LANGUAGE WITHOUT SPEECH
"That breaks the ice," said the irrepressible Jack. "We're introduced! Now
for the conquest of Venus."
We had all instinctively returned the smile of our beautiful
interlocutor, with bows and gestures of amity, and it looked as though we
might soon be within touch of her hand, for the vessels continued to
drift nearer, when suddenly Juba clambered out of the window and stood
beside us, his moon eyes blinking in the unaccustomed light. The greatest
agitation was immediately manifest among the crowd on the deck of the air
ship. They seemed to be even more startled than they had been by the
sound of Jack's voice. They interchanged looks, and, apparently, a few
words, spoken in very low voices, and glanced from Juba to us in a way
which plainly showed that they were astonished at our being together.
Edmund, whose perspicacity never deserted him, immediately penetrated
their thoughts.
"It is clear," he said, "that these people recognize Juba as an
inhabitant of the dark hemisphere, while, as to us, they are puzzled, and
all the more so now that Juba has made his appearance. I think it certain
that they have never actually met any representative of Juba's race
before, but no doubt he bears, to their eyes, ethnological
characteristics which escape our discernment, and it is likely that
tradition has handed down to them facts about the inhabitants of the
other side of their planet which accord with his appearance."
"Then, they must conclude that we have come from the other side, and
brought Juba along as a captive," I said.
"Undoubtedly."
"And what must they think of us--that we are inhabitants of the dark
hemisphere also?"
"What else can they think?"
I do not know into what train of speculation this might have led us if a
new incident had not suddenly changed the current of our thoughts.
Unnoticed by us the second air ship had drawn near. Signals were
interchanged between it and the first, and we observed that she who
seemed to be the commander in chief gave orders that the second air ship
should lay us aboard. The order was no sooner given than executed, and we
found ourselves face to face with a dozen of the blond-haired natives,
led by one who was clearly their captain. The deck of the air ship
touched the side of the car, and, as if instinctively recognizing our
leader, the captain laid his hand on Edmund's arm, but with a smile which
gave assurance that no violence was intended.
"Come," said Edmund, in a low voice, "it is best that we should go aboard
their craft. We are in their hands, and luckily so, for they will take us
where we want to go."
Accordingly, all, including Juba, passed upon the deck of the air ship.
You will readily imagine the intensity of interest with which we studied
the faces and forms of those whom I will call our captors. Now that we
were in contact with them we could better observe their resemblances to,
and differences from, ourselves. In all the main features of body they
were human beings, but of a somewhat superior stature. Noses and mouths
were small and delicate; hair long, silken, and either light gold or rich
chestnut in color; skin white and smooth; ears small and peculiarly
formed, with a curious mobility; and eyes large, round, invariably light
blue, and possessing that strange luminousness of which I have already
spoken. One could not look directly into these eyes without a certain
shrinking, for some wonderful power seemed to radiate from them, and one
had the feeling that the intelligence behind them could dip to the bottom
of his mind. We were gently treated and could perceive no indication of
peril to ourselves. Nevertheless, we were glad to feel our pistols in our
pockets. There were seats on the deck to which we were civilly conducted,
but Edmund refused to sit.
"I must see the commander herself," he whispered. "These are only
subordinates, and I cannot deal with them. It will not do to leave the
car here at the mercy of the waves. I must find the means of making them
understand that it is to go with us."
Accordingly, he approached the captain, and we watched him with beating
hearts, not being able to divine what an attempt to dictate terms on our
part might lead to. Jack shook his head, and put his hand on his pistol,
which Edmund had restored to him while we were in the ice mountains.
"I'll drop the jackanapes in his tracks if he shows up ugly," he said.
"You'd better keep quiet," I whispered, "and don't let them see your
weapon. They appear to have no arms, and you should trust to Edmund to
manage the affair. When he gives the word it will be time enough to begin
shooting."
Jack grumbled, but kept the pistol in his pocket, although he did not
withdraw his hand from it.
I have already told you how, at the caverns, Edmund had discovered that
the inhabitants there possessed a means of converse which he likened to
telepathy, and from what I had seen of the people here I was convinced
that they had the same mysterious power, and probably in a higher degree.
To be sure, they used words occasionally, but for the most part they
communed together in some other way. I felt sure that Edmund was now
about to apply what he had learned, and his actions quickly demonstrated
that my conjecture was well founded. Just what he did, I do not know, but
the result of his conference was promptly apparent.
The first air ship had withdrawn a short distance when the other boarded
the car, but now the two mutually approached until it was possible to
step from one deck to the other. As soon as they touched, Edmund was
conducted by the captain, at whose side he had remained standing, to the
presence of the important personage whom Jack had begun to designate as
the queen. We remained where we were, watching with all eyes, while Jack
persisted in keeping his hand on the pistol in his pocket. A crowd
immediately surrounded Edmund and we were unable to see exactly what went
on, a fact that rendered Jack so much the more impatient. But it turned
out that there was no cause for alarm. In about ten minutes the crowd
opened and Edmund appeared. Uninterfered with, he came to the edge of the
deck, close by us, and said:
"It is all arranged. The car will be towed by one of the air ships. I am
to stay here and you will remain where you are until we reach our
destination."
"Have you had a talk with her?" asked Jack.
"Not in any language that you understand," Edmund responded, smiling.
"But I have made good use of what I learned in the caverns. These people
are intellectually vastly superior to the others, and, as I guessed, they
possess a more perfect command of the sort of telepathy that I told you
about. I have not found much difficulty in making my wish understood, and
your amazon is a very obliging person. It is only necessary to be
discreet and we shall have no trouble."
"But why are you to be separated from us?" asked Jack anxiously. "That
looks bad, for it is exactly what they would do if they meant to kill us
one at a time."
"Why should they kill us?" retorted Edmund.
"And why should we be separated?" persisted Jack. "I tell you, Edmund, I
don't like it."
"Very well, then," Edmund said, after a moment's thought; "if that's the
way you feel about it, I'll see what I can do. It will be another
exercise for me in this new kind of language. But, mark this, if I
succeed in persuading the chieftainess to keep us together, you will have
to acknowledge that your fears were groundless. Perhaps it's worth trying
on that very account."
He disappeared from our eyes again--for as soon as he approached their
leader the people of the air ship crowded close around as if to afford
her protection--and, after another ten minutes' conference, came back
smiling to the edge of the deck.
"Dismiss your fears, friend Jack," he said cheerfully. "You are all to
come aboard here with me. So you see there could have been no thought of
treachery; but I'm glad that we are not to be separated, and I thank you
for your solicitude on my account. I'm sure that the original
arrangement was made only because of lack of room aboard this craft, and
you'll see that that was the reason."
He was right, for immediately half a dozen of the crew of the principal
air ship were sent aboard ours while we were transferred to take their
place.
We now had an opportunity to study the countenance of the "amazon"
commander, and we found her to be an even more remarkable personage than
she had appeared at a distance. Of the beauty of her features and form I
shall say no more, but about her eyes I could write a chapter. The
pupils, widely expanded amidst their circles of sky-blue iris, seemed to
speak. I can describe the impression that they made in no other way. I no
longer wondered at Edmund's ability to converse with her, for I felt
that, with a little instruction, and more of our leader's mental
penetration, I could do it myself. At times I shrank from encountering
her gaze, for I verily believed that she read my inmost thoughts. And I
could see that _thought came out of her eyes_, but it escaped all my
efforts to grasp it; it was too evanescent, or I was too dull. Sometimes
I imagined that the meaning was at the threshold of comprehension, but
yet it evaded me, like forgotten words whose general sense dimly
irradiates the mind, while they refuse to take a definite shape, and keep
flitting just beyond the reach of memory. Still, charity and good will
shone out so plainly that anybody could read them, and I do not know how
to express the feeling that came over me at this evidence of friendliness
exhibited by an inhabitant of a world so far from our own. It was as if a
dim sense of ultimate fraternity bound her to us. Jack's enthusiasm, as
you may guess, was without bounds, and strangely enough it rendered him
almost speechless.
"By Jo!" he kept repeating to himself in an undertone, without venturing
upon any further expression of his feelings.
Henry, as usual, was silent, but I know that he felt the influence no
less than the rest of us. Edmund, too, said nothing, but it was plain
that he was continually studying the phenomenon, and I felt sure that his
analytic mind would find a more complete explanation than we yet
possessed. Of course you are not to suppose that the power that I have
been trying to describe was peculiar to this woman. On the contrary, as I
have already intimated, it was common to all of them; but with her it
seemed to have reached a higher development, and, what was of special
interest, she alone exhibited a marked benevolence toward us.
The car was attached by a cable to the air ship that we had just quitted,
and our voyage into a new unknown began. The other air ships, which had
been hovering about, moved up into line, and, with the exception of the
one which towed the car, all rose to an elevation of perhaps a thousand
feet, and moved rapidly away from a row of dark clouds which we could now
see low on the horizon behind. We found the air ship splendidly fitted
up, with everything that could contribute to the comfort of its inmates.
And what a voyage it was! "Yachting on Venus," as Jack called it. We sat
on the deck, with a pleasant breeze, produced by the swift, steady
motion, fanning our faces; the temperature was delightful; the air was
wonderfully stimulating; the light, softly and evenly diffused from the
great shell-like dome of the sky, seemed to bewitch the eyesight; and the
sea beneath us, reflecting the dome, was a marvel of refluent colors.
We had left the calendar clock in the car, but, with our watches, which
we had never ceased to wind up regularly, we were able to measure the
time. The voyage lasted about seventy-two hours, but could, perhaps, have
been performed in less time if we had not been somewhat delayed by the
towing of the car. They had on the air ship ingenious clocks, driven by
weights, and governed by pendulums, but the divisions of time were unlike
ours, and there was nothing corresponding to our days. This, of course,
arose from the fact that there was never any night, and, being unable to
see either sun or stars, they had no measure of the year. With them time
was simply endless duration, with no return in cycles.
"What interests me most," said Edmund, "is the fact that they should have
established any chronological measure at all. It would puzzle some of our
metaphysicians on the earth to account for the origin of their sense of
time. To me it seems evident that the consciousness of duration is
fundamental in all intelligent life, and does not necessarily demand
natural recurrences, like the succession of day and night, and the
passage of sun and stars across the meridian, to give it birth. Did you
ever read St. Augustine's reply to the question, 'What is time'--'I know
if you don't ask me'?"
"If they haven't any years," said Jack, "how do they know when they are
old enough to die?"
"They have the years, but no measure for them," replied Edmund, and then
added quizzically, "Perhaps they _don't_ die."
"Well, I shouldn't wonder," Jack returned, "for this seems to me to be
Paradise for sure."
When we felt sleepy, we imitated the natives themselves, and, just as we
had done during the voyage from the earth, created an artificial night by
shutting ourselves up in the cabins that had been assigned to us. Rest
was taken by all of them in this manner as regularly as it is taken at
night on the earth.
One subject which we frequently discussed during the voyage was the
astonishing resemblance of our hosts to the _genus homo_. Influenced by
speculations which I had read at home about the probable unlikeness to
one another of the inhabitants of different planets, I was particularly
insistent upon this point, and declared that the facts as we found them
were utterly inexplicable.
"Not at all," Edmund averred. "It is perfectly natural, and quite as I
expected. Venus resembles the earth in composition, in form, in physical
constitution, and in subordination to the sun, the great ruler of the
entire system. Here are the same chemical elements, and the same laws of
matter. The human type is manifestly the highest possible that could be
developed with such materials to work upon. Why, then, should you be
surprised to find that it prevails here as well as upon our planet?
Intelligent life could find no more suitable abode than in a human body.
The details are simply varied in accordance with the environment--a
principle that works on the earth also."
I was not altogether satisfied with the reasoning--but as to the facts,
we had to believe our eyes.
Palatable food was served to us, and during the waking time Edmund was
frequently engaged in his mysterious conversation with the "queen."
Within forty-eight hours after we had set out in the air ship, he came to
us, wearing one of his enigmatic smiles, and said:
"I've got another aphroditic word for you to remember. It is the name of
our hostess--Ala."
We were not so much surprised by this news as we should have been but for
what had occurred at the caverns, where he had discovered the patronymic
of Juba.
"Good!" cried Jack, "it's a fine name. I was going to call her Aphrodite,
myself, but this is better as well as shorter."
"But, Edmund," I said, "how does it happen that these people, if they
converse by 'telepathy' as you say, and as I fully believe, nevertheless
occasionally use sounds and words? I should think it would be all one
thing or all the other."
"Think a moment," he replied. "Is it so with us? Do we not use signs and
gestures as well as words? And what do we mean by 'silent converse,' when
mind speaks to mind and soul to soul without the intervention of spoken
language? We have the potentiality of telepathic intercommunication, but
we have not yet developed it into a kinetic form as these people have
done. Ah, when will men begin to appreciate _what mind means?_"
I made no reply, and after a moment's musing, he continued:
"I suspect that here, too, speech preceded the higher form of converse,
and that the spoken language remains only as a survival, presenting
certain advantages for particular cases. But we shall learn more as time
goes on."
There was no disputing Edmund's conclusions. He was the greatest accepter
and defender of facts as he found them that I have ever known.
It was written that before this voyage ended we should have another phase
of language without speech presented for our wonderment. It came about
near the end of the trip. We were standing apart in a group, greatly
interested and excited by the discovery, which had just been made, of
land ahead. Far in advance we could see a curving, yellow shore line,
and, dim in the distance behind it, a range of mountains. Edmund had just
called our attention to these, with the remark that now I must admit that
he had reasoned correctly about the existence of elevated regions on this
side of Venus, when Jack, always the first to note a new phenomenon,
exclaimed:
"Hurrah! Here they come! We're going to have a royal reception."
He pointed toward the land in a different direction from that in which we
had been gazing, and immediately we beheld an extraordinary assemblage of
air ships, perhaps ten miles off, but rapidly making toward us. More were
coming up from behind, as if rising out of the land, and soon they
resembled flocks of large birds all converging to a common center. In a
little while they became almost innumerable, but their number soon ceased
to be as great a cause of surprise to us as their peculiar appearance.
Viewed with our binoculars they showed an infinite variety of shapes and
sizes. Chinese kites could not, for a moment, be compared in
grotesqueness with the forms which many of them presented. Some soared in
vast circles at a great height, with the steady flight of eagles; others
spread out to right and left, as if to flank us on either hand; and in
the center, directly ahead, about a hundred advanced in column deployed
in a semicircle, each keeping its place with the precision of a soldier
in line of battle.
As we continued to gaze, fascinated by the splendor and strangeness of
the spectacle, suddenly the air was filled with fluttering colors. I do
not mean flags and streamers, but _colors in the air itself_! Colors the
most exquisite that ever the eye looked upon! They changed, flickered,
melted, brightened, flowed over one another in iridescent waves, mingled,
separated, turned the whole atmosphere into a spectral kaleidoscope. And
it was evident that, in some inexplicable way, the approaching squadrons
were the sources of this marvelous display. Presently from the craft that
carried us, answering colors flashed out, as if the air around us had
suddenly been changed to crystal with a thousand quivering rainbows shot
through it, their beautiful arches shifting and interchanging so rapidly
that the eye could not follow them.
Then I began to notice that all this incessant play of colors was based
upon an unmistakable rhythm. I can think of no better way to describe it
than to say that it was as if a great organ should send forth from its
keys harmonic vibrations consisting not of concordant sounds but of even
more perfectly related undulations of color. The permutations and
combinations of this truly chromatic scale were marvelous and magical in
their infinite variety. It thrilled us with awe and wonder. But none was
so rapt as Edmund himself. He gazed as if his soul were in his eyes, and
finally he turned to us, with a strange look, and said, almost under his
breath:
"This, too, is language, and more than that--it is music!"
"Impossible!" I exclaimed.
"No, not impossible, since it _is_. They are not only exchanging
intelligence in this way, but we are being greeted with a great anthem
played in the heaven itself!"
There was the force of enthusiastic conviction in Edmund's words, and we
could only look at him, and at one another, in silent astonishment.
"Oh, what a people! What a people!" he muttered. "And yet I am not
surprised. I dimly fore-read this in Ala's eyes."
Even Jack's levity was subdued for the time, but after a while he said to
me with a shrug, half in earnest, half in derision:
"Well, this Yankee-doodling in the air gets me! I'd prefer a little plain
English and the Old Folks at Home."
After about ten minutes the display ceased as suddenly as it had begun,
and the nearer of the approaching air craft began to circle around us.
Finally one of them ran so close alongside that an officer of high rank,
for such he seemed to be, leaped aboard us, and was quickly at Ala's
side. There was a rapid interchange of communications between them, and
then the newcomer was, I may say, presented. Ala led him to where we were
standing, and I could read in his eyes the astonishment that the sight of
such strangers produced in him.