“Chara, this is Beth Lohn, my new friend.” He turned round and found that the mathematician had disappeared.
“Beth Lohn, don’t go away!” he shouted with all his might into the darkness.
“I’ll come back!” a powerful voice answered from a distance and this time there was no bitter insolence in it.
One of Chara’s companions, a youth of medium height, apparently the leader of the group, took a lantern that was hanging behind his saddle. A faint light together with an unseen radio ray rose into the air and Mven Mass guessed that they were expecting an aircraft of some sort. All five were little more than boys, members of a Destroyer Battalion who had chosen, as one of their Labours of Hercules, the security service that fought against dangerous animals on the Island of Oblivion. Chara Nandi had joined them in her search for Mven Mass.
“You’re mistaken if you think we’re so astute,” said the leader when they were sitting in a circle round the lantern and Mven Mass began asking the inevitable questions, “a girl with an ancient Greek name helped us.” “Onar!” exclaimed Mven Mass. “Yes, Onar. Our detachment was approaching the 5th Settlement from the south when the girl came running up to us on the verge of collapse. She confirmed the rumour about the tigers that had brought us here and persuaded us to ride after you immediately as there was a danger that they might attack you when you were crossing the mountain. As you see we were only just in time. A cargo helicopter will come soon and we’ll send your temporarily paralysed enemies to a reservation. If they really turn out to be man-eaters they’ll be killed. But such a rare animal must not be destroyed until it has been tested.”
“What sort of test?” The boy raised his brows.
“That’s outside our competency. To begin with they’ll probably be given a tranquillizer…. Now and again people who have too much misapplied energy and strength have to be dealt with in that way, too.” “How is it done?” asked Mven Mass. “I know of a case of an unbelievably brutal athlete here who forgot his social duties and obligations. He was given an injection to lower vital activity and bring his physical strength down to the level of his weak will and intellect thus balancing the two sides of his being. In the last three years he has learnt a lot — your enemies will be taught in the same way.”
A loud rumble interrupted the youth. A huge, dark mass came slowly down to them. A blinding light flooded the whole glade. The striped cats were enclosed in soft containers such as were used for fragile goods. The big airship, poorly visible in the darkness, disappeared, leaving the glade to the calm light of the stars. One of the five lads had gone off with the tigers and Mven Mass had been given his horse.
Mven’s horse and Chara’s walked along side by side. The path led down to the valley of the River Galle at whose mouth, on the sea-coast, the medical station and Destroyer Battalion base were situated.
“This is the first time I’ve been to the sea since I came to the island,” said Mven Mass, breaking the silence. “Until now it has seemed to me that the sea is a wall that I’m forbidden to cross and which marks off my world.”
“The island has been a new school for you,” said Chara joyfully but half-questioningly.
“Yes, in a short time here I’ve experienced a lot and have done some new thinking. All these ideas I’ve had on my mind for a long time….”
Mven Mass told her about his fears that man, by repeating the mistakes of the past, even if in a much less ugly form, is developing in a too rational, too technical manner. It seemed to Mven that on the planet of Epsilon Tucanae there was a mankind very much like ours and very beautiful in body that had paid greater attention to the perfection of the emotional side of the psyche.
“I’ve suffered a great deal from this sense of imperfect harmony with life,” answered the girl after a pause. “I’ve always wanted more of the old and much less of what is around me. I dreamed of the epoch that had not expended the strength and feelings accumulated in the primitive period, the Age of Eros in Mediterranean Antiquity. It would be a good thing for the Great World to set up a reservation for the Life of Antiquity where we could rest and acquire emotional strength. I have always tried to arouse a real strength of feeling in my audiences but, I’m afraid, only Evda Nahl has fully understood me!”
“And Mven Mass!” added the African, seriously, telling her how she had appeared to him as the copper-coloured daughter of Tucana. The girl raised her face and in the timid light of early dawn Mven Mass saw eyes so big and profound that he felt a slight dizziness, moved away from her and laughed.
“There was a time when our ancestors in their novels about the future imagined us as weakly, rickety beings with overgrown skulls. Despite the millions of animals that were tormented and slaughtered in the name of science they did not come any nearer to an understanding of the brain mechanism of man and simply because they used a knife where the most delicate measuring instruments in the molecule and atom range were needed. We now know that strong intellectual activity requires a powerful body, full of vital energy and that that body will produce strong emotions that we have so far learned only to suppress and, by suppressing them, make ourselves the poorer!”
“We are still chained to the intellect,” agreed Chara. “A lot has been done but the intellectual side continues to advance while the emotional lags behind and that is what must be looked after — so that emotion should not demand an intellectual chain but that reason should at times need emotion’s chains. I have come to regard this as so important that I intend to write a book about it.”
“Oh, of course,” exclaimed Chara enthusiastically, but grew timid and continued, “very few great scientists have devoted themselves to research into the laws of the beautiful and the fullness of emotions — I’m not talking about psychology.”
“I can understand you,” answered the African, admiring the girl who, in her confusion, had raised her proud head higher to the rays of the rising sun that again gave her skin the colour of burnished copper. Chara sat easily and lightly on the big black horse that walked in step with Mven Mass’ roan.
“We are lagging behind!” exclaimed the girl slackening her reins and urging her horse forward. The African overtook her and they cantered together along the smooth old road. They soon caught up with the others, reined in their horses and again Chara turned to Mven Mass.
“What about that girl, Onar?”
“She must go to the Great World. You said yourself that she had remained on the island quite by chance because she was attached to her mother who came here and died recently. It would be good for Onar to work with Veda, women’s gentle and sensitive hands are needed at the excavations…. And there are thousands of other jobs for which they are needed… and Beth Lohn, the new Beth Lohn who will come back with us, he’ll find her in a new way.”
Chara frowned and the bird that flew over her eyes spread its wings still more widely.
“And you won’t leave your stars?”
“Whatever the decision of the Council may be I shall continue my study of the Cosmos. But first I have to write….”
“About the stars of the human soul?”
“Quite right, Chara! So great is their variety that it takes my breath away.” Noticing that the girl was smiling gently at him, Mven Mass stopped, “Don’t you agree?”
“Of course I do. I was thinking about your experiment. You did it out of your passionately impatient desire to give people the fullness of the world. In that you were an artist and not a scientist.”
“And Renn Bose?”
“He’s different. For him the experiment was another step forward in his research but one that science required.”
“You don’t blame me, Chara?”
“No! Nor do many other people, the majority, I’m sure!”
Mven Mass took the reins in his left hand and held out his right to Chara. They entered the tiny group of houses around the station.
The waves of the Indian Ocean beat rhythmically at the foot of the cliff. In the sounds they mad
e Mven Mass could hear the rhythmic beat of the basses in Zieg Zohr’s symphony depicting life reaching out into the Cosmos. There was one powerful note, a strong F, the basic note in terrestrial nature, that sang over the sea and compelled man to respond with his entire soul, merging with the nature that gave him birth.
The sea was transparent, shining, cleansed of the relics of the past, of predatory sharks, poisonous fish, molluscs and medusae in the same way as the life of present-day man has been cleansed of the evil and fear of past centuries. But somewhere in the distant corners of the boundless ocean the seeds of harmful life have survived and we have the Destroyer Battalions to thank for keeping our ocean waters safe and clean.
And is it not true that in the same way there suddenly arises savage stubbornness, the self-confidence of the cretin, the egoism of the beast in the transparent soul of youth? If man today does not submit to the authority of society that is directed towards wisdom and goodness but, instead, is guided by his own accidental ambition and individual passions, courage is turned into bestiality, creative activity into cruel cunning while loyalty and self-abnegation become the bulwark of tyranny, cruel exploitation and abasement. The surface layer of discipline and social culture is easily torn off, only one or two generations of poor living are needed. Mven Mass had glanced into the face of the beast there, on the Island of Oblivion. If he is not restrained, if he has his way, a monstrous despotism will come into being that will crush everything underfoot and bring back that ruthless arbitrariness that held mankind enslaved for so many centuries.
The most astounding thing in world history is the emergence of that undying hatred for knowledge and beauty that is typical of all vicious ignoramuses. This mistrust, fear and hatred are to be found in all human communities, beginning with fear of the primitive witches and witch-doctors and continuing up to the beating of those thinkers who were ahead of their time in the Era of Disunity. The same thing occurred on other planets with highly-developed civilizations that had not succeeded in protecting their social systems from the arbitrary action of small groups of people, oligarchies, that emerged suddenly and cunningly in the most diverse forms. Mven Mass recalled that the same thing had been reported over the Great Circle about other inhabited worlds where the highest achievements of science were used to intimidate, for torture and punishment, for thought-reading and turning the masses into obedient semi-idiots ever ready to fulfil the most monstrous orders. A cry for help from such a planet had reached the Circle and flown on into space many hundreds of years after the people who sent it and their cruel rulers had perished.
Our planet is now at a stage of development when such horrors are inconceivable. But man’s spiritual development is still insufficient and people like Evda Nahl are working on the problem.
“How can you get so deep in thought?” came Chara’s voice from behind. “The artist Cart Sann said that wisdom is the combination of knowledge and feelings,” as she walked along the girl threw off her bathrobe, “and so we’ll be wise!”
Chara ran past the African and dived from the height into the noisy swirl below. Mven Mass saw her jump forward, turn a somersault, spread her arms and disappear into the waves. The lads from the Destroyer Battalion, bathing down below, were suddenly silent. A cold shiver of admiration verging on fright ran down Mven’s back. The African had never dived from such a crazy height but he now stood without a tremor on the edge of the cliff and took off his clothes. He later remembered that in hazy momentary thoughts Chara seemed like an ancient goddess to him, a goddess that could do anything. If she could, then so could he!
A faint cry of warning from the girl arose out of the waves but Mven Mass did not hear it as he dived down. The flight was blissfully long. Mven Mass, a skilled diver, entered the water perfectly and his dive carried him a long way down. The water was so amazingly transparent that the sea bed seemed dangerously close. He twisted his body upwards and the impact of unspent inertia was so terrific that for a moment everything ceased to exist for him. With the velocity of a rocket Mven Mass flew to the surface, rolled over on to his back and lay rocked by the waves. When he opened his eyes he saw Chara swimming towards him, the paleness of fright dulling the bronze of her sunburn. There was both reproach and admiration in her eyes.
“Why did you do that?” she whispered, hardly breathing.
“Because you did. I’ll follow you anywhere to build my Epsilon Tucanae on our Earth!”
“Will you come back to the Great World with me?”
“Yes!”
Mven Mass turned over to swim farther and gave a shout of amazement. The astounding transparency of the water that had played such a nasty trick on him seemed even greater out there, farther from the beach. He and Chara seemed to be floating at a dizzy height over the sea bed every detail of which showed as clearly through the pure water as it would through the air. Mven Mass was brimming over with courage and triumph such as people experience when they get outside the bounds of terrestrial gravitation. Journeys across the ocean in a storm, leaps into the black gulf of the Cosmos from artificial satellites aroused similar feelings of boundless daring and success. Mven Mass in a single spurt swam up to Chara, whispered her name and read a fervent response in her clear and courageous eyes. Their hands and lips joined over the crystal gulf.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE ASTRONAUTICAL COUNCIL
The Astronautical Council, like the planet’s central brain, the Economic Council, had for centuries possessed its own building for scientific conferences. It was believed that specially designed and decorated rooms would attune the assembled scientists to the Cosmos and in this way facilitate their rapid mental transition from matters terrestrial to matters astral.
Chara Nandi had never before been inside the main hall of the Council building. She was excited when she and Evda Nahl entered that strange, egg-shaped hall with its curved, parabolic ceiling and its rows of seats arranged in ellipses. The hall was drenched in a bright, transparent light that seemed to have been collected from some other star brighter than the Sun. All the lines of the walls, ceiling and seats converged at the end of the huge hall that seemed to be their natural focal point. At that point there was a dais with a screen, a rostrum and seats for the members of the Council who conducted the meetings.
The dull gold panels of the walls alternated with relief maps of the planets. On the right-hand aide there were maps of the solar system and on the left the planets of neighbouring stars that had been studied by the Council’s expeditions. A second series under the pale-blue dome of the ceiling carried diagrams of other inhabited stellar systems done in radiant colours; these had been received from the Great Circle.
Chara’s attention was drawn to an old, faded picture over the rostrum that had apparently been restored several times. A violet-black sky occupied the entire upper half of the huge canvas. The tiny crescent of an alien moon cast a deathly white light on the uplifted stern of an ancient spaceship harshly silhouetted against the ruddy glow of a setting sun. The rows of ugly blue plants, coarse and dry, seemed to be made of metal. A man in a light spacesuit was dragging his feet through deep sand. He was looking back at the wrecked ship and the dead bodies of his companions. The eyeglasses of his mask reflected only the setting sun but by some trick of infinite skill the artist had managed to put into them an expression of the hopeless despair of loneliness in a strange world. Something living, formless and disgusting, was crawling over a nearby sand hummock. There was a title under the picture in big letters, as brief as it was expressive: Left Alone!
So impressed was she by the picture that the girl did not at first notice a wonderful architectural feature of the hall: the seats spread out fanwise and were arranged in steps so that a separate gangway to each seat was provided from galleries running under the rows of chairs. Each row was cut off completely from its higher and lower neighbours. Only when she sat down with Evda did Chara notice the ancient craftsmanship of the chairs, reading desks and barriers, all of which were made from
real pearl-coloured African wood. Nobody today would waste so much time and effort on something that could be cast and polished in a few minutes. Perhaps it was due to the love of old things that lives in all people that Chara found the wood warmer and more full of life than plastic. Gently she stroked the curved arms of her chair, all the time looking round the hall.
As usual many people had gathered in the hall although powerful transmitters would carry telepictures of the proceedings over the whole planet. Mir Ohm, Secretary of the Council, opened the proceedings by the usual reading of brief announcements that had accumulated since the last meeting. Not a single unattentive face, not a single person occupied with his own thoughts, could have been found amongst the hundreds in the hall. A tactful attention to everything was a typical feature of the people of the Great Circle Era. Nevertheless Chara missed the first communication as she continued looking round the hall and reading citations from famous scientists written under the planet maps. She liked most of all an appeal to be receptive to natural phenomena written under the map of Jupiter: “Look how we are surrounded by facts that we do not understand — they thrust themselves upon us but we neither see nor hear the great things hidden in their faint outlines and awaiting discovery.” In another place, farther to the left, an inscription said: “The curtain hiding the unknown cannot be lifted easily — it is only after persistent labour, retreats and deviations that we begin to fathom true meanings and new boundless horizons open up before us. Never try to avoid that which at first seems useless and inexplicable, incomprehensible….”
There came a movement on the rostrum and the lights in the hall went out. The strong, calm voice of the Council Secretary quivered with excitement.
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