Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale) вк-1

by Ivan Yefremov

  Darr Veter recalled that Evda Nahl’s genealogy went back to the ancient Peruvians or Chileans. He greeted her in the manner of the ancient sun worshippers of South America.

  “It has done you good to work with the historians,” said Evda, “thank Veda for that.” Darr Veter hurriedly turned to his friend Veda, but she took him by the hand and led him to a woman with whom he was not acquainted.

  “This is Chara Nandi! All of us here are guests of her and Cart Sann’s, the artist, you know they have been living on this coast for a month already. They have a portable studio at the other end of the bay.”

  Darr Veter held out his hand to the young woman who looked at him with huge blue eyes. For a moment his breath was taken away, there was something about the woman that distinguished her from all others, something that was not mere beauty. She was standing between Veda Kong and Evda Nahl whose natural beauty was refined, as it were, by exceptional intellect and the discipline of lengthy research work but which nevertheless faded before the extraordinary power of the beautiful that emanated from this woman who was a stranger to him.

  “Your name has some sort of resemblance to mine,” began Darr Veter.

  The corners of her tiny mouth quivered as she suppressed a smile.

  “Just as you yourself are like me!”

  Darr Veter looked over the top of the mass of thick, slightly wavy black hair that came level with his shoulder and smiled expansively at Veda.

  “Veter, you don’t know how to pay compliments to the ladies,” said Veda, coyly holding her head on one side.

  “Does one have to know that deception is no longer needed?”

  “One does,” Evda Nahl put in, “and the need for it will never die out!”

  “I’d be glad if you’d explain what you mean,” said Darr Veter, knitting his brows.

  “In a month from now I shall be giving the autumn lecture at the Academy of Sorrow and Joy, and it will contain a lot about spontaneous emotions, but in the meantime…” Evda nodded to Mven Mass who was approaching them.

  The African, as usual, was walking noiselessly and with measured tread. Darr Veter noticed that the tan on Chara’s cheeks became tinged with pink as though the sun that had permeated her body were bursting out through her tanned skin. Mven Mass bowed indifferently.

  “I’ll bring Renn Bose here, he’s sitting over there on a rock.”

  “We’ll all go to him,” suggested Veda, “and on the way we’ll meet Miyiko. She’s gone for the diving apparatus. Chara Nandi, are you coming with us?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Here comes my master. The sun has gone down and work will soon begin.”

  “Posing must be hard work,” said Veda, “it’s a real deed of valour! I couldn’t.”

  “I thought I couldn’t do it, either. But if the artist’s idea attracts you, you enter into the creative work. You seek an incarnation of the image in your own body, there are thousands of shades in every movement, in every curve! You have to catch them like musical notes before they fly away.”

  “Chara, you’re a real find for an artist!”

  “A find!” A deep bass voice interrupted Veda. “And if you only knew how I found her! It’s unbelievable!”

  Artist Cart Sann raised a big fist high in the air and shook it. His straw-coloured hair was tousled by the wind, his weather-beaten face was brick-red and his strong hairy legs sank into the sand a though they were growing there.

  “Come along with us, if you have time,” asked Veda, "and tell us the story.”

  ‘“I’m not much of a story-teller. But still, it’s an amusing tale. I’m interested in reconstructions, especially in the reconstruction of various racial types such as existed in ancient days, right up to the Era of Disunity. After my picture Daughter of Gondwana met with such success I was burning with ambition to reincarnate another racial type. The beauty of the human body is the best expression of race after generations of clean, healthy life. Every race tin the past had its detailed formulas, its canons of beauty I that had been evolved in days of savagery. That is the way we, the artists, understand it, we who are considered to be lagging behind in the storm of the heights of culture. Artists always did think that way, probably from the days of the palaeolithic cave painter. But I’m getting off the track…. I had planned another picture, Daughter of Thetis, of the Mediterranean, that is. It struck me that the myths of ancient Greece, Crete, Mesopotamia, America, Polynesia, all told of gods coming out of the sea. What could be more wonderful than the Hellenic myth of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. The very name, Aphrodite Anadiomene, the Foam-Born, she who rose from the sea…. A goddess, born of foam and conceived by the light of the stars in the nocturnal sea — what people ever invented a legend more poetic….”

  “From starlight and sea-foam,” Veda heard Chara whisper. She cast a side glance at the girl. Her strong profile, like a carving from wood or stone, was like that of some woman of an ancient race. The small, straight, slightly rounded nose, her somewhat sloping forehead, her strong chin and, most important of all, the great distance from the nose to the high ear — all these features typical of the Mediterranean peoples at the time of antiquity were reflected in Chara’s face.

  Unobtrusively Veda examined her from head to foot and thought that everything in her was just a little “too much.” Her skin was too smooth, her waist too narrow, her hips too wide. And she held herself too straight so that her firm bosom became too prominent. Perhaps that was what the artist wanted, strongly defined lines?

  A stone ridge crossed their path and Veda had to correct the impression she had only just received: Chara Nandi jumped from boulder to boulder with an unusual agility, as though she were dancing.

  “She must have Indian blood in her,” decided Veda. “I’ll ask her later on.”

  “My work on the Daughter of Thetis,” the artist continued, “brought me closer to the sea, I had to get a feeling for the sea since my Maid of Crete, like Aphrodite, would arise from the waves and in such a manner that everybody would understand it. When I was preparing to paint the Daughter of Gondwana I spent three years at a forestry station in Equatorial Africa. When that picture was finished I took a job as mechanic on a hydroplane carrying mail around the Atlantic — you know, to all those fisheries and albumin and salt works afloat on big metal rafts in the ocean.

  “One evening I was driving along in the Central Atlantic somewhere to the west of the Azores where the northern current and the counter-current meet. There are always big waves there, rollers that come one after another. My hydroplane rose and fell, one moment almost touching the low clouds and next minute diving deep into the trough between the rollers. The screw raced as it came out of the water. I was standing on the high bridge beside the helmsman. And suddenly… I’ll never forget it!

  “Imagine a wave higher than any of the others that raced towards us. On the crest of this giant wave, right under the low ceiling of rosy-pearl clouds stood a girl, sunburned to the colour of bronze. The wave rolled noiselessly on and she rode it, infinitely proud in her isolation in the midst of that boundless ocean. My boat was swept upwards and we passed the girl who waved us a friendly greeting. Then I could see that she was standing on a surf board fitted with an electric motor and accumulator.”

  “I know the sort,” agreed Darr Veter, “it’s intended for riding the waves.”

  “What amazed me most of all was her complete solitude — there was nothing but low clouds, an ocean empty for hundreds of miles around, the evening twilight and the girl carried along on the crest of a giant wave. That girl….”

  “Was Chara Nandi,” said Evda Nahl. “That’s obvious, but where did she come from?”

  “She was not born of starlight and foam!” chuckled Chara, and her laughter had a surprisingly high, resonant note to it, “merely from the raft of an albumin factory. We were moored on the fringe of the Sargasso Sea where we were cultivating Chlorella[16] and where I was working as a biologist.”


  “Be that as it may,” said Cart Sann, “but from that moment for me you were a daughter of the Mediterranean, born of foam. You were fated to be the model for my future picture. I had been waiting a whole year.” “May we come and look at it?” asked Veda Kong. “Please do, but not during working hours. You had better come in the evening. I work very slowly and cannot tolerate anybody’s presence when I am painting.” “Do you use colours?”

  “Our work has changed very little during the thousands of years that people have painted pictures. The laws of optics and the human eye have remained the same. We have become more receptive to certain tones, new chromokatoptric colours[17]” with internal reflexions contained in the paint layer have been invented, there are a few new methods of harmonizing colours, that’s all; on the whole the artist of antiquity worked in very much the same way as I do today. In some respects he did better. He had confidence and patience — we’ve become more dashing and less confident of ourselves. At times strict nalvete is better for art. But I’m digressing again! It’s time for us to go. Come along, Chara!”

  They all stood still and watched the artist and his model as they walked away.

  “Now I know who he is,” murmured Veda, “I’ve seen the Daughter of Gondwana.”

  “So have I,” said Evda Nahl and Mven Mass together.

  “Gondwana, is that from the land of the Gonds in India?” asked Darr Veter.

  “No, it is the collective name for the southern continents. In general it is the land of the ancient black race.”

  “And what is this Daughter of the Black People like?”

  “It is a simple picture. There is a plateau, the fire of blinding sunlight, the fringe of a formidable tropical forest and in the foreground, a black-skinned girl, walking alone. One half of her face and her firm, tangibly hard, cast-metal body is drenched with blazing sunlight, the other half of her is in deep, transparent half-shadow. A necklace of white animal’s teeth hangs from her neck, her short hair is gathered at the crown of her head and covered with a wreath of fiery red blossoms. Her right arm is raised over her head to push aside the last branches of a tree that bar her way, with her left hand she is pushing a thorny stalk away from her knee. In the halted movement, in the free breathing, and in the strong sweep of the arm there is carefree youth, young life merging with nature into a single whole that is as change able as a river in flood…. This oneness is to be understood as knowledge, the intuitive understanding of the world. In her dark eyes, gazing over a sea of bluish grass towards the faintly visible outlines of mountains, there is a clearly felt uneasiness, the expectation of great trials in the new, freshly discovered world!” Evda Nahl stopped.

  “It isn’t exactly expectation, it is tormenting certainty. She feels the hard lot of the black people and tries to comprehend it,” added Veda Kong. “But how did Cart Sann manage to convey the idea? Perhaps it is in the raising of the thin eyebrows, the neck inclined slightly forward, the open, defenceless back of her head…. And those amazing eyes, filled with the dark wisdom of ancient nature…. The strangest thing of all is that you feel, at the same time, carefree, dancing strength and alarming knowledge.”

  “It’s a pity I haven’t seen it,” said Darr Veter. “I must go to the Palace of History and take a look at it. I can imagine the colours but I can’t imagine the girl’s pose.”

  “The pose?” Evda Nahl stopped, threw the towel from her shoulders, raised her right arm high over her head, leaned slightly backward and turned half facing Darr Veter. Her long leg was slightly raised as though making a short step and not completing it, her toes just touching the ground. Her supple body seemed to blossom forth. They all stood still in frank admiration.

  “Evda, I could never have imagined you like that!” exclaimed Darr Veter, “you’re dangerous. You’re like the half exposed blade of a dagger!”

  “Veter, those clumsy compliments again,” laughed Veda, “why half and not fully exposed?”

  “He’s quite right,” smiled Evda Nahl, relaxing to her normal self, “not fully. Our new acquaintance, Chara Nandi, is a fully drawn and gleaming blade, to use the epic language of Darr Veter.”

  “I can’t believe that anybody can compare with you!” came a hoarse voice from amongst the boulders. Only then did Evda Nahl notice the red hair cut ere brosee and the blue eyes that were gazing at her adoringly with a look such as she had never before seen on anybody’s face.

  “I am Renn Bose!” said the red-headed man, bashfully, as his short, narrow-shouldered figure appeared from behind a boulder.

  “We were looking for you,” said Veda, taking the physicist by the hand, “this is Darr Veter.”

  Renn Bose blushed and the freckles on his face and neck stood out even more prominently than before.

  “I stayed up there for some time,” said Renn Bose, pointing to a rocky slope. “There is an ancient tomb there.”

  “It is the grave of a famous poet who lived a very long time ago,” announced Veda.

  “There’s an inscription on the tomb, here it is.” The physicist unrolled a thin metal sheet with four rows of blue symbols on it.

  “Those are European letters, symbols that were in use before the world linear alphabet was introduced. They had clumsy shapes that were inherited from the still older pictograms. But I know that language.”

  “Then read it, Veda!”

  “Be quiet for a few minutes!” she demanded and they all obediently sat down on the rocks. Very soon Veda stood before the seated people and read her improvised translation:

  Thoughts and events and our dreams are all fleeting,

  Vanquished by time like a ship lost at sea…

  Leaving this world on my journey of journeys,

  Earth’s dearest obsession I’m talting with me…

  “That’s exquisite!” Evda Nahl rose to her knees. “A modern poet couldn’t have said anything better about the power of time. I should like to know which of Earth’s obsessions he thought the best and took with him in his last thoughts.”

  “He no doubt thought of a beautiful woman,” said Renn Bose, impetuously gazing at Evda Nahl. Or did she imagine it?

  A boat of transparent plastic containing two people appeared in the distance.

  “Here comes Miyiko with Sherliss, one of our mechanics, he goes everywhere with her. Oh, no,” Veda corrected herself, “it’s Frith Don himself, the Director of the Maritime Expedition. Good-bye, Veter, you three will want to stay together so I’ll take Evda with me!”

  The two women ran down to the gentle waves and swam together to the island. The boat turned towards them but Veda waved to them to go on. Renn Bose, standing motionless, watched the swimmers.

  “Wake up, Renn, let’s get down to business!” Mven Mass called to him. The physicist smiled in shy confusion.

  A stretch of firm sand between two ridges of rock was turned into a scientific auditorium. Renn Bose, using fragments of seashells, drew and wrote in the sand, in his excitement he fell flat, his body rubbing out what he had written and drawn so that he had to draw it all again. Mven Mass expressed his agreement or encouraged the physicist with abrupt exclamations. Darr Veter, resting his elbows on his knees, wiped away the perspiration that broke out on his forehead from the effort he was making to understand. At last the red-headed physicist stopped talking, and sat back on the sand breathing heavily.

  “Yes, Renn Bose,” said Darr Veter after a lengthy pause, “you have made a discovery of outstanding importance.”

  “I did not do it alone. The ancient mathematician Geisenberg propounded the principle of indefiniteness, the impossibility of accurately defining the position of tiny particles. The impossible has become possible now that we understand mutual transitions, that is, we know the repagular calculus[18]. At about the same time scientists discovered the circular meson cloud in the atomic nucleus, that is, they came very near to an understanding of anti-gravitation.”

  “We’ll accept that as true. I’m not a specialist in bipolar mathematics, p
articularly the repagular calculus which studies the obstacles to transition. But I realize that your work with the shadow functions is new in principle, although we ordinary people cannot properly understand it unless we have mathematical clairvoyance. I can, however, conceive of the tremendous significance of the discovery. There is one thing…” Darr Veter hesitated.

  “What, what is there?” asked Mven Mass, anxiously.

  “How can we do it experimentally? I don’t think we can create a sufficiently powerful electromagnetic field….”

  “To balance the gravitational field and obtain a state of transition?” inquired Renn Bose.

  “Exactly. Beyond the limits of the system, space will remain outside our influence.”

  “That’s true, but, as always in dialectics, we must look for a solution in the opposite. Suppose we obtain an anti-gravitational shadow vectorally and not discretely.”

  “Ah! But how?”

  Swiftly, Renn Bose drew three straight lines and a narrow sector with an arc of greater radius intersecting them.

  “This was known before bipolar mathematics. Two thousand and five hundred years ago it was called the Problem of the Fourth Dimension. In those times there was a widespread conception of multidimensional space; the shadow properties of gravitation, however, were unknown and people attempted to find an analogy with electromagnetic fields which led them to believe that points of singularity meant that matter had disappeared or had been changed into something that could be named but could not be explained. How could they have had any conception of space with their limited knowledge of the nature of phenomena? But our ancestors could guess — you sec, they realized that if the distance from, say, star A to the centre of Earth along line OA is twenty quintillion kilometres, then the distance to the same star by vector OB will equal zero… in practice, not zero but approaching it. They said that zero time would be achieved if the velocity of motion were equal to the velocity of light. Remember that the cochlear calculus[22]” has been only recently discovered!”