Issue #27 RRP $8.95 Rory Douglas Abel Aliette ... - Upgrade Systems

8
Bill McKinley
Lewis shook his head. “They’re blackmailing you. They could do it whether you
agreed to lecture or not. It wouldn’t be your fault. It wouldn’t be your decision, even
if they made one of your eagles into Hermann Goering.”
“Now that would be a fat eagle,” Warnie said. He poured his tea and stirred
an entire teaspoon of sugar into his cup. “It’s just as well we got those extra sugar
coupons.”
Lewis looked at him sharply. “Stop it, Warnie. We all know you’re in the thick of
the black market.”
“I might have to see a chap later, since you mention it.”
“Well, don’t interrupt. This is important,” Lewis said. He turned back to Tolkien.
“On the other hand, it would be your decision to walk up to that lectern. You would
face the consequences in the end, because a decision like that would change the
eternal part of you inside. You have to stand fast and say no.”
Tolkien savoured the peaty taste of his drink. “That sounds like something you
took out of your pain book.”
“It’s what I believe, and of course Warnie agrees with me.” Lewis looked to him
for confirmation.
“I’m sorry, Jack. I don’t,” Warnie said.
“You weren’t even listening.”
“I heard you, and I don’t agree with you. Maybe it’s all the extra sugar.” He said
to Tolkien, “Tell them how you’ve proved that Beowulf was written by a Christian,
looking back on the pagan past. I can’t see any harm in that, and it’d keep the
Germans off your back. They wouldn’t stop at taking your rights away. They’d hound
you, you’d never finish your book, and there is so much in it to give people hope for
the fight ahead.”
“My book isn’t about fighting the Germans,” Tolkien said. “I’ve always hated
allegory.”
“It doesn’t matter. People will apply your book to the times anyway. You have to
keep it secret, keep it safe, and finish it soon,” Warnie said.
Lewis snorted loudly. “It would be impossible to get a publisher. They can’t
print anything without a permit, and none of them want to disappear like Stanley
Unwin.”
Warnie said, “Just finish the book and do it quickly. You’ll be able to publish it
somehow — even if it ends up circulated in chapters like Tyndale.”
“You mean the Lollards,” Jack snapped. “Tyndale printed his Bibles in Holland and
smuggled them into England in barrels.”
Tolkien shifted uneasily in his armchair. “I don’t suppose there’s any more of that
whisky?”
They talked about other things for half an hour, then Tolkien left. There was an
eleven o’clock curfew, and he had a long walk home to Northmoor Road.
The house was silent. Edith had long gone to bed. Tolkien sat in the tobaccoscented
darkness of his study and thought about the German demand.