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  Seed of Light

  Edmund Cooper

  In my end is my beginning…

  CORONET BOOKS

  Hodder and Stoughton

  Copyright © 1959 by Edmund Cooper

  First published in 1959 by Ballantine Books Inc.,

  New York

  Coronet Edition 1977

  Second impression 1979

  The characters and situations in this book are entirety imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise. be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which this is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Printed end bound in Great Britain for

  Hodder and Stoughton Paperbacks, a division of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.

  Mill Road, Dunton Green, Sevenoaks, Kent

  (Editorial Office: 47 Bedford Square,

  London. WC1 3DP) by

  William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.,

  Glasgow

  ISBN 0 340 21990 4

  Contents

  PREFACE

  Part One BITTER HARVEST

  Chapter One - The World

  Chapter Two - The Desert

  Part Two THE SEED Chapter One - Firing Point

  Chapter Two - The First Year

  Chapter Three The Fifth Year

  Chapter Four - The Tenth Year

  Chapter Five - The Fiftieth Year

  Part Three GERMINAL Chapter One - Perspective

  Chapter Two - Precognition

  Chapter Three - Transition

  Chapter Four - Renascence

  Epilogue

  PREFACE

  This novel, my second, was written in 1958 and first published in 1959. It received good notices, which encouraged me greatly. It was also published with considerable success in the U.S. A., West Germany, Italy and Japan.

  The 1950’s were dominated by two factors - the Cold War and the development of the hydrogen bomb.

  In 1956, Russian tanks rumbled into Hungary to quell that country’s brave bid for democratic freedom. The Hungarians appealed to the West for help. Their call was unheeded. Though the gentlemen in the Pentagon were breathing hard, the Eisenhower regime did not want a nuclear confrontation.

  So the tanks won, and Hungary was ‘pacified’ - just as, much later, Czechoslovakia was similarly ‘pacified’.

  Sted of Light was written at a time when the Aldermaston marches were at their zenith, when a great many intelligent and well-meaning people saw fit to demonstrate their abhorrence of nuclear weapons. It seemed ludicrous that a small, vulnerable offshore European island should presume to be a nuclear power.

  Britain had already lost its imperial role. Two major wars in twenty-five years bad seen to that. Two generations of young men had been used to fertilize ‘some foreign field’. . Jingoism was dead; but strangely, not too many Britons seemed to notice. The myth persisted - superbly enshrined in the Last Night of the Proms - Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory, etc.

  Now, in the mid 1970’s, when Britain is economically and militarily at a low ebb, our pretensions as an effective nuclear power seem even more absurd.

  Twenty years ago, at this time of writing, the West chose to avoid a nuclear confrontation over Hungary. Several years later, when a consignment of nuclear warheads was routed for Cuba, President Kennedy accepted the challenge; and that time, Russia backed down.

  The Aldermaston fervour has waned. We all know that nuclear war is madness - the film Dr. Strangelove made the point admirably -and we have learned to live with the threat. We rely heavily on fail-safe systems and a modicum of international sanity.

  But what would happen if, say, some extremist groups in the

  Middle East or Central Africa managed to get hold of a few nuclear missiles? Would the conflict escalate?

  The very existence of nuclear strike forces is, itself, a symptom of madness.

  At the time of writing, NATO has a strike force of about 7000 nuclear warheads. Over 100,000 U.S. Servicemen have access to them. A recent Congressional Enquiry established that, in 1972 alone, more than 3000 of their key personnel were dismissed from service because of alcoholism, the use of drugs and/or mental instability.

  Fail Safe? How can you guarantee fail-safe systems in the light of such facts?

  The Russian capability is not accurately known. But the balance of tenor is probably comparable.

  In short, there are enough nuclear weapons, together with the missiles to deliver them, to destroy civilization completely.

  What the situation will be like in a few years, when so-called Third World countries develop sufficient technology to produce their own nuclear weapons, I shudder to think.

  Am I trying to frighten you?

  Yes.

  It is my task as a novelist to entertain. It is my duty as a human being to point out that, within the last quarter of a century, mankind itself has become an endangered species.

  The first part of Seed of Light may have, I hope, at least a certain period charm; but I am convinced that the theme of the entire novel is even more relevant now than when it was written.

  Edmund Cooper

  February 1977

  Part One

  In the neighborhood lived a very famous dervish, who passed for the best philosopher in Turkey; him they went to consult: Pangloss, who was their spokesman, addressed him thus:

  “Master, we come to entreat you to tell us why so strange, an animal as man has been formed”

  “Why do you trouble your head about it?” said the dervish. “Is it any business of yours?”

  “But, my Reverend Father.’’said Candide, “there is a horrible deal of evil on the earth”

  “What signifies it” said the dervish, “whether there is evil or good? When his Highness sends a ship to Egypt. does he trouble his head whether the rats in the vessel are at their ease or not?”

  Voltaire: Candide

  Perhaps you think me mad, gentlemen? IVeil, If so, I plead guilty; I quite agree with you. Man is essentially a constructive animal—an animal for ever destined to strive towards a goal, and to apply himself to the pursuit of engineering, in the shape of ceaseless attempts to build a road which shall lead hint to an unknown destination . . Man loves to construct and to lay out roads—of that there can be no question: but why does he also love so passionately to bring about general ruin and chaos? Answer me that.

  Dostoevsky: Letters from the Underworld

  BITTER HARVEST

  Proem

  Once, perhaps, Neanderthal Man felt like a conqueror. Was he not the Upright Animal—a weapon-maker, a toolmaker, an organizer of society? And with his weapons, his tools and his capacity for organization, could he not attack and overcome other individually more powerful animals?

  Given enough time, his numbers would have increased and his skills developed sufficiently to make him Lord of the Forests; perhaps, ultimately. Lord of the Earth.

  But he was not given enough time. He was already obsolete. For strangers came from the south and from the east They, too, were upright animals—weapon-makers, toolmakers, organizers of society.

  They came drifting into the world of Neanderthal Man in twos and threes, in families and tribes. And they brought with them weapons that were sharper, tools that were more functional, a society that was more tightly organized. They brought with them greater intelligence. They brought a death sentence.

  They dispossessed the Neanderthals of their caves and their hunting-grounds, their food and even their children. For the newcomers were ruthless; and they fo
ught a war of extermination.

  So, after enduring for thousands of years. Neanderthal Man—the elite of European animal life—disappeared in a matter of generations. The conqueror had fallen before a greater conqueror. And the world was reserved for the exclusive domination of homo sapiens . .

  The history of Man is a history of conquest: the conquest of hunger and superstition, disease and ignorance. Beginning as a nomadic hunter, a seeker of berries and nuts and roots and small game, Man was not content with a simple destiny.

  In the conquest of hunger, he learned how to make weapons that would kill at a distance; how to construct ingenious, self-operating traps. And eventually, he learned how to return the seeds of the wild wheat to the earth and thus safeguard himself against future hunger; how to domesticate and breed animals whose sole function was to serve, in living and dying, the needs of Man the master.

  Families united into tribes, and tribes into nations. Cities and civilizations came into being—monuments to the abilities of Man as an organizer, Man as a builder, Man as an artist-scientist-priest. Man as a conqueror . .

  Records were made, sicknesses were cured, laws were formulated, empires were conceived, oceans and continents were crossed. Machines that were driven by wind and water gave way to machines that were driven by steam.

  Intoxicated by his own genius, Man rushed headlong into the age of the powered machines. Coal and oil extended his conquests of land and sea and air. Electricity made a wishful daydream of remote and instantaneous communication into a commonplace reality…

  But no conquest is absolute. What of the conquest of hunger if one man or one nation starves? What of the conquest of superstition if it is replaced by rigid orthodoxy? What of the conquest of power if Man wastes his surplus energy in destruction?

  Man, the conqueror, ignored the problems posed by his triumphs. Instead, his pride sought new challenges.

  Even before the old knowledge was integrated, before the old machines had been given a chance to fulfil their purpose, Man’s curiosity, his intellectual arrogance, his insatiable desire for power drove him to reproduce the fantastic energies of the sun and lift his covetous eyes towards the stars.

  In the beginning, Man was a hunter and a warrior. His nature had not changed. Even as he hunted down the secrets of the fierce energies of the sun, even as he used them to create new and terrible weapons, even as he dreamed of harnessing them to extend his conquest to the stars, all his triumphs were overshadowed by one lasting defeat.

  He had survived every natural hazard of existence. He had triumphed over hunger, climate and disease. He had accepted every challenge the planet had to offer. And he had conquered everything—except himself.

  Neanderthal Man had gone down before a superior enemy.

  But, with the power at his command, Modem Man had no superior enemy—except himself.

  There remained, therefore, only one basic threat to his ancient desire for racial immortality.

  It was a threat that, until the atomic age, he had never seriously considered.

  It was racial suicide.

  Chapter One - The World

  It was a fine June evening, and a pall of heat hung over the city like a sad benediction. The faint nostalgia of summer crept along dusty streets and half-deserted squares, feeling its way gently as a blind man towards the city’s heart.

  The man at the window stared out through a turquoise patch of sky between the hazy defiance of St. Paul’s and the sharper outline of the Old Bailey. Those venerable landmarks still stood, quietly enduring: but even they had begun to wear the bright ephemeral glory of the doomed.

  However, Sir Charles Craig was not at that moment engaged in his frequent and bitter pastime of counting the few architectural survivors of an atomic war. His grey, tired eyes were focussed upon some non-physical horizon, some elusive dimension where the past and the future were one and indivisible, and where the present was an abstraction without meaning. He was seeking an answer that he already knew—seeking it in the forlorn hope that history might be wrong; that some latter-day miracle might even yet fasten on to the heart of civilized man; and that London, as a fact and a symbol, might still be saved.

  But there would be no miracle, for the future belonged to the past and the past could not be changed. For a hundred thousand years man had roamed heedlessly in his own condemned playground, fashioning club. axe. arrow, sword, cannon and bomb; tirelessly giving battle to the enemy that could never be defeated, the enemy within. And now, because of this, Pittsburgh. Detroit. Birmingham. Sheffield, Hamburg, Marseilles, Kharkov and Leningrad were no more: London, Paris and all the cities in the world were dying.

  It was not pleasant to watch a civilization die; nor was it reasonable to carry on as if it would never happen.

  As he gazed with unseeing eyes through the deepening patch of sky’ Sir Charles wondered how he could hope to raise any confidence in a project which he himself regarded as already destined to fail. At best, this latest achievement was a shabby emulation of what had already been accomplished years ago—before atomic war wrought havoc with the economies of the great nations. It was a project that had virtually crippled the resources of the Commonwealth. And, at best, it would delay Armageddon until the eastern economy and the eastern scientists produced their inevitable answer. Unless . . unless a miracle happened. A miracle of faith and understanding. A miracle of acceptance.

  But while Sir Charles was prepared to work for a miracle, be could not bring himself to believe in it. Miracles were obsolete. They had gone out of fashion nearly two thousand years ago.

  As he contemplated the latest synthetic star to be flung up into the heavens, Sir Charles remembered once more that first giant mushroom which, decades ago, had towered with sudden deathly beauty over a city called Hiroshima. Since then its terrible spores had blown about a helpless, fear-ridden world, swallowing city after city until those who remained intellectually alive knew that the end was in sight.

  Sir Charles Craig, Prime Minister of what was still optimistically termed the United Kingdom, shrugged his shoulders and wished that he had never been born . .

  There was a movement in the room behind him. That would be Lord Drayton, his scientific adviser—the incomprehensible Drayton, whose mere presence was sufficient to make the Prime Minister believe that he was only a neurotic old pessimist, viewing the world with the jaundiced attitude of one who is too much alone.

  Sir Charles gave a barely perceptible sigh, and turned his attention back to the room. Lord Drayton met him with a cheery smile.

  “Ninety seconds to go, Charles. You ought to settle yourself in front of the stereo-camera and look a hit more confident…Is your chair still on the chalk-mark? There, that’s better. You are supposed to be giving a message of hope, not a funeral oration.*’

  “That.” said Sir Charles, permitting himself a thin smile, “is n debatable point.”

  However, with a facility born of much experience, his 10 features began to register an expression of confidence—the discreet mask of the statesman.

  Presently, the red light flickered. Sir Charles fingered his typescript nervously and cleared his throat.

  “You know what they will be saying.” whispered Drayton with a’ grin. ’Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are!”

  An appreciative gleam came into the Prime Minister’s eyes; and at that moment, his three-dimensional image came to life on ten million stereo-screens.

  The man and the girl walked hand in hand along the edge of the fen. They watched the sun sinking low over fields of com and sugar beet, over tumbledown thatched cottages and a ruined windmill. The air was heavy with all the scents of summer; heavy, too. with a dreamlike unreality. It was as if the whole scene was a backcloth which, presently, would be lifted when the lights died and the audience went home.

  There was no visible indication that a landscape which bad endured for centuries was nearing its end; but the signs were there for those who wished to read them. Ove
r the hill behind the windmill was a large crater, a dustbowl. hundreds of yards in diameter. Once it had been an airfield runway; and before that, good farming land. Eleven miles to the east was another crater, a dead town, surrounded now by a pathetic fringe of prefabricated houses, shops and offices—more dead than ever with its thin halo of glass and concrete, its perimeter of insistent life.

  Michael Spenser looked at his companion and wondered why she chose to isolate herself in this drowsy corner of East Anglia; why she should waste herself upon the routine activities of country life when there was so much to be seen, so much to be done, and so little time left? Then he looked again at the placid landscape and suddenly had the odd thought that she was no longer concerned with reality but with the preservation of this, her private dream.

  She was twenty-three—seven years younger than himself. It was strange that Professor Bollinden’s daughter should live here in an almost medieval simplicity while her father pushed the frontiers of science out into space once more.

  But Mary Bollinden. as Michael had quickly learned, was a person who knew her own mind. She had inherited her father’s characteristic determination, his ability to follow the course he had set himself with little or no compromise.

  “People still get married, you know,’* said Michael, tentatively reopening an argument in which he had already been checkmated. “There have been wars before, and there will be wars again. History itself is one long blasted crisis. But the human race has survived it so far.’

  She gave him a quick smile, poised between affection and mockery.

  “So far!” echoed Mary. “We have been incredibly silly and incredibly lucky . . But it’s not that You know the real reason, don’t you?”