mexican Independence Day is?'

'No.'

'September sixteenth.'

Fall was silent for several seconds. 'You sure about that? Not the fifteenth, not the seventeenth?'

'September sixteenth, Mr Senator. And it's a big day for them, just like it is for us.'

'Well, I don't use the word irony much, but ain't that an irony? They were trying to show us they ain't so puny, but they're so puny we didn't even get the message.' 'Something else, Mr Fall. Two weeks before the bombing, Mr Lamont of the Morgan Bank was threatened. Lamont got it mixed up though. He thought a banker named Speyer was the one making the threat, but it wasn't Speyer. It was a Mexican consul – a guy named Pesqueira – who said that if Morgan didn't start letting money back into Mexico, there would be hell to pay.'