WHEN THE SUN WENT OUT (5)
By:
July 30, 2023
Leslie Silberberg, who wrote as Leslie F. Stone, was one of the first women sf pulp writers. She often worked with Hugo Gernsback in Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories. Gernsback published her 1929 story “When the Sun Went Out” as a chapbook. HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize it here for HILOBROW’s readers.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7.
THE HOME OF THE FIVE
Another floor was devoted entirely to a commissary to provide the building with its necessities. Three entire floors were devoted to the offices that recorded automatically every small detail in the life of its tenants. The remaining floors were given over to living quarters. This particular building which now housed Kuila and Ramo was the Scientific Building, and herein dwelt all those who belonged to one branch or another of Science.
Once every building in the city had been filled to capacity and there had been a continual overflowing into new buildings — but in the centuries that had just preceded this, the population of the world had diminished so greatly that city after city had been deserted until only Central City and the City of Children were inhabited.
In Central City there was one building that differed from the others. This odd building formed the nucleus of the city and was reckoned for that matter the center of the world. For from it emanated the life of the world and its government. It was the residence of The Five.
Many millions of years before Four Scientists had revolutioned the civilized world. They had previsioned a world subjugated by the yellow race, and to avoid that they had overthrown the entire world, destroyed its antiquated civilization and set up a new government with Scientists at the head instead of kings. Only by the effort of a young man was a catastrophe that would have entirely depopulated the world, averted. Thereafter the youth was added to the Quaternion so that henceforth it became a Quinvate and had continued so to this day.
The Five were sufficient unto themselves, directing the destinies of their world, choosing from each generation a new member to succeed the old and governed only by their high sense of duty to their fellow-man. As the new member was recruited from the younger generation, he (or she for sex made no difference) was taught the high principles of the order, bringing with him a fresh sense of justice and knowledge of the world he had been a part of. Thence he studied with his elders, so that, when he was aged and called upon a youth to succeed him, he had much to impart. As the man was sure to live well past his two hundredth year he had great knowledge, experience and understanding to pass on to his juniors.
The building that housed the Five was only ten stories high. One floor was given over to a common council chamber; the second to private council rooms, rooms for the guards, and offices. Two more floors were laboratories, and might be likened to a patent office where all new inventions, new innovations were investigated, tried and proven, as to their practibility. Here the various members of the Five spent much of their own time working, improving, giving the products of their own minds to civilization. The next five floors belonged to the Five exclusively. Here they had privacy, each having one entire floor for himself and his attendants. The tenth floor was their mutual meeting ground. Here was their common lounge and their conservatory. They also had a roof promenade, but that was covered over with unbreakable glass and guards passed up and down day and night.
The Five dressed exactly as did their fellow-men, without mark of distinction. Only with them the mask was always worn over the face and they never moved about unless under heavy guards. When once a man or woman took the sacred oath of the Quinvate all ties were cut. Friends were forgotten, mother and father they had never known, mates were discarded like all else. Thus, once in a generation, a fellow being might drop out of his sphere never to be seen again. One-time friends may conjecture that he who had so excelled in his line of endeavor had reached the zenith and had been chosen by the Five. But one could never be positive. Perhaps the friend had been transferred to a station across the world, to carry on their work as heretofore. Hence the mask, that none might claim friendship with any member of the Five, and retard the wheels of justice. For first of all the Five were the judges to decree life and death!
Once some fanatic who imagined an enemy of his to have been elevated to that high position had, with an infernal machine, managed to almost demolish the Center, killing two of the Five. That was the greatest catastrophe to have happened to them, and it took years to recover from the effects. It took vigilance and extreme care to prevent the recurrence of that same action.
For the past several thousand centuries the Five had not been the august body as heretofore. Recruited from a decaying race they had been merely representative of it. However, it was through the efforts of the newest recruit that the program of today was brought about; that the new machinery had been brought into being; that new heart was taken by the populace.
After receiving the cards with their room numbers upon them, Ramo Rei and Kuila Rei separated and agreed to meet again and go together to the Council Chamber where a meeting was scheduled to take place in ten hours.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.