Chapter 3: The Cipher Message

Benda conducted me personally to a room very much like an ordinary hotel room. He was glad to see me. I could tell that from his grip of welcome, from his pleased face, from the warmth in his voice, from the eager way in which he hovered around me. I sat down on a bed and he on a chair.

“Now tell me all about it,” I said.

The room was very still, and in its privacy, following Benda’s demonstrative welcome, I expected some confidential revelations. Therefore I was astonished.

“There isn’t much to tell,” he said gaily. “My work is congenial, fascinating, and there’s enough of it to keep me out of mischief. The pay is good, and the life pleasant and easy.”

I didn’t know what to say for a moment. I had come there with my mind made up that there was something suspicious afoot. But he seemed thoroughly happy and satisfied.

“I’ll admit that I treated you a little shabbily in this matter of letters,” he continued. “I suppose it is because I’ve had a lot of new and interesting problems on my mind, and it’s been hard to get my mind down to writing letters. But I’ve got a good start on my job, and I’ll promise to reform.”

I was at a loss to pursue that subject any further.

“Have you seen Smith and Francisco?” I asked.

He nodded.

“How do they like it?”

“Both are enthusiastic about the wonderful opportunities in their respective fields. It’s a fact: no engineer has ever before had such resources to work with, on such a vast scale, and with such a free hand. We’re laying the framework for a city of ten millions, all thoroughly systematized and efficient. There is no city in the world like it; it’s an engineer’s dream of Utopia.”

I was almost convinced. There was only the tiniest of lurking suspicions that all was not well, but it was not powerful enough to stimulate me to say anything. But I did determine to keep my eyes open.

I might as well admit in advance that from that moment to the time when I left the Science Community four days later, I saw nothing to confirm my suspicions. I met Smith and Francisco at dinner and the four of us occupied a table to ourselves in a vast dining hall, and no one paid for the meal nor for subsequent ones. They also seemed content, and talked enthusiastically of their work.

I was shown over the city, through its neat, efficient streets, through its comfortable dormitories each housing hundreds of families as luxuriously as any modern hotel, through its marvelous factories where production had passed the stage of labor and had assumed the condition of a devoted act of worship. These factory workers were not toiling: they were worshipping their God, of Whom each machine was a part. Touching their machine was touching their God. This machinery, while involving no new principles, was developed and coordinated to a degree that exceeded anything I had ever seen anywhere else.

I saw the famous Science Temple in the shape of a huge dynamo-generator, with its interior decorations, paintings, carvings, frescoes, and pillars, all worked out on the motive of machinery; with its constant streams of worshippers in blue serge, performing their conventional rites and saying their prayer formulas at altars in the forms of lathes, microscopes, motors, and electron-tubes.

“You haven’t become a Science Communist yourself?” I bantered Benda.

There was a metallic ring in the laugh he gave.

“They’d like to have me!” was all he said.

I was rather surprised at the emptiness of the large and well-kept park to which Benda took me. It was beautifully landscaped, but only a few scattering people were there, lost in its vast reaches.

“These people seem to have no need of recreation,” Benda said. “They do not come here much. But I confess that I need air and relaxation, even if only for short snatches. I’ve been too busy to get away for long at a time, but this park has helped me keep my balance--I’m here every day for at least a few minutes.”

“Beautiful place,” I remarked. “A lot of strange trees and plants I never saw before--”

“Oh, mostly tropical forms, common enough in their own habitats. They have steam pipes under the ground to grow them. I’ve been trying to learn something about them. Fancy me studying natural history! I’ve never cared for it, but here, where there is no such things as recreation, I have become intensely interested in it as a hobby. I find it very much of a rest to study these plants and bugs.”

“Why don’t you run up to New York for a few days?”

“Oh, the time will come for that. In the meanwhile, I’ve got an idea all of a sudden. Speaking of New York, will you do me a little service? Even though you might think it silly?”

“I’ll do anything I can,” I began, eager to be of help to him.

“It has been somewhat of a torture to me,” Benda continued, “to find so many of these forms which I am unable to identify. I like to be scientific, even in my play, and reference books on plants and insects are scarce here. Now, if you would carry back a few specimens for me, and ask some of the botany and zoology people to send me their names--”

“Fine!” I exclaimed. “I’ve got a good-sized pocket notebook I can carry them in.”

“Well then, please put them in the order in which I hand them to you, and send me the names by number. I am pretty thoroughly familiar with them, and if you will keep them in order, there is no need for me to keep a list. The first is a blade of this queer grass.”

I filed the grass blade between the first two pages of my book.

“The next is this unusual-looking pinnate leaf.” He tore off a dry leaflet and handed me a stem with three leaflets irregularly disposed of it.

“Now leave a blank page in your book. That will help me remember the order in which they come.”

Next came a flat insect, which, strangely enough, had two legs missing on one side. However, Benda was moving so fast that I had to put it away without comment. He kept darting about and handing me twigs of leaves, little sticks, pieces of bark, insects, not seeming to care much whether they were complete or not; grass-blades, several dagger-shaped locust-thorns, cross-sections of curious fruits, moving so rapidly that in a few moments my notebook bulged widely, and I had to warn him that its hundred leaves were almost filled.

“Well, that ought to be enough,” he said with a sigh after his lively exertion. “You don’t know how I’ll appreciate your indulging my foolish little whim.”

“Say!” I exclaimed. “Ask something of me. This it nothing. I’ll take it right over to the Botany Department, and in a few days you ought to have a list of names fit for a Bolshevik.”

“One important caution,” he said. “If you disturb their order in the book, or even the position on the page, the names you send me will mean nothing to me. Not that it will be any great loss,” he added whimsically. “I suppose I’ve become a sort of fan on this, like the business men who claim that their office work interferes with their golf.”

We walked leisurely back toward the big dormitory. It was while we were crossing a street that Benda stumbled, and, to dodge a passing truck, had to catch my arm, and fell against me. I heard his soft voice whisper in my ear:

“Get out of this town as soon as you can!”

I looked at him in startled amazement, but he was walking along, shaking himself from his stumble, and looking up and down the street for passing trucks.

“As I was saying,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice, “we expect to reach the one-and-one-quarter million mark this month. I never saw a place grow so fast.”

I felt a great leap of sudden understanding. For a moment my muscles tightened, but I took my cue.

“Remarkable place,” I said calmly; “one reads a lot of half-truths about it. Too bad I can’t stay any longer.”

“Sorry you have to leave,” he said, in exactly the right tone of voice. “But you can come again.”

How thankful I was for the forty years of playing and working together that had accustomed us to that sort of team-work! Unconsciously we responded to one another’s cues. Once our ability to “play together” had saved my life. It was when we were in college and were out on a cross-country hike together; Benda suddenly caught my hand and swung it upward. I recognized the gesture; we were cheerleaders and worked together at football games, and we had one stunt in which we swung our hands over our heads, jumped about three feet, and let out a whoop. This was the “stunt” that he started out there in the country, where we were by ourselves. Automatically, without thinking, I swung my arms and leaped with him and yelled. Only later did I notice the rattlesnake over which I had jumped. I had not seen that I was about to walk right into it, and he had noticed it too late to explain. A flash of genius suggested the cheering stunt to him.