RIMLA
IN studying the practical aims and issues of earth science, I was
taught to manage their apparatus, and to interpret every tremor in the
earth’s crust and every indication of the instruments. I had already
been taught to make their apparatus, for my physical discipline had
begun several years before I was admitted to Fialume. It was in fact
one of their primary maxims that muscular exercises should go on
contemporaneously with intellectual and spiritual pursuits, that no
citizen should be allowed to neglect for even a day the development of
the body, intimately as the soul was interwoven with it. As soon as
I was thoroughly tested and put through my course of probation, the
training of my muscles was begun, and along with the magnetic moulding
of my brain-tissues went the development of the force-tissues of the
body and the powers of my senses. But no one was permitted to enter
their great practical university or workshop till he had become a
certain devotee of the race. The mysteries and arts and crafts which
gave the nation its peculiar powers could not be communicated to anyone
who might by some change become an alien. It was thus that many years
of residence in Limanora passed before I was admitted to one of the
marvels of the island, the great valley of Rimla.
I well remember the evening of my initiation. The night work was as a
rule done by the younger men and women of the community; the elders
took their turn at the machinery by day, as they had to husband sleep
during the hours of darkness and silence. I had often wondered whither
went my proparents at a fixed hour every day; they vanished in the
distance as the sun began to wester, and they returned at evening with
high colour in their cheeks and the look of having used their muscles
with a will. Their physical life seemed to take new impetus from these
expeditions.
One day on their return they told me that I was to be admitted to
Rimla, which they explained to mean the centre of force. The mature
judgment of the community had decided that I could now be fully
trusted. My practical and muscular education was to begin. I was to set
out that evening with a band of young workmen who kept the first watch
of the night.
The sun had scarcely set when my escort arrived; and, as with my slow
powers of locomotion I could not be expected to keep up with them,
I was placed in one of their flight-cars. I had no companion, for
the whole band flew in front and drew the car by some magnetic power
unseen; and it was so light-hung and so balanced by wings and domes and
parachutes that it seemed capable of being the sport of every wind.
Over the central ridge of the island we swept towards a distant slope
of Lilaroma. Suddenly underneath me in the growing darkness there shone
out in a deep broad valley a vast dome of light, transparent enough to
reveal the flitting shadows underneath it. It seemed the laboratory of
a world. Innumerable streams flashed under its upper edge; they sped
from the summits of the surrounding hills, or across the gorges from
other and more distant ranges. I had seen as we flew hundreds of noble
aqueducts spanning the valleys with their arches and columns, some of
them thousands of feet up the slopes of Lilaroma. All the waters which
the great mountain gathered from the clouds of heaven made their way
towards this marvellous domed valley. At its mouth there was a deep
gorge, whether artificial or natural was not clear to me then; and
through the chasm leaped a river mightier than any I had ever seen; it
seemed to be on its way to the sea, but I could not trace its course
farther than its massive gateway out of the valley. Underneath the dome
I could see vast wheels of irelium move at all levels; they seemed so
fragile that a pebble thrown at them would break them; yet each turned
spindles of enormous power, which moved swifter than lightning. I soon
saw that all the intricate machinery was sheathed in casings of their
translucent metal, along which flowed a slow, glutinous stream of some
liquid that dripped through perforations on all points of friction.
As we alighted, night fell, and the titanic crystal workshop gleamed
with a soft radiance that seemed to come from no centres, but was
diffused everywhere in the manner of the sunlight or the atmosphere. It
was like a vast ice cave of the Arctic circle lit by brief and splendid
summer. Fairy-like yet vast, it seemed a fabric of some dream-world;
but the splash and hiss of the forceful waters and the unresting motion
of the machinery made it all real enough. The noises were by no means
deafening; they were subdued and musical with a halo of mysterious
whisper like the sounds of nature on a bright day of summer. Nor was
the sight bewildering to the eyes; there was too much symmetry in it
to perplex and dazzle.
My guides and companions tripped lightly and fearlessly through the
labyrinth of movement till they reached an edifice underneath the dome
more elaborate and majestic in its beauty than the noblest of Gothic
cathedrals; its towers and spires and pinnacles seemed to aspire to
the very stars as we looked up, and yet the loftiest of them failed to
reach the zenith of the vast diaphanous roof. Towards this building
radiated the moving network of spindles and axles that the flashing
water-wheels turned, and out from it passed great transparent tubes of
metal, woven together fantastically into a forest of gigantic trees
and flowers. Nothing of this arabesque of movement marred the colossal
symmetry of all beneath the crystal canopy. The church-like building
was the shrine of force. In it we found one of the wise men of the
elders seated on a high throne; and beside him stood muscular forms
ready to do his behests. He laid his hand on a key-board of innumerable
keys, each of which was marked with some hieroglyphic. The attendants
scattered to various points along the mosaic floor, and watched the
working of the labyrinth of wires and tubes. At the touch of the
master the whole edifice vibrated, and a sound as of the most sublime
orchestration filled the vault. We saw countless wheels and pistons
move and flash beneath their transparent metal sheaths, and along each
tube, now lit as with starlight, we could watch the rush of vapours or
liquids towards their destination in the various factories and houses
in the valley and along the mountain-side.
It was one of the masters of physical force who manipulated the
keys. He was controlling and harmonising the vast power that was
concentrated in Rimla, and, instead of the demoniac jarring of the
engines and machinery which I had been accustomed to in the industrial
centres of other lands, the sounds of the marvellous vault made sweet
concord that ever varied with the transference of power from purpose to
purpose. He was the pointsman of the numberless railroads of energy,
and at the same time the musician of the titanic workshop. His will
disciplined and guided both the generation and the distribution of all
the force of the island. Our troop took the place of that which had
been on guard through the sunset and twilight, and separated in pairs
throughout the valley, each pair taking under its charge one section of
the labyrinthine movement. My comrade, Ooriel, the cousin of Thyriel,
was a youth of splendid build, the strength of his upper limbs seeming
almost bovine, his shoulders and arms not too large for his size, yet
giving the impression of gigantic power. I soon saw how much he could
do. We were to inspect the generators of force underneath the dome. He
first led me to the various streams which came leaping down the slopes
and cliffs. One of them from some cause only to be ascertained at the
cone of Lilaroma was swollen into a yellow torrent that threatened
to overflow its lava banks and flood the valley. In a moment he saw
the danger, and rushed to the wing-dam dividing the upper course and
controlling the amount of water which should flow down to its various
wheels and the amount which unused should find its way to the great
exit. He found that the separating barrier had lost its automatic
motion through the sudden increase of the overflow and the intrusion
of a huge boulder that had come down like a battering-ram upon it. He
set me to guide the machinery and power that moved the dam to suit
the strength of the current, and then, fixing a narrow irelium shield
in the bottom of the channel, he leapt into the torrent. The shield, I
could see, keeping erect just above him, shed the stones and boulders
to this side and that. Thus protected he raised a huge hammer which he
had taken with him and by three or four well-directed blows split the
obstacle into half a dozen pieces; he then bent down and removed them
out of the way, and suddenly I felt the steering-gear begin to work,
and saw the dam swing round into the channel leading to the centre of
force, whilst the bulk of the torrent found its way into the exit,
which was deeper and broader. The danger was past; but a moment’s
hesitation, either in order to bring up the heavier tools or to call
other assistance, would have ruined many of the great works upon the
levels below and stopped the whole of the operations of Rimla for
several days.
Ooriel shook the water from his garments as he leapt out, and in a
few minutes he was on his way with me to the other brooks, cascades,
and conduits which gathered the aqueous forces of Lilaroma into this
valley of power. Not a drop that fell from the tributary clouds about
the head of the mountain but did its work for this singular people; the
moisture-lifting power of the sun, and the force of gravitation that
fought with it were alike made the servants and yoke-fellows of the
Limanorans.
They refused to waste the energy that nature gave them so freely. This
I saw more fully illustrated as I followed Ooriel. Having inspected
all the forms of stream-power, he sped round to the side of the valley
nearest to the western shore of the island; there in a great cave
or hollow in the rock, brilliantly lit, I saw myriads of wires and
cables concentrating from all westward directions on an immense block
of labramor or irelium alloy. This, he explained to me, was the great
electric storage-battery of the waves. From the north-west and the
south-west came the chief storms and currents that broke on the shores
of the island; and underneath the beetling cliffs of lava erected on
the western shores they had a line of long, lofty caves running some
hundreds of feet underneath into the land; in these huge vanes and
water-wheels were hung from the roofs and the higher portions of the
sides; and the waves as they ran in and out beat their paddles and
made them whirl with lightning swiftness. The motion thus communicated
was turned by their electro-generators into currents of electric force
which found its way by the network of wires and cables that I saw
into this enormous storage-battery. In another series of caves they
cooped up the water of the full tides by means of gigantic dams and
sluice-gates, and this during ebb drove huge wheels and turbines and
thus sent the power of the moon into their treasure-house of power.
Every storm that ruffled the surface of the ocean, every current that
swept past their shores, every ebb or flow of their tides added its
quota to the energy accumulated in their electric treasury, a far
more wonderful concentration of wealth than any Sindbad’s valley or
Golconda. Here was ready to the hand of man power greater than all that
the nations and the generations had ever been capable of.
And the winds had been made as much the slaves of this people as the
waves; for another great cavern that we visited was the storehouse of
the energy of the winds. In every gorge and pass and gully around
Lilaroma up almost to its crater had been erected immense windmills,
which as they revolved generated electricity; this found its way from
all points by massive cables buried in the earth to the conservator of
energy in this second cave. Ooriel tested the wires to see that they
were not leaking anywhere and tested the batteries for faults, and
finding everything in good order, we passed into a third power treasury
in the rock. This was vastest of all; for into it there poured the
energy of the power-wells which was not needed by the private houses
spread over the face of the island. As soon as the head of steam was
shut off from the machinery or the tubes of any mansion, its whole
force was turned upon an engine near the mouth of the well, which kept
generating electric force day and night. The accumulation of energy in
this cave of the wells would have been enough to supply ten times the
power that Europe had ever used in her industries.
In order to round off our tour of inspection, Ooriel led me to another
but smaller cave which had just been fitted up with storage-batteries.
This was the cave of the sun. For generations it had been contended
that most of the power from the sun’s rays was lost, even when they
reached the earth; and the inventors had at last worked out the
problem of its utilisation. I had noticed as I flew over the country
in a faleena vast gleaming spaces sparkling like gigantic diamonds in
the sunlight. These were the reflectors which collected the sunbeams
and concentrated their heat and light into power. Upon the slope of
Lilaroma they utilised the miles of snow surface and gathered their
gleam into a few heat-engines that sent the generated electricity into
Rimla.
Vast as the force was which in these various ways was bent into the
service of this people, there seemed still to be the need of increasing
it. Never a week passed without some facilitation of the collection and
distribution of energy by an improvement in the machinery. The mechanic
families were ever busy competing with one another in invention and
practical application of some principle or idea, and the pioneering
families who rode imagination to the verge of practicability marched
ahead of them, mapping tracks and highways into the unknown future.
One proposal was to utilise the magnetism of the earth as a new source
of energy, and already one of the mechanical families was far on the
way to its realisation. Another that was near at hand was the use of
the expansion of their liquefied and solidified air for purposes of
power. One plan somewhat farther off from the realm of practicability
was the utilisation of the primal ether by means of its compression
and expansion. Yet they were working at it in full hope of finding a
solution of the problem at some unexpected turn of their imaginative
road into the darkness. They had achieved so much that they had almost
boundless faith in their ultimate power to solve all problems presented
to their minds. They would face the death of the whole race sooner than
the thought of ceasing to push forward into the night that encircled
life.
My mind was almost paralysed at the thought of the vastness of the
power controlled in this centre of force; but it explained to me the
ease with which they could drive their leomorans miles and miles
through the solid crust of the earth, the power they had over the
volcanic fires of Lilaroma, the strength of the blast they could send
far out to sea from their storm-cone, and the general facility with
which they could control and use even the most titanic forces of
nature. I did not wonder now that they were the masters rather than
the servants of nature, especially when I saw that by the strength and
nicety of their machines they could concentrate all this tremendous
force upon any single point or distribute it over a wide area at the
striking of a key on the great key-board of forces. I have seen one
of the masters of energy turn the whole current from the ten thousand
services it was doing throughout the island upon the making of a
diamond; so enormous was the temperature it generated in a few moments
that a piece of carbon, submitted to the heat and pressure, came forth
a magnificent jewel, gleaming and sheening in the light. But this was
for no silly purpose of personal ornamentation; it was meant for the
friction edge of a leomoran down where it bit into the rock. It was the
easiest thing in the world for this people with all the concentration
of power they had at their call to follow nature in her most occult or
tremendous processes. There was not a metal they could not produce with
their high temperatures and enormous pressures. It is true that all
other operations had to be stopped in order to transmute rapidly common
materials into gold, irelium, or diamonds; but it could be done, and
they had no need to dig into the bowels of the earth like other men for
the more precious metals and crystals which had accumulated there in
the volcanic or chemical past.
It was one of their commonest sayings that no science which was not
creative was worthy of the name. True, there were often long tracts
of scientific investigation that seemed entirely barren; and many of
their researches seemed to lead nowhither. But when I inquired more
minutely I found that the investigators had realised many of the
practical applications of the discovery when once they should reach
it. They regarded as futile all abstract inquiries which had only a
distant and unforeseen chance of ending in something useful. Even their
astronomy had a keen eye to the possibilities of their future; it led
not only to a deeper knowledge of the living heart of creation, and to
a wider enjoyment of the pleasures of imagination and faith, but to the
purposes of the immediate life; it gave them immortal forms for their
art and especially their architecture; it moulded or suggested their
divinest music; it brought into even their physical life influences
unlike those of the earth, and they hoped with full faith that through
this they might catch the wandering thoughts or voices of the beings
of other worlds and at last reach the power of emigration from star to
star.
Their most creative science was chemistry; for this had reached the
secrets of nature’s most mysterious processes, and had imitated and
generally abbreviated the workings of her great laboratory. The
Limanorans did not need to grow the plants and trees that used to
produce their food. Agriculture had ceased to be necessary for them
except as a part of landscape-gardening. The elements and combinations
that used to be extracted from their harvests in order to support and
exhilarate life could be created directly in the chemical laboratories.
Everything needed as diet was drawn straight from the earth without the
long process of growth and culmination. They had the prime factors of
sustenance in unlimited quantity and purest form with the minimum of
labour, and they could give to these the exact quality and refinement
which would bear them straight to the various tissues or cells of
the body without the need of its offensive chemical processes. Most
of the chemistry of life-sustenance was accomplished before the food
entered the human system, and the space and energy of the body that
had before gone to the alimentary processes of life were now free for
other and higher functions. Pharmacy and chemical science combined to
create all that the constitution required not only for its support and
frictionless continuance, but for its progress towards longer life and
more ethereal texture. Their medicine had ages before passed the crude
stage of mere cure of disease. They laughed at the idea of the science
as merely therapeutic: it must be creative. The inter-relations of the
higher and lower elements of the nature were unremittingly studied in
the case of every member of the community, and every means of change
in them that would lead to the ennobling of Limanoran humanity was
carefully prescribed.
I was led through their food factories and grew deeply interested in
their processes of analysis and combination. They seemed never to
have any hesitation about the exact quantity of each element and the
exact temperature and pressure needed to produce any given kind of
sustenance. One of the most singular departments of these factories
was that in which they had yoked the infinitesimal plant and animal
life of the universe to the chemicalisation of their food and medicine.
They knew how to utilise all the life they could come across, however
microscopic, and here under their marvellously powerful magnifying
instruments I could see the minutest of all life enslaved to their
purposes. Nothing could surpass the exactitude with which they had
defined the functions and spheres of these mysterious beings invisible
to the naked eye. Each had its own department of industry. No one of
them interfered with the other. It was life put to its best purpose of
sustaining the noblest life. When I saw the huge irelium tubes bearing
out the results in aërial or vaporous form, I grew anxious to test
the effects at the other end of them. At my own request I was taken
one day to Oomalefa, the great series of public halls and baths which
formed the chief centre of associative life in the island. I had not
known of the institution before; for I was still too little advanced in
physical nature to be clear of the inner chemical processes needed for
nutrition, and it had not been thought necessary to show me a section
of their public life in which I could have no special share. But,
now that my own eagerness for knowledge had brought me to the stage
of education which demanded insight into this institution, they were
willing that I should inspect it and see all its peculiar features.