Then there was a lot to arrange. False names, and passports. A method by which his wife could also disappear and join him. Money to be banked for us under our new names. But we got it all fixed at last, with the Captain still looking a bit bewildered as if his sense of values had been turned upside down.
Well, that's about where truth ends and legend begins, and as everyone knows the legends, I need not repeat them here.
It seems a pity in a way to spoil a daring and exciting exploit this way, but, as you see, with the whole thing beautifully stage-managed and all guns loaded with blanks it wasn't really too difficult. We just shot off into the blue.
I kept my new name for some years until the whole thing had blown over and when I changed it back no one thought of identifying me with the escaped Fearon. Belford's name had become too well known, so he had to stick to his new one for the rest of his life.
My hope is that this account will at last put a stop to these perpetual treasure hunts to the Moon. Several lives and a lot of money have been thrown away on them. Once and for all, then; Captain Belford's treasure does not exist. It never did.
CHILD OF POWER
Chapter One
OF MICE AND MEN
It was one of those evenings more often imagined than granted in the Lake District. The stir in the air scarcely ruffled the water and it was warm enough to enjoy sitting out on the terrace after sunset. Peace had crept gradually over the valley to settle down finally with the closing of the public bar. The peak of the mountain opposite was still silhouetted against the lingering afterglow, lights occasionally wandered across its black base and the sound of a car engine came over the lake to us no louder than the buzz of a bumble bee. One sat and drank beer and smoked and chatted.
We were a chance-met group, such as any pub in the district might have held that night. A business man and his son from somewhere in Lancashire, two American college boys energetically seeing England from bicycles bought within an hour of their arrival at Southampton, a tall man in whose speech was a faint suggestion of the north Midlands, his wife, and Joan and myself. The four others in the place, two young men and young women whose notion of a holiday seemed to consist of dissipating the maximum of ergs in the minimum of time, had already left us in order that no mountain might put them to shame on the morrow.
Conversationally, we had rambled quite a way. We had considered the inhabitants and character of the neighbourhood, thence we had somehow arrived at the Spanish question and settled that, which had entailed our decision that certain social reforms were vitally necessary all over the world, and this in its turn had led us to speculation on the future in general and the future of man in particular. One of the Americans was touched into eloquence on the subject.
'It's such a darned muddle in most people's minds,' he said. 'They know that nothing is really static, it's all got to change, but along with that they're convinced that modern man is God's last word—and yet that's contradicted again because if they were as convinced of it as they think they are they'd do something to straighten out the system and make it a decent world for this climax of evolution to live in—to settle down in permanently.'
'As it is,' put in his companion, 'they just tinker away at it a bit because instinct rather than reason tells them that it's a waste of time to make the perfect social set-up for our kind of man when he may be superseded by another kind who won't be satisfied with that set-up at all.'
'What do you mean by another kind of man?' asked the Lancashire man from behind his pipe. 'What other kind can there be?'
'What about a type with a super brain?' suggested his son. 'Something like "The Hampdenshire Wonder" that Beresford wrote about, or Stapledon's "Odd John." Didn't you read those books?'
'No, I didn't,' his father said, bluntly. 'I've something better to do with my time than readin' tales about fancies and freaks.'
'It's only the form,' said his son. 'What they're suggesting is that the next step will be a great brain development.'
'Oh, aye. Chaps wi' big 'eads, and suchlike. I don't believe it.'
'That's not the only possibility,' put in Joan, beside me. 'I think the next step will be psychic. Perhaps telepathy, or a kind of clairvoyance that can really be used; or perhaps they'll be able to see things that we can't see now—as some people say animals can.'
'Sounds retrogressive to me,' the first American told her. 'I'd say most of those things did exist in man, and do in animals to a certain extent now, but that they've atrophied with the development of the brain. No, I guess brain development's the way it goes. Though in a way I'd say you're right about seeing things. Eyes are still improving. Maybe they'll be able to see the infra-red or the ultra-violet, and p'raps some emanations we know nothing about. But I think the brain and the reasoning faculties will gradually develop beyond anything we can conceive at present.'
'Why gradually?' asked his friend. 'There doesn't seem to have been much change in the last five thousand years. Why not at a jump?—that's the way with mutations.'
'Maybe, but how do you think a sudden mutation is going to survive boneheads like us? We'd probably put it out of the way out of kindness, or lock it up in an asylum and not let it breed. I can see us defending ourselves mighty toughly against any mutations.'
'And very right, too,' said the Lancashire man. ' 'Oo wants to breed freaks or mutilations or whatever they are? Put 'em out of their misery, be 'umane, I say.'
'But they wouldn't be freaks, Father. If they were the natural next step in development, they'd be normal.'
'If they 'ad big 'eads and thought different from other people they'd be freaks. A big 'ead's a freak, same as a bearded woman. I've seen 'em at Blackpool. A man's the same as the rest of us or 'e's a freak. Stands to reason.'
The tall man from the Midlands spoke out of the darkness to the Americans.
'I think you're right about the jump, but what sort of a jump's it going to be? That's the question. It can't be too big a physical change at one step. We, just like the wild animals, hate a variation from our norm, and I agree we'd be pretty sure to suppress it for a humane or for any other reason which happened to suit us. No, we must have survived to reach this stage by taking a series of small and not very obvious jumps in safety.'
'But small jumps would mean pretty frequent jumps, or we'd never have had time to get from the amoeba to here.' said one of the Americans. 'Now, if there's been a jump worth a nickel in the last five thousand years I've not heard of it. That's surely a long time to stay put. Maybe we have come to the end or maybe nobody's noticed it when it happened.'
'Or,' said the tall man, 'maybe it's just about to happen.' He puffed at his cigarette so that it glowed and lit up his face. One had a feeling from his tone that he was not just speaking at random. The American asked :
'You've an idea what it might be?'
'Might be—well. yes. But, mind you, I'm laying no claim to prophecy. As far as I go is to say that I have seen a variation from the normal which does not seem to be due to any of those glandular upsets which commonly cause freaks. It is, to the best of my knowledge, unique, but, of course, there may be others. If there are, I see no reason why they should not survive and stabilise the new type.'
'Which is?' prompted the American.