Limanora the island of progress
the body, intimately as the soul was interwoven with it. As soon as
I was thoroughly tested and put through my course of probation, the
training of my muscles was begun, and along with the magnetic moulding
of my brain-tissues went the development of the force-tissues of the
body and the powers of my senses. But no one was permitted to enter
their great practical university or workshop till he had become a
certain devotee of the race. The mysteries and arts and crafts which
gave the nation its peculiar powers could not be communicated to anyone
who might by some change become an alien. It was thus that many years
of residence in Limanora passed before I was admitted to one of the
marvels of the island, the great valley of Rimla.
I well remember the evening of my initiation. The night work was as a
rule done by the younger men and women of the community; the elders
took their turn at the machinery by day, as they had to husband sleep
during the hours of darkness and silence. I had often wondered whither
went my proparents at a fixed hour every day; they vanished in the
distance as the sun began to wester, and they returned at evening with
high colour in their cheeks and the look of having used their muscles
with a will. Their physical life seemed to take new impetus from these
expeditions.
One day on their return they told me that I was to be admitted to
Rimla, which they explained to mean the centre of force. The mature
judgment of the community had decided that I could now be fully
trusted. My practical and muscular education was to begin. I was to set
out that evening with a band of young workmen who kept the first watch
of the night.
The sun had scarcely set when my escort arrived; and, as with my slow
powers of locomotion I could not be expected to keep up with them,
I was placed in one of their flight-cars. I had no companion, for
the whole band flew in front and drew the car by some magnetic power
unseen; and it was so light-hung and so balanced by wings and domes and
parachutes that it seemed capable of being the sport of every wind.
Over the central ridge of the island we swept towards a distant slope
of Lilaroma. Suddenly underneath me in the growing darkness there shone
out in a deep broad valley a vast dome of light, transparent enough to
reveal the flitting shadows underneath it. It seemed the laboratory of
a world. Innumerable streams flashed under its upper edge; they sped
from the summits of the surrounding hills, or across the gorges from
other and more distant ranges. I had seen as we flew hundreds of noble
aqueducts spanning the valleys with their arches and columns, some of
them thousands of feet up the slopes of Lilaroma. All the waters which
the great mountain gathered from the clouds of heaven made their way
towards this marvellous domed valley. At its mouth there was a deep
gorge, whether artificial or natural was not clear to me then; and
through the chasm leaped a river mightier than any I had ever seen; it
seemed to be on its way to the sea, but I could not trace its course
farther than its massive gateway out of the valley. Underneath the dome
I could see vast wheels of irelium move at all levels; they seemed so
fragile that a pebble thrown at them would break them; yet each turned
spindles of enormous power, which moved swifter than lightning. I soon
saw that all the intricate machinery was sheathed in casings of their
translucent metal, along which flowed a slow, glutinous stream of some
liquid that dripped through perforations on all points of friction.
As we alighted, night fell, and the titanic crystal workshop gleamed
with a soft radiance that seemed to come from no centres, but was
diffused everywhere in the manner of the sunlight or the atmosphere. It
was like a vast ice cave of the Arctic circle lit by brief and splendid
summer. Fairy-like yet vast, it seemed a fabric of some dream-world;
but the splash and hiss of the forceful waters and the unresting motion
of the machinery made it all real enough. The noises were by no means
deafening; they were subdued and musical with a halo of mysterious
whisper like the sounds of nature on a bright day of summer. Nor was
the sight bewildering to the eyes; there was too much symmetry in it
to perplex and dazzle.
My guides and companions tripped lightly and fearlessly through the
labyrinth of movement till they reached an edifice underneath the dome
more elaborate and majestic in its beauty than the noblest of Gothic
cathedrals; its towers and spires and pinnacles seemed to aspire to
the very stars as we looked up, and yet the loftiest of them failed to
reach the zenith of the vast diaphanous roof. Towards this building
radiated the moving network of spindles and axles that the flashing
water-wheels turned, and out from it passed great transparent tubes of
metal, woven together fantastically into a forest of gigantic trees
and flowers. Nothing of this arabesque of movement marred the colossal
symmetry of all beneath the crystal canopy. The church-like building
was the shrine of force. In it we found one of the wise men of the
elders seated on a high throne; and beside him stood muscular forms
ready to do his behests. He laid his hand on a key-board of innumerable
keys, each of which was marked with some hieroglyphic. The attendants
scattered to various points along the mosaic floor, and watched the
working of the labyrinth of wires and tubes. At the touch of the
master the whole edifice vibrated, and a sound as of the most sublime
orchestration filled the vault. We saw countless wheels and pistons
move and flash beneath their transparent metal sheaths, and along each
tube, now lit as with starlight, we could watch the rush of vapours or
liquids towards their destination in the various factories and houses
in the valley and along the mountain-side.
It was one of the masters of physical force who manipulated the
keys. He was controlling and harmonising the vast power that was
concentrated in Rimla, and, instead of the demoniac jarring of the
engines and machinery which I had been accustomed to in the industrial
centres of other lands, the sounds of the marvellous vault made sweet
concord that ever varied with the transference of power from purpose to
purpose. He was the pointsman of the numberless railroads of energy,
and at the same time the musician of the titanic workshop. His will
disciplined and guided both the generation and the distribution of all
the force of the island. Our troop took the place of that which had
been on guard through the sunset and twilight, and separated in pairs
throughout the valley, each pair taking under its charge one section of
the labyrinthine movement. My comrade, Ooriel, the cousin of Thyriel,
was a youth of splendid build, the strength of his upper limbs seeming
almost bovine, his shoulders and arms not too large for his size, yet
giving the impression of gigantic power. I soon saw how much he could
do. We were to inspect the generators of force underneath the dome. He
first led me to the various streams which came leaping down the slopes
and cliffs. One of them from some cause only to be ascertained at the
cone of Lilaroma was swollen into a yellow torrent that threatened
to overflow its lava banks and flood the valley. In a moment he saw
the danger, and rushed to the wing-dam dividing the upper course and
controlling the amount of water which should flow down to its various
wheels and the amount which unused should find its way to the great
exit. He found that the separating barrier had lost its automatic
motion through the sudden increase of the overflow and the intrusion
of a huge boulder that had come down like a battering-ram upon it. He
set me to guide the machinery and power that moved the dam to suit
the strength of the current, and then, fixing a narrow irelium shield
in the bottom of the channel, he leapt into the torrent. The shield, I
could see, keeping erect just above him, shed the stones and boulders
to this side and that. Thus protected he raised a huge hammer which he
had taken with him and by three or four well-directed blows split the
obstacle into half a dozen pieces; he then bent down and removed them
out of the way, and suddenly I felt the steering-gear begin to work,
and saw the dam swing round into the channel leading to the centre of
force, whilst the bulk of the torrent found its way into the exit,
which was deeper and broader. The danger was past; but a moment’s
hesitation, either in order to bring up the heavier tools or to call
other assistance, would have ruined many of the great works upon the
levels below and stopped the whole of the operations of Rimla for
several days.
Ooriel shook the water from his garments as he leapt out, and in a
few minutes he was on his way with me to the other brooks, cascades,
and conduits which gathered the aqueous forces of Lilaroma into this
valley of power. Not a drop that fell from the tributary clouds about
the head of the mountain but did its work for this singular people; the
moisture-lifting power of the sun, and the force of gravitation that
fought with it were alike made the servants and yoke-fellows of the
Limanorans.
They refused to waste the energy that nature gave them so freely. This
I saw more fully illustrated as I followed Ooriel. Having inspected
all the forms of stream-power, he sped round to the side of the valley
nearest to the western shore of the island; there in a great cave
or hollow in the rock, brilliantly lit, I saw myriads of wires and
cables concentrating from all westward directions on an immense block
of labramor or irelium alloy. This, he explained to me, was the great
electric storage-battery of the waves. From the north-west and the
south-west came the chief storms and currents that broke on the shores
of the island; and underneath the beetling cliffs of lava erected on
the western shores they had a line of long, lofty caves running some
hundreds of feet underneath into the land; in these huge vanes and
water-wheels were hung from the roofs and the higher portions of the
sides; and the waves as they ran in and out beat their paddles and
made them whirl with lightning swiftness. The motion thus communicated
was turned by their electro-generators into currents of electric force
which found its way by the network of wires and cables that I saw
into this enormous storage-battery. In another series of caves they
cooped up the water of the full tides by means of gigantic dams and
sluice-gates, and this during ebb drove huge wheels and turbines and
thus sent the power of the moon into their treasure-house of power.
Every storm that ruffled the surface of the ocean, every current that
swept past their shores, every ebb or flow of their tides added its
quota to the energy accumulated in their electric treasury, a far
more wonderful concentration of wealth than any Sindbad’s valley or
Golconda. Here was ready to the hand of man power greater than all that
the nations and the generations had ever been capable of.
And the winds had been made as much the slaves of this people as the
waves; for another great cavern that we visited was the storehouse of
the energy of the winds. In every gorge and pass and gully around
Lilaroma up almost to its crater had been erected immense windmills,
which as they revolved generated electricity; this found its way from
all points by massive cables buried in the earth to the conservator of
energy in this second cave. Ooriel tested the wires to see that they
were not leaking anywhere and tested the batteries for faults, and
finding everything in good order, we passed into a third power treasury
in the rock. This was vastest of all; for into it there poured the
energy of the power-wells which was not needed by the private houses