Limanora the island of progress
made as massive as marble walls of Eastern palaces that were built for
both pleasure and siege. It was in portions as transparent as glass,
and in others frosted with wondrous pictures. And how were those
countless domes and arches and arborescent columns produced with such
ease? How were those airy galleries hung? How were those fragrant
fountains poised so nicely that an infant’s finger seemed capable
of overturning them? Even the gently moving curtains had the same
crystalline character as the walls, now frosted as by the artist of our
winter-mornings, again goldenly dim, or rainbow-hued.
There was a spaciousness that reminded me of the colonnaded aisles
of our great cathedrals. Was I resting in one of the temples of the
island? Was I being consecrated for sacrifice? And yet the dainty
warm nooks, the close-hung curtains, and graceful tapestries so broke
the awe and loneliness of the place as to make me feel that it was
a chamber for a solitary. And I could look out upon the fields and
forests and the far-stretching sea; for every foot of wall had in it
some transparency that with its landscape stood like a picture framed
in the frosted tracery around it. I seemed never to reach the limit of
these varied perspectives and distances. I sank back exhausted on my
perfumed couch, then slowly recovered by aid of the sweetness that
met my every sense. The fragrance that filled the room was like that
of finest garden flowers, and kept changing from one lovely variety to
another, never cloying the sense. Around, too, from unseen sources,
floated sweet music, that now swelled into a chorus, and again fell
into angelic softness. Then a new sensation came to me; with every
breath I seemed to draw in a subtle nourishment and stimulation to
my senses; every minute added to the renewal of my strength. And,
to increase my delighted bewilderment, I gradually felt a new sense
appealed to; every nerve in my body seemed exhilarated, and I felt
capable of heroic actions. Some magnetic influence was raying towards
me through the atmosphere, and a dormant electric faculty seemed
to be awakened in my mind and in my body, producing the effect of
intoxication without its stupor or the numbing of the moral powers. It
was like a beautiful dream without the helplessness of the dreamer.
I felt no delirium or voluptuous languor from the excitement of the
senses. It all led to spiritual vigour, that would have made the body
its prompt ally.
My renewed energies turned my mind to my strange surroundings. I
wondered where the beings were who had built this wondrous palace,
and were now doubtless playing upon my senses. Was it all a dream?
And had I never been shot into the sea with Noola? It seemed as if
my inmost thoughts were at once communicated to my watchers; for
from some direction, out of some niche or doorway I had not noticed,
moved softly a figure, that, in its muscular breadth, large head, and
springy gait, reminded me of Noola. Upon the face a smile shone out
of unfathomed depths of thought and sympathy, and yet the lips were
close as if to forbid speech. It was enough to rest and gaze at the
beautiful expression of the face with its intensity of love and pity in
the eyes. But the features had not that symmetry of outline which we
call beauty in Europe; and the form was not “divinely tall.” The whole
of the attraction lay in the upraying of the soul into the face. It was
like gazing into the limpid waters of a lake; I tried to give speech
to my emotions, but the hand rose gently to the lips in a gesture that
commanded silence, then waved over me, and, as I looked, I fell into a
deep and dreamless sleep.
I knew not how long I had been unconscious; for when I woke I seemed
to be a new man; every faculty tingled with energy; health glowed
through my tissues; I wandered from niche to niche, from arcade to
recess; I climbed the lofty galleries and raised the curtains, shaking
the sweet perfumes from them as they swung in the air; I ran from
transparency to transparency with the delight of a child, and gazed
through each at the ever-varying landscapes that stretched outwards to
the sea. Music, distant and entrancing, floated around me in the air,
with variations and cooling bars of silence, so that it made a subtle
ether circumambient rather than a definite impression on the senses.
Under such conditions what could not I do in life? I remembered the
old weariness and despair that used to cling around me like a shirt of
Nessus even in the morning when I was refreshed with sleep, and the
clogging humours that used to retard my most generous or most energetic
action. In my former life I had moved in a clammy viscous medium that
dragged back my most eager faculties. Now I was built of air, and
stirred lightly as air.
What was it that had accomplished this strange transformation? I had
not felt so in the other islands of the archipelago or even on its
seas. I had not been so exhilarated at my first awaking. How had this
great change come about? Or was it but momentary, to pass away like
other intoxications and leave exhaustion and ache? I began to be
puzzled and to feel the return of the thought that it was perhaps only
a dream after all. How was I to test the matter?
Surely I could not have thought aloud. Yet here from somewhere or other
was moving across the floor the figure that had appeared after my first
trance. I was so awestruck by the noiseless flash of the approach that
I could make no sign of welcome. What could I say to a being who came
so near to what we consider in the old world the supernatural? As soon
as my thoughts touched upon the state of my mind and the circumstances
that surrounded me, my host (should I call him so?) appeared. And,
though my senses, I thought, had acquired preternatural acuteness, not
a sound had I heard of his entrance or of his footsteps across the
chamber.
He seemed to know the perplexity of my thoughts again, for he advanced
with so airy a grace that my eyes were fascinated by the ease of the
motion. And his words came almost like music; I scarcely considered
what he was saying, so beautiful were the tones and manner in which it
was said. “Come, and I shall tell you what has occurred,” was what I
understood. It was in the primary or simplest vocabulary of Limanora,
the vocabulary that Noola had taught me.
He led me by a covered but transparent way into a vaulted chamber, that
seemed to the other as a cathedral to a chapel; for it was pillared
and galleried and aisled with the most transcendent art. But I was
too interested in the story he had to tell to give way to my passive
enjoyment of the scene. He motioned me to ascend with him a platform
that rose above us in a lofty recess at one brightly sunlit corner of
the building. I saw him lean back, and feared that he would fall to
the floor; but with his motion the rich mosaic of the platform opened,
and a rest rose to meet his body which was of the same alabaster-like
texture as the curtains and seemed to shape itself to every curve and
bend of his figure. He stretched out his hand towards me, and before I
knew what he had done I was resting, in an attitude not far from the
upright, on a soft machine like his own. He showed me how to control
this by a knob under my right hand, and then together we flew to the
ceiling and back, wheeled round, swung gently in the air, or remained
still. It moved like a thing of life in sympathy with every desire; a
slight change of the position would relieve any part of the body and
yet leave all the rest supported; any kind of motion was accomplished
on changing the screw that lay in the knob. I afterwards investigated
the mechanism, and was amazed at its simplicity; a few levers,
cunningly mastering all the various combinations of motion, turned on
or off the force needed for the necessary changes. After a few hours’
experience of it, I could find no comparison in nature but the couch
of air on which the albatross seems to rest as it moves. I afterwards
found that a nice management of compressed air was the secret of this
wonderful rest that was neither couch nor chair. As soon as we ceased
to use it, it disappeared as suddenly as it had risen. This accounted
for the complete absence of the furniture that impedes free motion in
our European houses and made me think as I awoke in my chamber of our
great cathedrals with their free floor space.
There in mid-air we lightly hung as if resting on wings; he seemed to
know my anatomy and the points of greatest pressure in any attitude,
and controlled both machine-rests with such adroitness that we swung
hither and thither, changing slowly from the recumbent to the erect
attitude or back again, finding every few minutes a different point of
view of the chamber or of the landscapes that could be seen through
the walls. But I soon grew oblivious to the beauty that stole through
every sense; my whole consciousness was absorbed in watching the
play of the intelligence on his face and listening to his narrative.
I missed many of the links in his story, even though he contrived
to put most of it into the primary and secondary vocabularies, and,
where he was compelled to go beyond them, put so much of his thoughts
into his features that I could almost have gathered it from them.
But I saw the drift of the story, and, when it was over, pieced the
fragments together and found, when afterwards I knew the language and
the civilisation better, I had missed little of the real meaning. I
give it, then, as if it were in his own words, although my intelligence
seemed to stumble at every step in it.
“You wonder at your hospitable reception. But you will not wonder when
you know the change in the condition of our knowledge since Noola was
exiled. He was unhurt by the ricochet of the missiles on the beach. In
the darkness they were ill-aimed, and, though they struck in sand, they
were shattered by the impact and recoiled from the shingle underneath.
He disentangled himself from the wreck and rescued you. But soon the
watchers by the storm-cone were down on the beach and carried you to
our house, whilst they led your comrade to another. You were each
examined by the wise men and the medical families. Your faculties and
emotions and tendencies were all tested, and their various strengths
measured by means of the different kinds of cerebrometers whilst you
slept. Since Noola was exiled a hundred years ago, our knowledge of
the brain and the nerves and their various functions has been applied
in the most practical way to the art of living. Every curve and
convolution of the controlling instrument of the body has its value
and meaning tabulated. Every action, thought, and emotion has had its
physical symbol and locality fixed; and the minutest change in the
strength of any one of these points in the brain or in the nervous
system can be discovered by applying one of the cerebrometers. You will
know what these are some day; but it is enough to say that they can
measure, by means of a delicate apparatus controlled by electricity,
the amount of force that exists in any living tissue; there is a
separate kind for each portion of the brain and each nerve section of
the trunk, and it will move only when near that portion or any living
tissue that has similar properties and powers. Our own magnetic sense,
which has greatly developed since Noola’s banishment, can roughly
gauge the relative strengths of the various faculties and emotions
in any man; and it is deeply thrilled when any thought or passion
is energising in his nature. But it cannot accurately measure the
strength, as these instruments can. We can absolutely trust them, in
testing the character of any human being.
“Noola fully expected to be thrust back, unless he came across his own