Curiosities, Freaks and Monstrosities
Even though my companions felt constantly ill at ease in Atlantis,
yet as the weeks went by they were becoming more proficient in the
use of the native tongue and were taking their places in the life of
the Sunken World. One by one they were being summoned, as I had been
summoned, before the Committee on Selective Assignments; and each in
turn was ordered to perform some specified daily work after taking the
usual thirty days’ tour around Atlantis.
Captain Gavison, as one of the most adept of all in mastering the
language, was one of the first to be graduated into citizenship. But
his advancement brought him no great pleasure, since his prescribed
duty was to spend two and a half hours daily in a bureau engaged in
compiling statistics of population and industry; and his chosen work
for the State, which was to write a comparison of Atlantean and upper
world civilization, gave him no end of trouble owing not only to
linguistic difficulties but to his lack of training in authorship.
Meanwhile Stranahan and Rawson had also matriculated into citizenship;
but their assigned work differed strikingly from the Captain’s. Rawson,
as a well formed and brawny youth, was permitted to exercise his
muscles for an hour and a half daily in a marble quarry some miles to
the north of the city; while Stranahan, who had been given his choice
of several occupations, decided that it would suit him best to serve
three hours daily as doorman at the Archeon City Museum.
It seemed almost as if this position had been made to order for him;
for when he stood at the museum entrance, robed in an official red,
and politely directed visitors to the various aisles and departments,
he had the dignity of one born to a lofty station. His work was
not altogether easy, he assured me, for the exhibits were many and
confusing, and he had difficulty in memorizing their names and
positions; yet to see him as he swayed commandingly from side to side
of the great arched doorway, with chest thrown well out and hands
folded sedately behind him, one could scarcely have believed that he
was troubled by any doubts, but might have imagined him to be the owner
and creator of the building.
Indeed, the interest which he took in the museum seemed to be almost
personal. He summoned the whole Upper World Club to inspect it, as
though it had been his own handiwork; and he directed us from gallery
to gallery and from exhibit to exhibit with the serenity of perfect
knowledge. And while there was much about the institution that neither
he nor the rest of us could understand, yet we had him to thank for
introducing us to some truly extraordinary displays.
Unquestionably, the museum was one of the things best worth seeing in
all Atlantis. Not only were the contents vivid and remarkable beyond
description, but the building itself was a never-failing source of
wonder. The sides and roof were of glass, and on the lower levels the
walls were colorless and transparent, so that passers-by could feast
their eyes on the more conspicuous displays, just as on earth the
passers-by may gaze into the shop windows. But above the first story
the glass was no longer crystal-clear, but was frosted and tinted to
the semblance of clouds driven across a pale blue sky; and over those
clouds and down from the enormous rounded dome a dim rainbow seemed to
reach, spreading a web that varied in hue and texture with every step
one took and every variation in the luster of the searchlights that
shone faintly from above.
To glance at this superb building, one would never have guessed
what queer objects it concealed. For my own part, I was simply
astounded--astounded at the beauty of some exhibits, at the strangeness
and ghastliness of others. The department of science and inventions (to
select merely at random) was a source of bewilderment, for it showed
the oddest contrivances I had ever beheld--machines for preventing
earthquakes, machines for regulating the undersea temperature, machines
for detecting and isolating noxious bacteria, machines for transforming
iron into copper or tin into lead, machines for boring through the
ground as a submarine bores through the water.
But what particularly interested me was the historical department.
I shall never forget my first visit to it; it was one of the most
surprising experiences of my life. Imagine, for example, a glass case
that contained nothing but the fragment of a brick wall, a perfectly
commonplace wall of red brick!--and imagine reading that this was
a substance employed for building purposes in the days before the
Æsthetic Renaissance! Or, again, picture yourself in contact with half
a dozen gold coins, larger than silver dollars and each worth several
days’ wages, yet left unguarded where any one might seize them!--and
fancy reading that these bits of metal had once been considered
valuable and had even been contended for and hoarded! Or, to take still
another illustration, conceive of one’s surprise at seeing a carefully
treasured speck of coal, and being informed that this was used for fuel
in the days before intra-atomic energy; or paint for yourself the shock
of coming across a case of fine jewelry, of rings, earrings, brooches,
bracelets, and the like, only to find them represented as typical of
primitive taste!
* * * * *
But while all of the historical department proved most diverting to me,
there was one section that interested me more than all the rest. This
was known as the “Hall of Horrors.” Once having observed the title,
I was eager to explore the department in detail--and I was not to be
disappointed. Somehow, there was something about the “Hall of Horrors”
that seemed familiar, even though a placard at the entrance assured
one that all the exhibits had been preserved from a remote antiquity.
Thus, the first thing that I noted was a gas masque said to date from
the third century B. S., but looking as if it might have been useful
in the present World War. Beside the gas masque was a steel helmet
reported to be from the fourth century B. S.; yet, had it not been for
the card identifying it, I might have suspected it of being taken from
the Germans this very year.
This suspicion, however, would not have applied to the other military
implements ranged about the room; most of them were so crude of design
as to make me positively smile. Even as I write this, I can re-capture
the mood of exultation I felt at the proof of our own superiority: the
rifles of the second century B. S. were so puny-looking and feeble as
to appear worse than primitive, and the bayonets were fully half a foot
shorter than our own; the machine guns of the first century B. S. had
obviously not half the killing capacity of ours, and the cannons were
not constructed for long distance firing; while the conspicuous absence
of the armored “tank,” the hand grenade and “liquid fire,” showed that
the ancient Atlanteans would have had much to learn from the sanguinary
experts of our own day.
From the “Hall of Horrors” Stranahan conducted us into another
and scarcely less interesting department that was apparently
nameless, since its miscellany of ancient oddities would have defied
classification. “Here’s where you’ll feel at home,” grunted our guide,
as with a gesture of welcome he preceded us through the doorway. But
his remark had been poorly chosen. We did not feel in the least at
home. In fact, I had never had a more distinct reminder of my exile
than when I gazed at great brick and iron chimneys towering within
glass cases, and catalogued as typical of “The Age of Steel and Fire”;
and it made me almost homesick to see pictures of long-vanished cities
wrapped in great clouds of smoke and soot, and described succinctly
as “Representative of the Tubercular Era in Old Atlantis.” But much
more surprising to me were the huge ancient furnaces, resurrected in
detail, with puppet stokers in the act of pitching the coal into the
giant flames. An explanatory card naïvely declared that “These were
once considered necessary evils, not only for industrial reasons,
but because the Submergence had not yet made possible the automatic
regulation of the weather.”
But an apparently insignificant object in the same department aroused
far greater interest among my companions. Carefully guarded under a
glass cover, where it had evidently undergone some special process of
preservation, was a flat, little rectangle of some shrivelled brownish
substance, which upon close scrutiny I took to be tobacco!
That my guess had been correct was demonstrated by a placard that
accompanied the exhibit: “This is a fragment of a narcotic imported
into old Atlantis from across the western ocean. It found high favor at
one time among the women of the country, and to a lesser extent among
the men, although its use was considered a mark of effeminacy. There
were several common ways of absorbing this drug, the most popular being
to ignite it and suck the smoke into the lungs by means of a little
twisted tube. Happily, this disgusting habit has long ago disappeared,
and the elimination of this plant at the time of the Good Destruction
is not the least of the benefits conferred by Agripides.”
I am afraid that few of my companions agreed with the latter statement.
They cast longing glances in the direction of the tobacco; and, had it
not been safely guarded beneath glass, its career would surely have
ended then and there.
With the memory of the tobacco still rankling in our minds, we were
escorted into what was known as the “Department of Human Evolution.”
Here was depicted the rise of man from the lowest savage state to
the height of present-day Atlantis. A series of skeletons indicated
the gradual transformation from a broad-boned, ape-like thing to a
big-skulled modern--and, to my great surprise, the large cranial
capacity was represented as belonging almost exclusively to the
aboriginal and Post-Submergence eras!
* * * * *
While I was wondering why this should be, I chanced to overhear
the words of a sagacious-looking bearded man, who accompanied a
party of smooth-faced youths, evidently as their tutor. “Before the
Submergence,” he was saying, “we were civilized in a rude sort of way,
and yet were not intelligent. That is to say, we were not intelligent
as a people, for only one man in a hundred possessed any understanding
of civilization; and it was that one in a hundred, or perhaps one
in a thousand, who accomplished all the changes in science, art and
culture. Today, however, every normal man is intelligent enough to be
more than the dead lumber of civilization. You will observe this skull
here”--the speaker paused, and pointed to one of the most ancient of
the group--“this is the fossil of a paleolithic pre-Atlantean, who
inhabited our island forty-five or fifty thousands years ago. You can
see for yourselves how much higher and ampler the skull is than that
of your own ancestor of thirty-two hundred years ago, although of
course the latter represented the world’s most advanced civilization.
Fortunately, our intellectual decline was counteracted by the vigorous
measures of Agripides and his successors, and we can now boast of
being on the same high mental plane as the men of fifty thousand years
ago....”
The speaker withdrew with his students toward a further exhibit, and I
could catch no more of what he said. But I had heard quite enough, for
it seemed to me that his words were not to be taken seriously. And I
was more interested in browsing about the gallery than in listening to
his pointless remarks--particularly since I had chanced to set eyes on
some arresting tables of statistics. These figures, which dated back
more than three thousand years, showed how the rise in the appreciation
of beauty had been almost simultaneous with the growth of intellect;
how the mental advance and the decline of crime seemed likewise to be
related phenomena; how the general measure of happiness, as indicated
by the absence of nervous disorders, mental aberrations and suicides,
had been incalculably increased since the intellectual revival.
Having read to the end of the statistics, I passed with my companions
down several long corridors to the art departments, where some of
the more notable contemporary paintings and statues were placed on
exhibition along with a multitude of classic works. But if I were
to dwell upon the contents of these galleries, beyond saying that
its art was in that same exquisite and original style I had already
observed, I should have to add chapters to my story; and, likewise, I
should find my narrative interminable if I were to describe the other
exhibits: the natural history department, with specimens of the flora
and fauna of old Atlantis, the paleo-botanical department with lifelike
restorations of long-extinct tree-ferns and gigantic palms, the
sociological-historical departments, with representations of scenes in
prisons, poorhouses, orphanages, and insane asylums, all of which were
declared to have been “herding places of the days when unfortunates
were so plentiful that they had to be dealt with by the pack, instead
of, as at present, being consigned individually to the care of those
sympathetic men and women who make social work their service for the
State.”
But while the sheer abundance of the exhibits makes it impossible
to describe them all, there is one that I must not fail to mention,
since in some ways it was the most remarkable in the museum. We had
just entered the section ambiguously known as “Curiosities, Freaks
and Monstrosities,” when Stranahan, with an odd twinkling expression,
warned us to be ready for a surprise. And, certainly, he warned us
with good reason! As we glanced toward the further wall, we were
shocked by sight of something dazzlingly familiar--so very familiar,
indeed, that several of us uttered little cries of amazement. Neatly
arranged behind a glass case, flattened against the rear panels so
as to afford a better view, were dozens of well known blue uniforms!
Among them, from the Ensign’s stripes, I recognized my own; and among
them, also, was the decorated uniform of the Captain! And above
them, on a large-lettered placard, appeared the statement that these
were the clothes worn by the only aliens to enter Atlantis since the
Submergence, and that they were interesting as showing what grotesque
and unsightly garments were fashionable in the upper world!