Limanora the island of progress
by narolla or dream-consciousness stimulants. Now the narolla were
entirely abandoned; for imagination was preternaturally excited, and
discovery and invention seemed to come to investigators almost without
effort.
It was indeed a period of accelerated progress, if not of precipitance,
in the work of all families. The darkness around existence lifted over
the whole horizon, and demanded redoubled exertion, in order that the
new regions should be mapped before it fell. The tissues and nerves
of every Limanoran felt the stimulus; each worked with a will. Still
the necessities of the situation almost ran ahead of their powers.
One thing became clear, that they must have more workers; the new
generation would have to be more numerous than the last. For the young
had to be drawn upon for active nerve- and head-work before their usual
time; and these would need more leisure in the next stage of their life
to compensate for the loss of it in the period of growth.
It grew evident that parents who had been exceptionally successful
in the two children they had brought forth, reared, and launched
full-fledged on the career of life should be permitted and stimulated
to resume parentage. It was considered one of the highest privileges
and honours to be selected as parents again by the magnetic
consciousness of the nation. There was needed no formal agreement
or resolution; the mind of the race was known without consulting it
openly; and every pair felt in a moment that they were selected for
reparentage; they required no stimulation, no permission to enter on
the patriotic duty. And all considered it a duty of the loftiest kind.
Passion in the race burned low; no longer was it a sting or goad that
had to be mastered; it was in short no more a passion, such as the use
of imagination, the love of the race, or the yearning after advance had
become. The animal element in it had grown insignificant, and left it
at the bidding of intellect and will. These tried parents had thus no
sensuous pleasure to seek in the new task assigned to them. They took
it upon them as a duty, and their chief pleasure lay in the honour they
had been paid, and in the service they were doing to the race and to
the progress of their humanity.
A second necessity of the new position was earlier marriage on the
part of the men and women of the community. As soon as bare maturity
had been reached, pairing now began. First it had to be scientifically
ascertained that all the merely primitive stages of mankind had been
passed through, not only the prehistoric, but the historical. It would
be one of the greatest of evils to allow the privilege of parenting
for the community to any who might have yet to go through a stage of
individual life that represented centuries of the past of mankind.
Little better would this be than stocking their island with children
from their exiles. It was a question of testing every individual;
for some passed more rapidly through the life of their ancestry than
others; and these were not always the best as parents or even as
citizens. Every tissue and faculty had to be tested, after careful
study of the records of the childhood and youth. No possible prospect
or chance of atavistic taint was overlooked.
The next duty was to review the needs of the race. The tasks and
abilities of every family were measured, and the possible expansions of
these were estimated; then new sciences, or new divisions of sciences,
or new duties that would need the services of a family or families
specially selected and moulded for the purpose, were taken into the
account. From this elaborate review of the resources and needs of
the population conclusions were carefully drawn as to the number and
quality of the children that were required. The problem was easy enough
as far as mere extensions of the existing families were concerned. But
the creation of new types was a question that tasked the abilities of
the wisest to the utmost. The special faculties needed for the new
science or art or duty had to be discussed and decided; and especially
how far existing faculties would have to be modified or newly
combined. Then out of the various families those two had to be chosen,
a cross which would produce the required modification or combination.
But, as this was still largely of the nature of experiment, more than
one effort was made towards each new type, in order that, if one child
failed, the others might be available. But the wise creators of new
types were rapidly getting surer of their ground; their experiments
were growing less of experiments; they could almost foretell to a
faculty or tissue the result of the crossing of any two families. And
where any quality was unequal to the new duty, first creative surgery
was called in to modify or add to the tissue of that part of the brain
which was the physical equivalent of the faculty, and afterwards
education with its various magnetic and dietary aids was brought to
bear on its development. Yet there might be some chance of their new
type falling short of its purpose and, to guard against this, several
individuals of it were brought forth and trained. It was generally
found that all of them were needed to carry out the duties of the new
position.
After everything had been settled in the programme of the next
generation, the task of matching began. Time after time the two who
were to be the parents of the new type were thrown together as if by
accident in circumstances and surroundings which would touch their
imaginations and rouse their enthusiasm for each other. They were put
into difficult positions together, so that one might help to extricate
the other from them. Alternate debt and service wove mutual bonds
around them, till at last neither desired to issue from the network of
obligation and love in which they were caught. The magnetism of one was
complementary to that of the other; and when separated they longed to
see each other. With none in the community was the filammu of either
in such communion as with the loved mate. Thus partly wise choice,
and partly spontaneity, produced the match. The lifelong bond could
never become enslaving for either; for the material of it had been
selected not by mere youthful caprice, but by the maturest wisdom of
the race, whilst it was spun by the impulse and will of the two friends
themselves. Neither the state nor either of the partners could possibly
regret the friendship, or wish it dissolved. It passed as naturally
into marriage as flower into fruit.
But, whilst the future was thus being safeguarded, the new duties or
expanded duties had to be looked after. Seventy-five years of work
had to be provided for before the new citizens could be made fit for
their duties. Part of this was covered by drawing earlier on the powers
of the new generation; the youth must come out of their seclusion a
few years sooner than usual. But that was not sufficient. What way
was there out of the difficulty? It was a tacit rule of the community
that none were to overstrain their energies; overwork was considered
as great a vice as indolence; for it cheated the race of some of its
advance by demoralising the faculties and tissues, and bringing on the
nausea of life earlier than it should come by nature. The biometer
was carefully applied to every citizen in order to test how far he
could go in work without wasting his energies. And after all had been
assigned additional work to their utmost limit, there was still so much
unassigned. The only chance of meeting it was the extension of life.
The elders must live longer. Happily every condition was now present
for managing this. They had new foods and agents for revitalising the
tissues; they had new apparatus for discovering internal defects in the
human system, and new methods of remedying them; the far vistas opened
up into the future gave a new purpose to the life even of the most
aged; they longed to see what would come of all the expanded invention
and discovery; the enthusiasm of the new age fired the imagination of
the oldest. Limanoran life had another century added to it.
In the midst of the bustle of these preparations for the future (if
anything the Limanorans did could be called bustle), there occurred an
accident that smote them almost with dismay, and brought them as near
as I had ever seen them approach to melancholy. The additions to the
sources of the energy available in Rimla had entailed more muscular
work as well as more superintendence, and it was necessary to assign
more physical toil to the now-earlier mature than had been customary.
Two scions of the meteorological families, who had been selected for
marriage and parentage, were sent to manage a large pirakno, which had
been constructed for drawing the magnetism from the air and the spaces
just beyond the atmosphere. The great machine had been placed on an
isolated spur of Lilaroma, so that if ever through the sudden sweeping
of the earth into a supermagnetised area it should become dangerous, it
could easily be detached from Rimla and insulated. And there were never
less than two beside it to help in its management.
The younger men and women took the night watches in all the physical
labour that had to be undertaken. And Tamarna and Omirlo, as one of
the youngest and least experienced of the pairs that had to manage
this huge pirakno, kept the last watch of the night, the watch that
included sunrise and was followed by that of two of the most mature
workers. It was thought that, as every Limanoran would be awake and on
the alert at dawn, help in any emergency could easily be procured. As
it was well known that during that period there was a great increase
of magnetism in the atmosphere, provision was made in the machine
itself for so regular a change; it was so arranged that, when the sun’s
rays first touched it, it should automatically increase its capacity
for magnetism. But so recent had been the development of cosmic
magnetography that the times and seasons of the irregular increase of
magnetism had not been tabulated and classified. Had the observations
been made for a long enough time to allow of inferring a uniformity
or law, then it would have been seen that these supermagnetised
spaces, though they may have been entered by the earth during the
night, have little effect upon her atmosphere till day dawns; the
excess of magnetism seems to lie dormant in the dark; the first rays
of the sun act like a fuse to a mine and complete the circuit between
extra-terrene space and the surface of the earth. Sunrise, in fact,
as they came afterwards to see, was the most critical time for such a
machine as the pirakno.
It happened, too, that on this particular night the sarmolan or cosmic
barometer had been getting out of order; but its watchers did not think
it called for immediate attention; the morning would be time enough
to put it right. Its indicator thus lay tongue-tied and misleading,
when it should have been violently agitated. Tamarna and Omirlo had no
warning of the approaching magnetic tornado. The hour before dawn the
pirakno moved as regularly and quietly as at that point of the night
when the magnetic tide is at its lowest ebb, the point when sleep is
deepest and death is most frequent. They had just seen that every part
was moving without friction and fully coping with its work; and Omirlo
felt that he could leave his mate for a brief space and consult the
sarmolan-watchers. He had been gone but a few minutes when he heard a
loud crash behind him, and at the same moment he noticed that the first
beams of the sun had struck across the levels of the sea. He turned
and saw a flash from the place where, he thought, the pirakno stood.
Flying back in trepidation, he found the machine as he had left it, but