Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

There Lanny sat in silence for perhaps twenty minutes, and had about concluded that his hundred marks had been wasted, when he heard a sort of cooing voice, like a child’s, saying in English: "What is it that you want, sir?" He replied: "I want news about a young friend who may or may not be in the spirit world." After another wait the voice said: "An old gentleman comes. He says you do not want him."

Lanny had learned that you must always be polite to any spirit. He said: "I am always glad to meet an old friend. Who is he?"

So came an experience which a young philosopher would retain as a subject of speculation for the rest of his life. A deep masculine voice seemed to burst the tiny room, declaring: "Men have forgotten the Word of God:" Lanny didn’t have to ask: "Who are you?" for it was just as if he were sitting in the study of a rather dreary New England mansion with hundred-year-old furniture, listening to his Grandfather Samuel expounding Holy Writ. Not the feeble old man with the quavering voice who had said that he would not be there when Lanny came again, but the grim gunmaker of the World War days who had talked about sin, knowing that Lanny was a child of sin—but all of us were that in the sight of the Lord God of Sabaoth.

"All the troubles in the world are caused by men ceasing to hear the Word of God," announced this surprising voice in the darkness. "They will continue to suffer until they hear and obey. So is it, world without end, amen."

"Yes, Grandfather," said Lanny, just as he had said many times in the ancestral study. Wishing to be especially polite, he asked: "Is this really you, Grandfather?"

"All flesh is grass, and my voice is vain, except that I speak the words which God has given to men. I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread."

Either that was the late president of Budd Gunmakers, or else a highly skilled actor! Lanny waited a respectful time, and then inquired: "What is it you wish of me, Grandfather?"

"You have not heeded the Word!" exploded the voice.

Lanny could think of many Words to which this statement might apply; so he waited, and after another pause the voice went on: "Swear now therefore unto me by the Lord, that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me."

Lanny knew only too well what that meant. The old man had objected strenuously to the practice known as birth control. He had wanted grandchildren, plenty of them, because that was the Lord’s command. Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. It had been one of Samuel Budd’s obsessions, and the first time Irma had been taken to see him he had quoted the words of old King Saul to David. But Irma had disregarded the injunction; she didn’t want a lot of babies, she wanted to have a good time while she was young. The price which nature exacts for babies is far too high for fashionable ladies to pay. So now the old man had come back from the grave!

Or was it just Lanny’s subconscious mind? His guilty conscience —plus that of Irma’s, since she was defying not merely Lanny’s grandfather in the spirit world, but her own mother in this world! A strange enough phenomenon in either case.

"I will bear your words in mind, Grandfather," said Lanny, with the tactfulness which had become his very soul. "How am I to know that this really is you?"

"I have already taken steps to make sure that you know," replied the voice. "But do not try to put me off with polite phrases."

That was convincing, and Lanny was really quite awestricken. But still, he wasn’t going to forget about Freddi. "Grandfather, do you remember Bess’s husband, and his young brother? Can you find out anything about him?"

But Grandfather could be just as stubborn as Grandson. "Remember the Word of the Lord," the voice commanded; and then no more. Lanny spoke two or three times, but got no answer. At last he heard a sigh in the darkness, and the soft fluorescent light was switched on, and there sat Madame Diseuse, asking in a dull, tired voice: "Did you get what you wanted?"

Lanny arrived at the hotel just a few minutes before Irma, who had consulted two other mediums, chosen from advertisements in the newspapers because they had English names. "Well, did you get anything?" she asked, and Lanny said: "Nothing about Clarinet. Did you?"

"I didn’t get anything at all. It was pure waste of time. One of the mediums was supposed to be a Hindu woman, and she said I would get a letter from a handsome dark lover. The other was a greasy old creature with false teeth that didn’t fit, and all she said was that an old man was trying to talk to me. She wouldn’t tell me his name, and all he wanted was for me to learn some words."

"Did you learn them?"

"I couldn’t help it; he made me repeat them three times, and he kept saying: You will know what they mean. They sounded like they came from the Bible."

"Say them!" exclaimed Lanny.

"And that thou wilt not destroy my name out of my father’s house."

"Oh, my God, Irma! It’s a cross-correspondence!"

"What is that?"

"Don’t you remember the first time you met Grandfather, he quoted a verse from the Bible, telling you to have babies, and not to interfere with the Lord’s will?"

"Yes, but I don’t remember the words."

"That is a part of what he said. He came to me just now and gave me the beginning of it. Swear now therefore unto me by the Lord, that thou wilt not cut off my seed after me, and that thou wilt not destroy my name out of my father’s house. "

"Lanny, how perfectly amazing!" exclaimed the young wife.

"He said he had already taken steps to convince me that it was really he. He had probably already talked to you."

Irma had been living with the spirits now for nearly four years, and had got more or less used to them; but this was the first time she had come upon such an incident. Lanny explained that the literature of psychical research was full of "cross-correspondences." Sometimes one part of a sentence would be given in England and another in Australia. Sometimes there would be references by page and line to a book, and through another medium references to some other book, and when the words were put together they made sense. It seemed to prove that whatever intelligence was at work was bound by none of the limitations of time and space. The main trouble was, it was all so hard to believe—people just couldn’t and wouldn’t face it.

"Well," said Lanny, "do you want to have another baby?"

"What do you suppose Grandfather will do if we don’t?"

"You go and ask him," chuckled Lanny.

Irma didn’t. But a day or two later came a letter from Robbie, telling what the old gentleman would do if they obeyed him. He had established in his will a trust fund for Frances Barnes Budd to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, and had provided the same amount for any other child or children Irma Barnes Budd might bear within two years after his death. The old realist had taken no chances, but added: "Lanny Budd being the father."

The golden-haired and blue-eyed young sports director, Hugo Behr, came to see his American friend, and was taken for a drive. Hugo didn’t need any urging to induce him to "spill the dirt" about the present tendencies of his National Socialist Party; he said he had joined because he had believed it was a Socialist party and there were millions who felt as he did—they wanted it to remain Socialist and they had a right to try to keep it so, and have it carry out at least part of the program upon which it had won the faith of the German masses. Breaking up the great landed estates, socializing basic industries and department stores, abolishing interest slavery— these were the pledges which had been made, millions of times over. But now the party was hand in glove with the Ruhr magnates, and the old program was forgotten; the Führer had come under the spell of men who cared only about power, and if they could have their way, all the energies of the country would go into military preparation and none into social welfare.