Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale) вк-1

by Ivan Yefremov

  Veda wished them success and intended to continue on her way. A tall, thin lad with absolutely yellow hair stepped forward.

  “You came here with Evda Nahl, didn’t you? Then may I ask you a couple of questions?”

  Veda laughingly consented.

  “Evda Nahl works at the Academy of Sorrow and Joy. We have studied the social organization of our planet and of several other worlds, but we have not been told the significance of that Academy.”

  Veda told them of the great census conducted by the Academy to compute sorrow and happiness in the lives of individuals and investigate sorrow by age groups. It was followed by an analysis of sorrow and joy for all the stages of the historical development of mankind. No matter what qualitative differences there may have been in emotions, the sum totals, investigated by big number stochastic[23] methods, showed some important regularities. The Councils that directed the further development of society did their utmost to correct any worsening and ensure improvement. Only when joy predominated, or at least counterbalanced sorrow, was it considered that society was developing successfully.

  “And so the Academy of Sorrow and Joy is the most important?” asked another boy, one with bold eyes. The others smiled and the boy who had first spoken to Veda Kong explained what they were laughing at.

  “Oil is always looking for what is most important. He dreams about the great leaders of the past….”

  “That’s a dangerous thing to do,” smiled Veda. “As an historian I can tell you that the great leaders were people who were themselves tied hand and foot and very dependent.”

  “Tied up by the conventionalism of their actions?” asked the yellow-haired boy.

  “Exactly. But you must remember that that was in the unevenly and spontaneously developing ancient societies of the Era of Disunity or even earlier. Today, leadership invested in each of the Councils and is expressed by the fact that the action of all the others is impossible without it.”

  “What about the Economic Council? Without that Council nobody can undertake anything big,” Oil objected cautiously, somewhat abashed but still not confused.

  “That’s true because economics are the only real basis of our existence. But it seems to me that you don’t have quite the right idea of what constitutes leadership. Have you studied the cytoarchitectonics[24] of the human brain?”

  The boys said that they had.

  Veda took a stick from one of them and in the sand drew circles to represent the administrative bodies.

  “Here in the centre is the Economic Council. We will draw direct links from it to the consultative bodies: the ASJ, the Academy of Sorrow and Joy, the APF, the Academy of Productive Forces, the ASP the Academy of Stochastics and Prognostication, the APL, the Academy of the Psychophysiology of Labour. There is lateral connection with the Astronautical Council, a body that functions independently. From the latter there is direct communication with the ADR, the Academy of Directed Radiation, and the Outer Stations of the Great Circle. Further….”

  Veda drew an intricate diagram in the sand and continued.

  “Isn’t that just like the human brain? The research and registration centres are the sensory nerve centres. The Councils are the associative centres. You know that all life consists of the dialectics of attraction and repulsion, the rhythm of dispersal and accumulation, excitation and inhibition. The chief inhibition centre is the Economic Council that translates everything into the actual possibilities of the social organism and its objective laws. Our brain and our society, both of which are persistently advancing, have this dialectic interplay of opposing forces brought into harmonic action. There was a time, long ago, when this was incorrectly termed cybernetics, or the science of control, in an attempt to reduce the most intricate interplay of inhibitions to the relatively simple functioning of a machine. That attempt, however, was due to ignorance; the greater the knowledge we acquired the more complicated we found the phenomena and laws of thermodynamics, biology, and economics, and simplified conceptions of nature or the processes of social development disappeared for ever.”

  The boys listened to Veda spellbound.

  “What is the chief thing in such a social structure?” she asked the lover of “chiefs” and “leaders.” He was so put out that he could not think of an answer and the first boy came to his rescue.

  “Its forward movement!” he answered, boldly.

  “A prize for such an excellent answer!” exclaimed Veda admiringly; she looked at herself and then took an enamel brooch, depicting an albatross over the blue sea, from her left shoulder. She offered it to the lad on the palm of her hand. He was shyly hesitant.

  “As a reminder of today’s talk and… of forward movement!” Veda insisted and the lad took the albatross.

  Holding up the blouse that was slipping from her shoulder Veda made her way back through the park. The brooch had been a present from Erg Noor and her sudden urge to give it away meant a lot — amongst other things it meant a strange desire to get rid of the past as quickly as possible, to get rid of what had been or was being left behind….

  The entire population of the school-town gathered in the round hall in the centre of the school building. Evda Nahl, in a black dress, stood on the central dais, illuminated from above, calmly studying the rows of people in the audience. The people maintained perfect silence, listening to her clear but not loud voice. Screaming loudspeakers were used only for safety precautions and large halls had ceased to be necessary since the stereoscopic televisophone (TVP) had come into general use.

  “Seventeen is the turning point in life. Soon you will pronounce the traditional words at a meeting of the Irish Educational Division:

  “You, my elders, who have called me to a life of endeavour, accept my ability and my desire, accept my labour and teach me by day and by night. Hold out to me the hand of help, for the road is a hard one, and I will follow you.’

  “A very great deal is understood between the lines of this ancient formula and that is what I am going to talk about today.

  “From childhood you have been taught the philosophy of dialectics that long ago, in the secret books of the ancients, was called the Secret of Duality. It was believed that its power could only be achieved by the initiated — mentally and morally lofty and strong individuals. From childhood you have looked upon the world through the laws of dialectics and its mighty strength is now at everybody’s service. You have been born into a well-ordered society created by countless generations of unknown toilers and those who struggled for a better life in the dark ages of cruelty and tyranny. Five hundred generations have passed since the formation of the first society with a division of labour. In the course of that time the various races and nations of the globe have mingled. Every one of us has drops of blood, or, as we should say today, the mechanics of heredity, in him from each of those peoples. A tremendous amount of work has been done to purge heredity of the consequences of the incautious handling of radioactive materials and from the diseases that were formerly widespread and interfered with it.

  “The upbringing of the new man is an elaborate task involving personal analysis and a very cautious approach to each individual. The time has gone beyond recall when society could be satisfied with people who had been brought up casually, whose insufficiencies were excused by heredity or by man’s inherent nature. Every badly brought up person is today a reproach to the whole community, a grave mistake made by a large number of people.

  “You, who have not yet freed yourselves of the egocentrism of youth or of an overestimation of your own ego must get a clear understanding of how much depends on your own selves, to how great an extent you are the creators of your own freedom and of an interest in life. Many roads are open to each of you and this freedom of choice carries with it full responsibility for that choice.

  Gone for all time are the back-to-nature dreams of the uncultured, dreams of the freedom of primitive society and primitive relations. Humanity, a union of gigantic masses of people, was face
d with the final choice — either submit to social discipline, lengthy teaching and training, or perish; there was no other way to live on our planet, generous as her nature is. The puny philosophers who dreamed of nature did not understand her or love her as she should be loved — if they had they would have known her merciless cruelty.

  “The man of the new society was inevitably faced with the necessity of disciplining his desires, will and thoughts. The struggle against the personal, against the ‘I’ that is man’s most dangerous enemy, is essential for the good of society and for the maximum expansion of his own intellect. This method of training mind and will is today obligatory for every one of us as is the training of the body. The study of the laws of nature and of society with its economics has replaced desire by definite knowledge. When we say ‘I want to’ we mean ‘I know that it can be done.’

  “There is one other enemy amongst you, an enemy against whom we fight from the time the child makes its first steps on earth; that is, a crudeness of perception that sometimes seems to be primitive naturalness. Crudeness means that the key to measure and understanding has been lost and, consequently the key to love, since a measure of understanding is a degree of love. Thousands of years ago the Hellenes said, metron ariston, the mean is the most lofty. Today we still say that the basis of culture is an understanding of moderation in all things.

  “As the cultural level improved the striving for the crude pleasures of property grew weaker and there was less craving for a quantitative increase in the amount of property owned, which once acquired, soon began to pall and leave the owner still unsatisfied.

  “We have taught you the greater pleasure of austerity, the pleasure of helping one another, the genuine joy of work that sets the heart on fire. We have helped you liberate yourselves from the power of petty strivings and petty things and carry your joys and disappointments to a higher sphere, the sphere of creative activity.

  “Good physical training, the clean, regular lives of dozens of generations have rid you of the third enemy of the human psyche, indifference, the empty and indolent spirit that arises out of a morbid insufficiency of energy in the body. You are going out in the world to work charged with the necessary energy, with a balanced, healthy psyche which, by virtue of the natural ratio of emotions, possesses more good than evil. The better you are, the better and more elevated society will be — the two conceptions are interrelated. You will create a high spiritual milieu as an integral part of society and society will elevate you. The social milieu is the most important factor in the training and teaching of the individual. Man today is training and learning his whole life long, so that society is constantly progressing.”

  Evda Nahl stopped and smoothed her hair with her hand, using exactly the same gesture as Rhea who sat there in front, never once taking her eyes off her mother.

  “At one time people called their urge to comprehend reality a mere dream,” she continued. “You will dream in that way all your lives and will know joy in knowledge, in movement, in struggle and in labour. Never pay any attention to the falls that follow flights of the spirit because they are the regular turns of the spiral of motion that we find in all matter. The reality of liberty is stern but you have been prepared for it by the discipline of your schooling and upbringing; you, therefore, are permitted all the changes of activity that constitute happiness because you are conscious of your responsibility. The dream of tranquil inactivity has not been justified by history because it is against the nature of man the fighter. There always have been and still are specific difficulties in every epoch, but a regular and rapid ascent to the heights of knowledge and emotion, science and art has become the good fortune of all mankind!”

  Evda Nahl finished her lecture and went down to the front row of seats where Veda Kong greeted her as they had done Chara at the fete. All those present stood up and repeated the gesture, in this way expressing their admiration for an incomparable art.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TIBETAN EXPERIMENT

  The Corr Yule installation on the flat top of a high mountain was no more than a thousand metres from the Astronautical Council’s Tibetan Observatory. It stood at a height of nearly 4,000 metres where the only trees that would grow were a dark-green leafless variety with branches bending inwards towards the top brought from Mars. Although the light-yellow grass in the valleys waved in the wind these rigid iron-limbed strangers from another world stood motionless. The slopes were covered with streams of stones, the remnants of eroded rocks. The fields, patches and strips of snow gleamed with that special whiteness that belongs to mountain snow under a clear sky.

  A tower built of steel tubes supporting two latticed arches stood behind crumbling diorite walls belonging to a ruined monastery that had been built with astounding audacity at that great height. On the arches lay an inclined parabolic spiral of beryllium bronze dotted with the gleaming white spots of rhenium contacts and open to the sky. Close beside it lay a second spiral with the open end turned to the ground to form a cover over eight huge cones made of the greenish borason amalgam. Energy was brought to the installation by branches of the main pipe, six metres in diameter. The valley was crossed by a line of pylons with directing rings, a temporary line from the observatory’s main that was used when transmissions requiring the energy of all the world’s stations were in progress. Renn Bose, scratching his tousled head, reviewed with a pleased air the changes that had been made in the former installation. It had all been done by volunteers in an incredibly short time. The most difficult job had been the digging of deep, open trenches in the hard stone of the mountain without the use of big mining machines. But that was all over and the volunteer workers, justly believing themselves entitled to see the great experiment as a reward for their labours, had moved to some distance from the installation and found a place for their tents on the mountain slope to the north of the observatory.

  Mven Mass, who was in control of all communications with the Cosmos, sat on a cold boulder opposite the physicist and, shivering slightly from the cold, told him the latest news from the Great Circle. Satellite 57 had been used recently for communication with spaceships and planetships and had not been working for the Circle. Mven Mass also told him of the death of Vlihh oz Ddiz near star E at which the weary physicist showed more interest.

  “The high gravitational tension of star E will lead to its becoming overheated in its further evolution. It is becoming a violet super-giant of tremendous power that is overcoming colossal gravitation. The red end of the spectrum is missing altogether and, despite the strength of the gravitational field, the waves of light rays are shortened and not lengthened.”

  “They become very short violet or even ultra-violet,” agreed Mven Mass.

  “That’s not all. The process goes farther. The quanta become bigger until at last the transition takes place — there is a zero field and antispace — the other side of the movement of matter that is unknown to us on earth owing to the insignificant scale of everything we have. We could not achieve anything like it even if we were to burn up all the hydrogen in all the water on Earth.”

  Mven Mass made a lightning mental calculation.

  “If we translate fifteen thousand trillion tons of water into the energy of the hydrogen cycle on the principle of the relativity of mass-energy we should get roughly a trillion tons of energy. The Sun gives off 240 million tons a minute so that it would be equal to no more than the Sun’s radiation for ten years.”

  Renn Bose gave a smile of satisfaction.

  “And how much does a blue super-giant radiate?”

  “I can’t compute it at once. But you can judge for yourself. In the Greater Magellanic Cloud there is a cluster, NGK 1910, near the Tarantula Nebula… excuse me, I’m accustomed to using the old names and numbers for heavenly bodies!”

  “It doesn’t matter at all!”

  “Cluster 1910 is only 70 parsecs in diameter but it contains no less than a hundred super-giant stars. And the Tarantula Nebula is so bright that
if it could be moved closer to us like, for example, the Orion Nebula that everybody knows so well, it would be as bright as our Moon. In that area there is the binary blue super-giant in the Dorado, with clear-cut hydrogen lines in the spectrum and dark lines at the violet end. It is greater than Earth’s orbit in diameter and its luminosity is about half a million of our suns! Is that the sort of star you mean? In that same cluster there are stars bigger in size, with a diameter equal to Jupiter’s orbit, but they are only just beginning to warm up.”

  “We’ll leave the super-giants alone. For thousands of years people have been looking at the annular nebulae in Aquarius, Ursa Major and Lyra, not realizing that they have before them neutral fields of zero gravitation, which, according to the repagulum law, is the transition from gravitation to antigravitation. It was there that the riddle of zero space was hidden.”

  Renn Bose jumped up from where he had been sitting on the doorstep of the control room, a shelter built of huge blocks of cast stone.

  “I’m sufficiently rested. We can begin now.”

  Mven Mass’ heart was beating fast and he was almost choking from excitement. His breathing was deep and irregular. Renn Bose remained quite calm, the feverish gleam of his eyes alone betraying the concentration of thought and will-power that the physicist had achieved in order to begin his dangerous experiment.

  Mven Mass squeezed Renn Bose’s tiny hand in his huge palm. A nod of the head and Mven’s tall figure was striding downhill along the road to the observatory. The cold wind howled wildly down from the ice-bound mountain giants that stood guard over the road. Mven Mass shivered and involuntarily hurried his footsteps although, actually, there was no need for haste. The experiment was to begin at sunset.