The Tide Went Out (British Library Science Fiction Classics Book 5) by Charles Eric Maine

Author:Charles Eric Maine [Maine, Charles Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Drought, apocalypse, armageddon, nuclear, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, classic, 60s, british
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2019-01-23T05:00:00+00:00

When Wade was discharged from hospital and returned to his home, he found that the house had been ransacked. Everything of value, however trivial, had been stolen. The rear windows had been smashed and the greater part of the furniture was missing. They had taken his clothes, his books, his portable typewriter, and worst of all, they had taken the small stockpile of cigarettes and whisky that he had been carefully building up.

He inspected the desolate rooms, stripped of carpets and lino, and the bedrooms, stripped of beds and bedding, and cursed humanity as a whole. He attempted to phone the police, but found that the microphone unit had even been stolen from the handset.

From a callbox he notified the police, and presently they came round and investigated, but their manner was indifferent and lethargic. This sort of thing was going on all the time, the sergeant pointed out. Property no longer had any value. Crime had become a natural function of society. The world consisted of have-nots for the most part, and they took what they wanted from the haves. There was little the police could do about it. But they made notes and compiled an inventory of the stolen items, then said good morning and departed.

Wade returned to his office in the Consort Building. He travelled in a crowded Underground train. No buses were running, because of the fuel shortage, and the only remaining modes of transportation were the electric train services and a number of horse-drawn taxis.

Patten was in his office when he arrived—a frantic and bewildered Patten, partially engulfed in a small mountain of documents.

Patten breathed a huge sigh of relief when he saw Wade. He stretched out his arms and smiled broadly. “Wade,” he said happily, “you’re the nicest thing I’ve seen in days.” He stood up and waved one arm in a gesture of renunciation over the desk. “It’s all yours, Wade. I’ve had more than my fill.”

As an afterthought he added: “Are you well?”

“Well enough,” Wade conceded.

He settled down to work with no great enthusiasm. The signals from other I.B.I. centres overseas were depressing in the extreme. In Italy there had been wide-scale riots and the troops had killed more than twenty thousand people. China was a land of the dead, and the dead lay everywhere in the streets of the towns and in the open country. Japan had virtually ceased to exist. Martial law was the order of the day in Australia and New Zealand. Russia had embarked upon a programme of eugenic control of population, selecting those most suited for survival on a dialectical and ideological basis, and exterminating those who failed to reach the required standard. The United States of America was a land divided among itself, with individual states demanding and acquiring autonomy, and dealing with their own particular problems as they severally saw fit. But everywhere death was a prominent factor; indeed, surveying the statistics as a whole, death had become a scientific and legitimate technique in the fight for survival.

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