Limanora the island of progress
It outdistanced sound, if not light too, in its magic motion.
As soon as I began to reflect, I was astounded to find the cold not
merely bearable, but deprived of its bitter penetrativeness. My heart
bounded with exhilaration; every tissue of my body seemed elastic and
full of spring. I could account for these sensations by the atmosphere
of these heights, but how was I to explain the mild temperature of
this snow region? When puzzling over the problem, I began to notice a
haze of half-glowing light like the shimmer of heat over the surface
of the earth at blazing noon. It seemed at first to be an optical
illusion coming, I thought, from the suddenness of my transference from
the plain to such a height, but its unsteady gleam moved so uniformly
that I soon saw it was outside of me. Yet it did not intercept my view
of the snow and ice around. They fascinated me by their splendour of
whiteness, but there was a warmth, a pallid glow over them that was
quite unwonted. Our guide felt my mental interrogation, and pointed
out that we had stepped from the shuttle car on to a movable platform,
which would soon bring us to the observatory; over this platform was an
electric covering, that protected us from the outer air and radiated
heat in all directions. He showed us the snow melting on all sides of
our platform in form corresponding to it, and, as it moved along the
steep, the dark honeycombed square of snow moved with us. There was
above and on every side of us an electric field produced by unseen
circuits of wires; and these fields gave out heat falling short of
light.
This was how they modified the climate up in these glacial regions
and made it even sweeter and healthier than the purified atmosphere of
the Limanoran plateaux below. They had done much for the climate of
the lower levels; by daily casting their electric shuttles through the
atmosphere they brought its impurities to the earth, its particles of
dust and minute living organisms; but as more of these crowded in again
from the outlying regions of air, the electric shuttles would have to
ply ceaselessly in all directions in order to keep the lower strata
pure. In those mountain altitudes the air was naturally sterilised to a
large extent; few organisms could persist in so keen a medium; and the
constant use of electric walls and roof for modifying the bitterness of
the cold swept every trace of bacterial life into the snow. Hence the
purity of the air we breathed up there and the buoyancy of the soul.
The body seemed no clog upon the spiritual functions, and the magnetism
that came from the heavenly bodies uniting with that of the earth had
free play upon our minds, stimulating them to lofty flight. I no longer
wondered why the Lilamo had no aversion to life at this altitude.
They passionately loved it. It was, indeed, being drunk without wine,
without self-abandonment, without waste of tissue.
They kept strict rein on this intoxication, ethereal though it was;
for, like all their race, they had severe practical issues before them.
Daily each of them returned to the less volatile and less pure air of
the lower levels in order to check excess of buoyancy and to reinforce
the graver purposes of life by consultation with the elders and wise
men. They had in their hands an important phase of the well-being and
continuance of their race. They had all the foes of human life, as it
existed amongst the Limanorans, to fight off, whether seen or unseen.
The tornadoes that swept across these subtropical regions, the climatic
strata that drifted from other lands or realms of space, the bacterial
swarms bringing plague in their train, the lower-planed human life
which might swoop down on their shores from the archipelago around
them,--all these had to be watched and directed past Limanora. Any one
of these evils might in a few hours or days sweep out the civilisation
that had taken long centuries to develop and leave them all their steps
to retrace. Eye-tense vigilance was needed to watch for any sign of
their approach, and the keenest invention to prevent their advance when
observed.
I had not long to wait for evidences of the great services the Lilamo
did to their country. Thyriel and I were led by our guide into the
various divisions of the observatory. We inspected the innumerable
testing and controlling machines without fully understanding their
intricate and often subtle arrangements. Had we not been acquainted
with Rimla and Oomalefa and Oolorefa, we should have been bewildered or
even awestruck. As it was we were amazed at the refinement of purpose
in the apparatus, approaching almost to human intelligence; but we saw
that a mere novice would have deranged most of it, so nice were the
adjustments.
Our attention had been especially arrested by the electric indicator or
tremolan. It contained a complete chart of the electric variations of
every point of the island throughout every day in the year. This had
been compiled and drawn up from the observations of several centuries,
and marked the differences between periodical and temporary, regional
and narrowly local, terrestrial and planetary variations. Every day the
instrument was set like a clock to all the electric changes which they
expected to occur periodically on that day. Each of these, indicated at
every point of the map, represented an electrically uniform locality
of the island with which it was connected. The superintendent of
the tremolan for any section of the day specially studied all the
unclassified variations which had occurred at the corresponding hour of
the same day and period of time. He knew every change in the position
of the earth or in the movements of the stars that might affect the
electricity of the atmosphere at any moment during his watch. Along
with him there was a sky-watcher, who used one of their marvellous
reducers of distance and magnifiers to scan the sky and the whole
horizon, and reported every new appearance which broke the uniformity
of the sky-line. In an adjoining chamber with transparent partitions
a third observer was stationed with his ear at a makro-mikrakoust or
vamolan, that gathered in the slightest sounds at the distance of even
hundreds of miles and magnified them for the listening sense applied
to it; it also indicated approximately the distance of the source of
the sound by an automatic calculator. This was a kind of eavesdropper
that could pick up whispers on the orb of the earth, just as their
astronomical instruments could catch the faintest gleam in space
myriads of miles beyond the scope of the eye. In another crystal-walled
apartment stood a fourth watcher, who used an instrument that was to
his electric sense what the telescope is to the eye and their vamolan
was to their ear. With this idrolan he swept the sky for new and
unclassified electric impulses; and the faintest and most distant
indication, quite unrecognisable by his unaided sense, was magnified
ten thousand-fold; at the same time the distance of the source was
roughly measured and indicated.
This was by far the most attractive group of chambers for us. Not only
could we test the wonderful instruments for ourselves; but we could
examine by aid of magnifiers the graphic results of their observations
automatically recorded as if by photography. We could minutely study
the flight of sea birds not visible to the naked eye. The babel of
sounds that went on in the cities of the archipelago quite beneath the
horizon we could hear like a great roar beside us when we placed the
sonoscripts in the sound-magnifier; and with the aid of its analyst
we could unravel the sounds by repeating them slowly. Though I had
not my electric sense sufficiently developed to feel the differences
in the starry impulses when the electrographs were placed in the
electro-magnifier, I could distinguish their differing degrees of
force, and I could see how much Thyriel appreciated the fine shades of
variety in the impulses.
We were engaged in testing the electric records, when we could see the
observer of the tremolan bustling from table to table and map to map,
whilst his pupil watched the indicator. His excitement spread into the
adjoining chambers, and their occupants, leaving their instruments
to assistants, came to his aid. There was an inexplicable electric
disturbance on the north-east shore of the island; the field in that
direction was agitated. They ran to the idrolan and turned it to the
north-east; at once they knew that some seven or eight hundred miles
off there was advancing at a rapid rate a great wave of electric
disturbance. We all recognised a growing sultriness of heat in the
profound calm of the atmosphere even at those icy heights. No time was
to be lost. All the members of the Lilamo were called up, and in a few
minutes were assembled in the observatory.
It was resolved to turn the whole force available in the island into
the storm-cone, and especially into that part of it which could shoot
masses and streamers of electric energy out to great distances in
the atmosphere. Other indications of an approaching tornado soon
appeared. The great telescope discovered a vast cloud of birds on
the horizon, and the sea greatly agitated by shoals of fish beneath
them. The vamolan analysed the sounds made by the birds and revealed
that they were not all of one species; sea birds small and great
were predominant; but there was no lack of land birds, insect-eaters
chiefly, and a few great flesh-eaters, vultures, hawks, and falcons.
The Lilamo knew in a moment what this meant. Myriads of microbes were
afloat in the air in front of the storm, and the sky in the van of the
cloud of birds was obscured by the mass of insect life battening on
the unseen plague. The fish had gathered to eat the clotted life that
dropped into the ocean, and the sea birds had assembled in pursuit
of the fish. It was a striking sight, this great moving internecine
slaughter and feast. Seated at a clevamolan, or combination of
telescope and makrakoust, we were present at the scene, though hundreds
of miles off. We could see the swoop of the vultures down on the land
birds, too busy with their banquet of insects to foresee their own
fate, the water boiling with the leap of the fish and the dive of the
sea birds, and the air turbid with the flash and glimmer of wings; at
the same time we could hear the war of jubilance and dismay, the wild
cry of foretasting appetite, and the still wilder death-shriek; and
round and through the clangour like an atmosphere moved the dull hum of
happy glutted insect life. It sickened us and we had to cover our eyes
and ears to shut out the carnage. We had forgotten that we had been
using the clevamolan, and were glad to find that we could leave it and
return to the ordinary powers of our senses; there was a speck on the
horizon, which might be a boat at sea for anything our eyes could make
out; whilst to our hearing there was the profoundest calm.
Everything was ready for the concentration of our millions of
horse-power in the direction of the north-east, when a new but by no
means unexpected phase of the phenomenon occurred. Word came up from
the north-east shore that a plague had broken out amongst the dwellers
in the district, and that the medical wise men had been summoned to
their help. The Lilamo had already given warning that something of this
kind might be expected in that quarter, and the physicians were by
this time removing all the Limanorans in the north-east to Oomalefa.
So dense a cloud of insects was not there without the attraction of
superfluous bacterial life. Not always was a tornado thus heralded and
vanguarded by a winged army, but when it was, it meant the migration
under magnetic impulse of clirolanic plague-swarms from some favourite
breeding area.