Carlson rubbed hands. On its share a considerable part of the huge income which was brought in by anabiosis fell.
– Well? – he fatly spoke to Gilbert. – Now you understand that the schemer means? Your money and my projects brought you millions. Without me you would be ruined with your coal mines long ago!
– Coal mines give me a loss also now – Gilbert answered. – There is no sale, workers are pig-headed, the government refuses subsidies. Yes, Carlson, life – difficult piece! You the good schemer, but life carries out the projects contrary to our desire. We assumed to freeze the unemployed together with their families, and instead turned our refrigerators into sanatoria and prisons!
– Patience! Also workers will come! Now you have spare capitals. Promise good contents to families of workers in case the head of their family wants to subject himself to anabiosis. Believe, they will go to this rod! And when they will get gradually used to anabiosis, it will be possible to reduce the price. Eventually they will ask that they were frozen together with families, if only not to starve! They will come! The need will tire out! Believe me, they will come!
And they came…
VI. IN ICES OF GREENLAND
Cold autumn wind knocked down. The young miner-coalminer working in the Cardiff mines, having bent the head, slowly approached the small cottage which was seen through naked branches of a garden.
Bendzhemin Johnson stood at a door, deeply sighed before opening it, and, at last, timidly entered the house.
His wife, Frederica Johnson, washed the dishes at a big fireplace. The two-year-old son Samuel already slept.
Frederica interrogatively looked at the husband.
Johnson, without undressing, fell by a chair and quietly spoke:
– Did not get…
The plate slipped out Frederica’s hands and with a ring fell in a wash-tub. She with fear looked back to the child, but he did not wake up.
– The strike committee has no more means… In a bench do not trust for…
Frederica ceased to wash the dishes, wiped a hand about an apron and silently sat down to a table, looking in a corner to hide the nervousness from the husband.
Johnson slowly took out from a lung pocket not on a coat season the crumpled issue of the newspaper and put on a table before the wife.
– On here, read.
And Frederica, brushing away a tear which dimmed it eyes, read the large announcement:
«Five pounds a week receive families of the workers who agreed to oversleep till spring…» There was an explanation Further what is anabiosis. Frederica already heard about it. Gilbert’s agents conducted promotion of anabiosis among workers for a long time.
– You will not make it! – firmly she told – We are not the cattle that we were frozen!
– City gentlemen do not disdain anabiosis!
– With fat your gentlemen rage! They to us not the decree!
– Listen, Frederica, but, eventually, in it there is nothing neither terrible, nor shameful. Dangers to me any. I not shtreykbrekherstvy, do not infringe on anybody’s interests.
– And mine, and your own interests? Same almost death, though for a while! We have to fight for the right for life, but not rest in bed the frozen hulks until then, dock misters owners will not deign to revive us!
She got excited and spoke too loudly.
Little Samuel woke up, began to cry and began to ask to eat. Frederica took it on hands, began to rock to sleep. Johnson with melancholy looked at a fair-haired head of the son. He so turned pale lately! Poblednela and Frederik…
The child fell asleep, and Frederica fell at a table, having hidden the face in hands. It could not constrain tears more.
Bendzhemin stroke-oared rough her fluffy hair, same light as at the son, and it is tender as child, persuaded:
– I grieve about you! Understand! Tomorrow Samuel will have big circles of the smoking milk and white loaf, and you on a table will have a good piece of beef, potatoes, oil, coffee… It is difficult to be separated, but it only till spring! Apple-trees in our garden will blossom, and I will be with you again. I will meet you, cheerful, healthy, blossoming as our apple-trees!.
Frederica once again sobbed and stopped.
– It is time to sleep, Ben…
It is more they about anything did not speak.
But Bendzhemin knew that it agrees. And the next day, having said goodbye to the wife and the child, it already flew on the passenger airplane to Greenland.
The gray-green veil of the Atlantic Ocean was replaced by polar pictures of the North. The ice desert with the mountain tops scattered on it here and there… From time to time the airplane flew by low above the ground, and then owners of these desert places – polar bears were visible. At the sight of the airplane they in horror rose by racks, stretching paws up, as if asking mercy, then started running away with an unexpected speed.
Johnson involuntarily smiled to them, envied severe, but their free life.
In the distance constructions and airfield seemed.
– Arrived!
Further events went extraordinary quickly.
Johnson was invited in Konservatoriuma office where wrote down his surname, the address and supplied with number which was attached to a hand in the form of a bracelet.
Then he went down to underground rooms.
The underground car flew with terrific speed down, crossing a number of horizontal mines. Temperature gradually increased. In the top mines it was much below zero whereas about ten degrees below rose.
The car unexpectedly stopped.
Johnson entered brightly lit room in the middle of which there was a platform with four metal ropes going to a wide opening in a ceiling. On the platform there was a low bed made by a white sheet. Changed clothes of Johnson for a light dressing gown and suggested to lay down in a bed. Put on a mask the person, forcing it to breathe some couples.
– It is possible? – he heard a voice of the doctor. And the same minute the platform with its bed began to rise up. He felt everything the amplifying cold soon. At last cold became intolerable. He tried to shout, descend from the platform, but all members of his body as if hardened… His consciousness began to be stirred up. And suddenly he felt how pleasant warmth spreads on his body. But it was delusion which is experienced by all freezing: in the last effort the organism lifts body temperature before giving all to warmly cold space. In this short time of a thought of Johnson earned with extraordinary speed and clarity. Or rather, it were not thoughts, but bright images. He saw the garden in gold beams of the sun, the apple-trees covered in fluffy white colors, a yellow path on which his little Samuel runs to it towards and after it there is a smiling, young, red-cheeked, blond Frederica…
Then everything began to grow dim, and he finally fainted. In some moment it returned to it, and it opened eyes. Before it, having bent, the young man sat.
– How do you feel, Johnson? – he asked, smiling.
– I thank you, small weakness in a body, and it is generally quite good – Johnson answered, looking around. It lay in the white, brightly lit room.
– Be supported with a glass of wine and broth, and then to the road!
– Allow, the doctor, and how with anabiosis? He was not successful or in mines workers urgently were required?
The young man smiled.
– I am not a doctor. We will be familiar. My surname Kruks. – And he gave to Johnson a hand. – Anabiosis was successful, but we still will manage to talk about it. We are waited by the airplane!
Johnson, being surprised that anabiosis so it is finished soon, quickly put on and rose with Kruks to the surface.
«And Frederica cried probably all night long» – he thought, smiling to a fast meeting.
The entrance to a vault had a big passenger airplane. Around the eternal ice desert was spread. There was a night.
The polar lights polosovat the sky sheaves of beams of the gentle changing coloring.
Johnson, already in a warm fur coat, with pleasure inhaled clean frosty air.
– I will bring you to the house! – told Kruks, helping Johnson to walk upstairs in a cabin.
The airplane quickly rose in air.
Johnson saw the same cross-country terrain, the same frozen craters appearing from time to time for ways as steppe barrows, and the same bears to whom he so envied recently. Here and ancient gray-haired waves of the Atlantic Ocean. It is a little more time, and coast of England heaved in sight in gray fog.
Cardiff… mines… cozy cottages… Here also its white cottage which is buried in dense verdure of a garden is seen. At Johnson heart was strongly clogged. Now he will see Frederica, will take on little Samuel’s hands and will begin to throw up.
«Still, still!» – the kid as usual will murmur.
The airplane was made by an abrupt bend and went down on a lawn at Johnson’s lodge.
VII. RETURN
Johnson in impatience left a cabin.
Air was warm. Having thrown off a fur coat, Johnson ran to a lodge. Крукс hardly kept up with it.
There was a fine autumn evening. The setting sun brightly lit large red apples on garden apple-trees.
– However – with surprise Johnson said – really I overslept till fall?
He ran up to a fencing of a garden and saw the son and the wife. Little Samuel sat among autumn flowers and with laughter threw mother’s apples. Frederica’s face was not visible behind apple-tree branches.
– Samuel! Frederica! – joyfully Johnson cried and, having jumped through a low fencing, ran through beds towards to the wife and the son.
But the kid instead of rushing towards to the father, began to cry, having taken away the approaching Johnson, and in a fright rushed to mother.
Johnson stopped and suddenly uvidat the mistake: it were not Samuel and Frederica though the boy very much resembled his son. Young mother left because of a tree. It was one years with Frederica, same light and ruddy. But hair were more dark. Of course, it is not Frederica! And as soon as he could be mistaken! Possibly, it is one of neighbors or Frederica’s girlfriends.
Johnson slowly approached and bowed. The young woman expectantly looked at it.
– Forgive, I, apparently, frightened your son – he told, getting accustomed to the child and being surprised to similarity with Itself – ale. – Frederica of the house?
– What Frederica? – the woman asked.
– Frederica Johnson, my wife!
– Whether you were mistaken the address? – the woman answered. – Frederica is not here…
– Pretty business! That I was mistaken in the address of own house!
– Your house?.
– And whose? – This confused woman began to irritate Johnson.
On a threshold of a lodge the young man of years of thirty three attracted obviously, seemed noise of voices.
– In what business, Elaine? – he asked, without descending from a step of a porch and popykhivy a short tube.
– Business is in that – Johnson answered that during my absence here, obviously, there were some changes the question turned not to it – … Others lodged in my house…
– In your house? – derisively the young man standing on a porch asked.
– Yes, in my house! – Johnson answered, having waved a hand on the cottage.
– With whom I have honor to speak? – the young man asked.
– I am Bendzhemin Johnson!
– Bendzhemin Johnson? – the young man asked again and burst out laughing. You hear, Elaine? – he addressed the woman. – One more Bendzhemin Johnson and owner of this cottage!
– Allow to assure you – suitable Kruks suddenly put in a ward – that before you really Bendzhemin Johnson. – And he pointed to Johnson by a hand.
– It becomes entertaining. And with itself dragged the witness! Allow also you to tell that your joke is unsuccessful. Thirty three years I was Bendzhemin Johnson who was born in this house and its owner, and now you want to convince me that the owner of the house, Bendzhemin Johnson, this young man!
– I not only want, but also I hope to convince you of it if you allow to come into the house and to explain you some circumstances, obviously to unknown to you.
Крукс said so convincingly that the young man, having thought a little, invited him and Johnson to the house.
With nervousness Johnson entered the house which left so recently. He still hoped to meet on the usual place, at a fireplace, Frederica and the son playing at her legs on a floor. But they were not there…
With greedy curiosity Johnson threw the room in which carried out so many joyful and bitter minutes.
All furniture was unfamiliar, alien to it.
Only over a fireplace still painted plates Elizabethan times – a family jewelry Dzhonsonov hung.
And at a fireplace in a deep chair the gray-haired, decrepit old man with the legs wrapped in a plaid, despite warm day sat. The old man took entered an unfriendly view.
– The father – addressed the young man the old man – these people claim that one of them Bendzhemin Johnson and the owner of the house. Whether you wish to catch one more sonny?
– Bendzhemin Johnson – the old man proshamkat, examining Kruks – so called my father… but he died in Greenland long ago, in this damned glacier where froze people!.
– Allow me to tell how there was a business – Kruks answered. – First of all, Johnson not I, and here it. I Kruks. Scientist, historian.
And, addressing the old man, it began the story:
– To you was if I am not mistaken, about two years, when your father, Bendzhemin Johnson, fell into a trap the coalman Gilbert and decided to subject himself to «freezing» to save you and your mother from starvation during unemployment. Also many other suffered much and desperate family workers followed Johnson’s example soon. Being empty Konservatorium on the northwest coast of Greenland quickly was filled with bodies of the frozen workers. But Carlson and Gilbert were mistaken in the calculations.
Freezing of workers did not solve the crisis which endured the English capitalism. Even on the contrary: it only aggravated the inflamed passions of class fight. The most firm workers were revolted with «the frozen human flesh» as they called application of anabiosis to «conservation» of the unemployed, and used freezing as propaganda means. Revolution broke out. Group of the armed workers, having captured airplanes, went to Greenland with the purpose to recover the brothers who were dead asleep and to put them in ranks of fighting.
Then Carlson and Gilbert, wishing to anticipate events, gave on radio the order to the servants in Greenland to blow up Konservatorium, hoping to explain this crime with accident.
The radiotelegram was intercepted, both Carlson and Gilbert incurred deserved punishment. However radio waves fly quicker than any airplane. And when pilots went down at the purpose of the flight, they found the abysses only gaping, smoking, fragments of constructions and pieces of frozen human meat. It was succeeded to dig out several untouched accident of bodies, but also these died from too bystry temperature increase or maybe from suffocation. Works were at a loss the fact that plans underground телохранилищ disappeared. It was necessary only to put a monument over this sad place. There passed seventy three years…
Johnson involuntarily screamed.
– And not so long ago, studying history of our revolution on archival materials, I found Gilbert’s statement with a request for permission in archive of one of the former ministries to it to construct Konservatorium for conservation of the unemployed. Gilbert in detail and eloquently wrote about what benefit can be derived from this means in «business an izzhitiya of periodic crises and related working disorders». The minister’s hand on this statement wrote the instructions: «Of course, it is better if they peacefully rest, than to revolt to resolve…»