The island was mountainous; a constant succession of green hills and
valleys. A small lake came into view, with steam rising from it.
Everywhere the scene was dotted with thatched huts and, occasionally, a
more pretentious bungalow like the one in which the visitors had passed
the previous night. As they flew low over the hills, they could see
small brown and white patches of cultivated land scattered everywhere.
"That is the way the Bas live," Loto commented. "Sometimes they bring
their produce to the cities and sell it for ridiculously small sums. If
there's a food shortage, the Arans come out and take it--paying for it
nominally."
"But their factories, their industries?"
"In the cities, Father. Reduced to a minimum, and for the use and
welfare of the Arans and Scientists almost exclusively. Skilled labor is
performed by the higher types of the Bas. They are allowed to live in
the cities, but are paid so little that they must live unpretentiously.
Everything is done for the welfare of the Arans and the League of
Scientists."
"And the government?"
"A monarchy. A king, his council of fifty and his personal cabinet of
five. A hereditary monarch, wholly inefficient, except in forcing his
laws upon the Bas."
"I should think that would be somewhat difficult," Rogers commented.
"There is a large police force made up of swaggering young men of the
Arans. They serve for the joy of it; they're mostly arrogant individuals
who take pleasure in the enforcement of the personal power they hold.
And they abuse it, of course. Their task is easy, for they have the
Scientists behind them. If one of them were killed, or even attacked by
a Bas, it would mean the death of that Bas and all his family.
"I said the Bas were under conditions almost intolerable. And that's
exactly why these spies of Toroh's are dangerous to us just now. The
whole social condition here is wretched, but, I suppose, logical enough
under the circumstances of environment and racial development.
Fundamentally, the difficulty has been a limited land area. The race
cannot expand, hence numerically it must be restrained."
"How?" demanded Rogers. "By birth control?"
"Obligatory birth control--applicable only to the Bas. More Bas are not
desired, hence births are limited. The desire just now--more than to
hold the population even--is to cut it down. Hence, a Bas woman is
allowed only two offspring."
"But suppose she has three?" George suggested.
"The mother and her child--illegitimate in a new sense--are banished
from the island." Loto's voice rose to sudden vehemence. "Can you
understand what that sometimes does? I have seen a mother with her
newborn infant, two or three weeks old, pleading before the King's
Council. She would not murder it at birth, as the Bas women sometimes
do, and I saw her plead for its right to live on the island. And then,
with her plea denied, she took it away into the frozen north. Her
husband did not follow her. That is optional. This one stayed behind,
keeping the other two children, and letting her take the infant alone.
And she went, to save its life--her child, born without a birthright."
There was a silence. Rogers was staring down at a hilltop where, as the
plane swept past, a woman with two naked children at her side stood in
front of a small shack.
"And when you have seen the Arans, living their life of luxury and
immorality," Loto went on, "you will wonder why the Bas have stood it so
long. 'After us--the deluge,' has always been the Aran reasoning."
The plane was climbing to pass over a jagged, volcanic-looking peak.
Behind, nestled in a hollow, with a curving stretch of white sand and
the blue waters of the channel beyond, lay the capital city of the
Arans: reckless, pleasure-loving, secure in its beauty and supremacy,
yet trembling from so many causes upon the brink of disaster.