Limanora the island of progress
eddy of a new and loftier ambition; my spirit perceived stages of being
within its reach, yet beyond all it had known; and it throbbed with
new eagerness to rise above itself. Nothing could be more rapturous
than the consciousness of this system beyond system, each with its own
type of life and stage of spiritual aim, each with its peculiar medley
of magnetic influence, each drawn into its own vortex of emotion and
energy.
A touch on my hand broke the spell, and I was down on earth again,
exalted, yet knowing the contrast. It was Thyriel, who would remind
me of my duty to my own being and to the state. I arose and moved out
with her but she knew the ecstasy too well to break in on my dream,
and led me out to the sea arcade, where I could hear the low rippling
melody of the waves beneath and the faint music of the world of air. I
turned my eyes up to the azure, and seemed to tread amongst the orbs
that veiled their silver radiance in the blaze of noon. Out of my life,
I am sure, the exaltation never wholly vanished. I had been among the
living fountains of eternity. I had moved conscious of the birth of
worlds, and known the throb that is a myriad of ages. Was this not
to be kin with God, to know the all-grasping passion of a moment of
divine life? Ever and again the greatness of the memory flamed out into
conflagration within me, and I was then in the mood to make or conquer
worlds; and never wholly out of my blood died the exaltation I had
felt.
CHAPTER XI
A CATASTROPHE
BUT long years divided my first visit to Oomalefa and my admission to
Firlalain. I saw that there were certain vast sections of Oomalefa that
I was led past; massive portals showed their rank, but the number on
them defining the age at which entrance was possible warned us off,
and allegorical pictures adorning their arches figured the decay of
tissue and cell that would result in the youthful body from too early
admittance. Any curiosity Thyriel or I could have felt was repressed by
these ominous symbols; for this people never relied on mere authority.
Their strongest prohibitions were in the form of graphic appeals to
the reason, and only where these could not impress youthful natures
sufficiently were the emotions involved; the influences of any special
indulgence upon the human system were represented in living form,
which, looked at through a medium magnifying them ten thousand-fold,
stirred the heart of all the more deeply.
We saw in a moment that we were unfit to enter Firlalain, and we
passed on into the vast series of baths wherein the Limanorans could
rid their bodies of obstructive or noxious elements. Here was every
grade of temperature endurable by their tissues: for every grade there
was a separate swimming-pool in which they could exercise themselves;
and every hour automatic machinery driven by force from Rimla sent
the contents of each pool into one of the lava wells, where in a few
moments the water and all the débris thrown off from the bathers’
bodies vanished in fire. These baths were so arranged that not more
than two should be empty together, and at the general entrance were
seated two medical counsellors, who measured and tested the state and
temperature of the body, and showed graphically what would be the
effect of entering each bath of the series to which the state of the
bather restricted him.
Far more important than these water baths were the baths of ether,
baths of magnetism, and solar baths, in which any portion of the body
or the whole of it could be submitted to the purified forces of the
world. From the ethereal baths all terrene elements were exhausted,
and there remained the pure medium of life beyond our atmosphere, the
divine air which spiritual beings breathe. Nothing so raised the power
of the mind over the body or the part of the body immersed in this. It
partially and for the time being dematerialised the part, withdrawing
its earthy tendencies, and giving it an exhilarant atmosphere in which
it acquired new life and energy, and resisted the encroachments of
lower parasitic life. The two other kinds of baths had somewhat the
same effect, but were less powerful than this. Magnetism allowed the
ether a more direct influence than either water or air; it concentrated
the force of the purer medium on any point. The solar baths had been
used from time immemorial. It had been one of the earliest discoveries
of their science that the lower organisations and microscopic forms of
life that battened on the human frame lost vitality in the full beams
of the sun. Later their investigators had found that solar radiance
dispelled the vapours and terrene elements which floated in the air,
clinging invisibly to bodies and forming the feeding-ground of quickly
generative microbes. It purified by its energy all that it came into
contact with, and in short allowed the ether which was its medium freer
play. For generations sunshine had been one of their most successful
curative agencies and was now used to reinforce and stimulate human
life and energy. The rays of the sun, blanched to some extent of their
heat and excessive force, were concentrated in rooms made wholly of
transparent irelium, or upon irelium glasses of various shapes and
forms to suit the part of the body to be subjected to their influence.
These were their solar baths; but their whole system of life was one
continuous solar bath: for every corner of their houses both public and
private was laid open to the sun’s influence from dawn to twilight, and
this stored up in the atmosphere of the rooms and halls forms of energy
which during the night gave ease and exhilaration to those who slept.
They fully realised that it was not merely heat and light they got from
the sun, but subtle energies, a fine aroma from the diviner medium that
filled the interstellar spaces.
Every Limanoran of an age to be admitted to Oomalefa resorted several
times a day to each of these three kinds of baths. First came a
magnetic bath, in which every organ and tissue was stimulated to throw
off its débris towards the pores. Then came the swim in one or more of
the pools, in order that all this rejected part might be washed off.
After this came the solar bath, which penetrated into the superficial
channels of the body and swept away all bacterial life that might be
nocuous. The last stage was the ethereal bath, which was enjoyed in
solitude and could be endured by any but the mature for only a few
minutes; the exhilaration and tenuity of atmosphere were too great for
unaccustomed lungs, and I could see the heads of the bathers thrust
out at short intervals to take a breath. But long practice made the
older Limanorans enjoy the buoyancy of the pure medium for hours. It
was indeed one of the hopes of the race that they would be able at
last to breathe the interstellar ether with greater ease than the air
surrounding their own earth.
It was in these baths I first came to see the marvellous grace and
plasticity of their garments. They were outside of all my previous
experiences and conceptions, and seemed so natural that I took them for
a part of their material outfit like their hair. It had never entered
into my mind to question whether they laid them aside in sleep or not.
Perhaps it was owing to the beauty and animation of the countenance,
when they spoke or even looked, that I had not paid any attention to
their dress except to see how it never impeded their movements either
in flight or in work, and how it varied with the individual, and
never with the sex or age or profession; it belonged to the childhood
of the world to regiment men in the minor details of life. Now I
saw in the baths that the vesture did not need to be laid aside in
other elements than air. It was made of some fine and flexible stuff
woven out of irelium threads, plastic to the shape, yet capable of
stiffening out when the wearer sent an electric wave through it from
the electro-generator he always bore under his right arm. This process
at once shook out every drop of water from it, when he issued from
the bath or the sea. It was so porous that it seemed fragile, and yet
it could bear great strains. Through its pores passed with ease the
water or air or ether that was to influence the body underneath; and
along its threads passed with ease any magnetism the wearer wished to
feel. In certain lights it was almost transparent, yet with such a
play of rainbow colors that it seemed a living fence against lights
and shadows. In the darkness it shone with dazzling radiance as soon
as the electric current flowed into it. At the will of the wearer it
could be, like a magic garment of invisibility, black as midnight, yet
in daylight could reveal every grace and tint of the limbs it covered,
clinging closely like an outer epidermis to the body. Nor was it ever
laid aside except to be replaced by a new vesture, and that was every
few days; for all germs and débris that adhered to it or obstructed
its pores could be destroyed and got rid of by the electric current
the wearer had control of. It was on my first visit to Oomalefa that I
came to know these things, as it was then that I first donned a like
vesture, and was taught its properties and the ways of managing it and
the minute electro-generator that went with it.
There were alternative garments, that they wore under different
conditions. One, almost as plastic as the ordinary vesture, but
armoured by electricity against the inroads of excessive cold, was worn
when they ventured up into the higher regions of the air or beyond; for
it enabled them to keep up the natural temperature of the body as they
flew. Another was as well suited for protection against extreme heat.
It consisted of an asbestine double wall of irelium, within which was
kept up a constant current of cold air by means of a minute apparatus
worked by their wings and arms; and, if they could get moisture
from the atmosphere to run between the two textile folds, it was at
once frozen. Such an arrangement was necessary in their adventurous
experiments in the bowels of the earth or under the blazing eye of the
sun. The most beautiful and most convenient of all their vestures was
one which looked and felt like a film of white cloud; I would have said
that it was woven of the misty fleeces that caught and rent themselves
on the lesser peaks of Lilaroma. It was indeed no distant mimicry of
this; for though it could be thrown loosely round the figure in the
most graceful forms like a toga, and seemed as thin and fragile as
gossamer, it consisted of a treble fabric: between two transparent
films, fairly delicate as if woven by a spider on a windless dawn,
moved in cloud-like purity and dimness the airy vapour of some liquid
that shone as silvery and warm as moonlight. Its purpose was to conceal
and yet to reveal the general contour and movements of the body; to
sift the strength of the sun’s rays as they fell in their purity from
heaven, and yet to pass as much of their curative power through it as
the skin needed; to cling to the limbs, and yet to impede them no more
than a fleece of cloud would.
It was as I was studying the texture and the beauty of these garments
that there happened the first approach to panic I had yet witnessed
among this calm-eyed people. There had been a stillness as of
ill-bridled tumult in the atmosphere all day. My proparents had moved
restlessly abroad from daybreak, and all the Leomo were on the wing
husbanding every minute with feverish clutch. We were sent in squadrons
to different parts of the island, and many new leomorans were set
to work in unaccustomed corners of the mountain, yet there was a
look of baffled intelligence in every face. I had felt there was an