Some Riddles Solved
The home of Professor Tan Trum was typical of the so-called "Second
Class" citizen of the country of Wu. It was composed of five or six
small rooms, excavated out of solid rock, and opening on one of the
numerous side-galleries that threaded the underworld. There were no
windows, but light was provided by the yellowish-green electric bulbs;
while a constant supply of air was forced in through whirling fan-like
devices located in little orifices near the front door. All in all,
the Professor's abode was comfortable enough, although I could never
accustom myself to the stone chairs and tables, to the stone beds
without pillows, or to the grotesque hangings and adornments, composed
of small likenesses of swords, helmets and land-battleships, which
constituted the native idea of art.
The family of the Professor included his wife, Tan Tal, and his three
daughters, Loa, Moa, and Noa. In them I made my first acquaintance with
the feminine half of the population--and not few or slight were the
surprises which they gave me! To begin with, there was the trouble of
telling them apart, and in distinguishing the oldest from the youngest.
On first entering the house, I assumed that Tan Tal, the mother, was
the most youthful of the girls, while Loa, the last-born daughter,
struck me as undoubtedly the parent. And this mistake, absurd as it
may seem, was only natural, owing to the peculiar ideas of beauty
entertained by the ladies of Wu.
For it was their opinion--in which the men seemed to share--that the
supreme mark of a woman's loveliness was her wrinkles, and that the
more wrinkles she boasted, particularly around the eyes and on the
neck, the more alluring was her appearance. Hence all the damsels used
to spend hours a day with wrinkle-producing creams, with permanent
"wrinkle-wavers," and with other devices to create creases in their
naturally smooth countenances; and only the old and matronly women,
who were past the stage of trying to shine before their lovers, could
afford to neglect the cosmetic arts and to let their features unwrinkle
themselves.
It was for this reason that the young Loa, who, as I was later told,
had barely reached seventeen, impressed me as a hag of advanced years.
Her cheeks, her forehead, and her neck were furrowed in such a fashion
as to remind me of a crone of ninety; while she was rendered all the
more hideous, to my way of thinking, by the cream-colored paint with
which she had daubed her lips, and by the fact that her eyelashes,
in accordance with native custom, had been shaved away. Yet in the
estimation of the chalk-faces, she was supremely beautiful!
There was another fact about Loa--and about all the other ladies--which
grated horribly on my sensibilities. This was that, while the men
wore skirts, the women all went around in trousers! All females, above
the age of four or five, wore loose, pajama-like pantaloons of various
colors; and it was considered unseemly, not to say indecent, for a
lady to appear in any other costume; in fact, one of the maidens of my
acquaintance was denied admittance to the best social circles because
once, in jest, she had donned her brother's skirts.
In the same way, I myself was looked upon with suspicion, not to say
contempt, because the trousers which I wore were considered unbecoming
for a gentleman. Some persons, seeing me from a distance, made a
mistake as to my sex, while others were so shocked that they went away
shuddering with noses pointed high in the air in horror. Only after
Professor Tan Trum had been officially notified of my delinquency, and
had remedied the situation by providing me with one of his old black
skirts, was I able to appear in respectable society.
I am sure that any of the local youths would have envied me the
privilege that I now endured for several hours each day. This was to be
instructed in the native language and institutions by the "beautiful"
Loa. Professor Tan Trum, of course, supervised my education, but was
so absorbed in his researches into the roots of extinct verbs that he
could not give me more than a few minutes a day. Hence, it was natural
that his daughter, having little else to do with her time, should be my
instructress.
I must confess that she took her task, on the whole, conscientiously
enough, although her first efforts were not to teach me the language,
but to teach me how to pencil my eyebrows, whiten my cheeks and lips,
and bleach my hair, so as to conform to the native idea of masculine
beauty. Failing in these efforts, she resigned herself with a sigh to
the inevitable; yet from the too-gentle and yearning way in which she
glanced at me from time to time, I could see that my charms, such as
they were, had had too much of an effect on her impressionable young
heart. Already I had intimations that trouble was brewing!
* * * * *
But let me pass from this subject, for the present, to mention some
of the astonishing facts I learned under her tutorage. First, of
course, there was the necessity of studying the native language;
but, fortunately, I made rapid steps in this direction, not so much
because of any natural ability, as for the fact that Loa was a capable
teacher, and because I made every effort to remember when she pointed
to object after object and mentioned its native name, and then, after
a time, began linking the words into simple sentences. I was like a
little child first learning the language of its parents; but having,
I confidently believe, a quicker intelligence than a child's, I was
not long in absorbing the rudiments of the vernacular. Within two or
three weeks, I could exchange elementary ideas; within a month, I could
conduct a brief conversation; while, in less than three months, I was
able to carry on an extended colloquy with any member of Tan Trum's
household, and would not miss more than an occasional word, due to the
limits of my vocabulary.
Strange, unbelievably strange, were my discoveries as to my new home.
The underworld, composed of the twin countries of Wu and Zu, reached
for hundreds of miles in all directions, and probably underlay not only
most of Nevada, but much of Utah, Arizona, and adjoining states. This
whole vast universe, comprising a multiplicity of great caverns and
smaller connecting galleries, some of which reached down eight or ten
miles, was inhabited by a population variously estimated as between
forty and fifty millions--all of them chalk-faced and salmon-eyed,
like the ones I had already seen. Neither Loa nor her father could
tell me how long they had dwelt underground; their written records
dated back thousands of years, and their claim was "Forever"! While
there were traditions that once they had lived above ground, in a land
of blue skies and open air from which they had been driven to escape
annihilation in warfare, there were now no intelligent men to believe
such tales, which were not only preposterous on the surface, but had
never been proven by historical research. It was generally held that
human life had originated in caves underground, and that, as population
multiplied, men had excavated new caves and corridors to take care of
the surplus millions.
So accustomed had the people become to their subterranean environment
that it was impossible for them to appear above ground, unless they
wore heavy metallic suits, like those of undersea divers, in order to
protect them from the rays of the sun, which their white skins, having
lost all pigment in the course of the ages, were no longer able to
endure. Hence their belief, which scientists had verified by means of
elaborate mathematical proofs, that no life could endure above ground,
and hence the fact that none of them had ever been observed by our
race; for only once every score of years would any scientist of Wu
venture above ground, and even then he would emerge in some desert
place where no human habitation existed.
But how did the millions of Wu and Zu manage to preserve life
underground? How did they contrive to eat, breathe, and clothe
themselves? That was one of the first questions I asked; and the answer
came to me partly from Loa, and partly from my own observations.
The secret, as I had early surmised, was to be found in the prodigious
scientific development of the Underworld. I do not exaggerate when
I say that they were centuries in advance of our own race; they had
evolved mechanical formulae and devices of which we have not the
remotest conception. As an engineer by profession, I was naturally much
interested in this phase of their growth; and while I was not able
to study or understand all their numerous contrivances, yet I could
understand enough to fill me with amazement and admiration. Every phase
of the life of Wu, I found, depended upon science. Without it, they
could not have existed for a single day; it was both astonishing and
frightening to know how completely these people had come to rely upon
their own inventions.
* * * * *
I shall not take time, at this point, to dwell upon all their elaborate
appliances--which, indeed, would require a separate volume even
for their enumeration. I shall leave out of account the intricate
ventilating system, by which they pumped an adequate supply of air from
the outer world; for I shall have occasion to refer to this again.
Likewise, I shall not now describe their military engines, of which I
have already given some idea, but which I was later to observe more
intimately. I shall begin, therefore, by telling of the manufacture of
food and clothing, which was conducted on principles I had never before
considered possible.
Let me say, by way of explanation, that my food in the Professor's
house had consisted entirely of queer-looking ingredients, comprised
in part of purple capsules, such as I had been given in prison, and
in part of a stringy, fibrous substance reminding me of seaweed.
I was told, indeed, that the wealthier sections of the population
occasionally enjoyed delicacies such as fish from subterranean rivers,
and mushrooms grown in specially prepared cellars; but if Professor Tan
Trum could afford such luxuries, he would not waste them on a barbarian
such as myself.
My clothes, likewise, were of a substance I could not recognize--a
woven substance a little like hemp and yet clearly not hemp, for it
was not quite so coarse. But the fibres, on the other hand, did not
resemble those of linen, cotton, silk, or wool. What could it be?
The answer, as I learned from Loa, was that the native clothing, and
likewise the food, was manufactured synthetically. From the most
ordinary chemical ingredients--from oxygen and hydrogen as contained in
water, from carbon as contained in carbon dioxide or in coal, from the
nitrogen found in the air, and from the sulphur and phosphorus of the
mines--they would create compounds resembling natural organic products.
The simplest of all to manufacture were starch and sugar, and a fibre
like the cellulose of plants. For these, all that was required was
a brilliant lamp, imitating the qualities of sunlight, a chemical
cell which utilized the lamp-rays as the chlorophyll of the vegetable
kingdom utilizes the solar beams, and an adequate supply of water
and carbon. Thus the people might obtain all the carbohydrates they
required for the table, and also all the fibres needed for weaving into
paper and clothes; for, since cellulose constitutes the main ingredient
of cotton and other vegetable fabrics, it was possible to produce a
synthetic equivalent of the garments worn in the world above.
More difficult was the problem of the nitrogenous foodstuffs; but here
again the ingenuity of the chalk-faces had proved equal to the task. I
was never able to understand by exactly what process they had succeeded
in combining nitrogen with oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and other
substances to form albumin; but it is certain that this is precisely
what they did, fusing the elements by means of an electric current and
several catalytic agents, whose nature I was unable to learn.
Let me say, at this point, that I made every effort to find out;
but the formula was the carefully guarded secret of the National
Food Producers, Unlimited, a privately owned corporation, which was
forbidden by law to tell the people the truth about the food they ate.
Hence my efforts not only met with no success, but were so resented
that I was threatened by the Company with imprisonment on the charge of
unpatriotic activities.
In other fields, however, I was better able to satisfy my curiosity.
I learned something of the power-system, by means of which the
chalk-faces kept their factories running, excavated and illuminated the
galleries, and conducted their warfare; I was told that they generated
electrical energy in part from the flow of underground rivers, and in
part by means of a chemical discovery made so long ago that no one
remembered the inventor. This was the compound knows as Mulflar, an
explosive at times beneficial, and at times annihilating in its effects.
Once again I was unable to discover the formula, for this was the
exclusive property of the National Power Producers, who found it their
most lucrative source of dividends, and had long ago succeeded in
passing a law prohibiting themselves from making the facts public. The
general principles underlying the invention, however, were well known.
Mulflar was made by the union of nitrogen, phosphorus, magnesium, and
sulphur with carbon, hydrogen, and one or two other elements in a
compound both simply and easily produced. Its distinctive feature was
its chemical unstability; its atoms would disintegrate and explode
upon the slightest shock or upon the application of a spark, releasing
a prodigious amount of energy through the conversion of that active
element, hydrogen, into the chemically inert helium.
* * * * *
So great was the explosive power of Mulflar that a single gram,
properly directed, was capable of blowing a hundred pounds of rock or
iron to the height of half a mile. Naturally, a substance so dangerous
had to be carefully controlled; and though accidents sometimes did
occur, resulting in the occasional loss of a few hundred lives, in
general it was highly adaptable to industrial uses. Shot off in small
quantities in cannon-like tubes of specially prepared steel, it was
used to set great dynamos into action, and consequently to furnish the
larger part of the electricity indispensable to life. It was the energy
of Mulflar, passed into storage batteries, that made it possible to run
those little coaster-like cars with which I had had such a frightening
experience; it was the energy of Mulflar that kept the lights and the
ventilation in operation, that ran the food and clothing factories, and
that pumped fresh water into pipes throughout the length and depth of
the land.
But, at the same time, it was the energy of Mulflar that proved to be
the worst enemy of the people. Never had I seen more convincing proof
of how the most beneficial inventions may be transformed into engines
of destruction! For it was Mulflar that accounted for the deadliness of
the warfare waged by the chalk-faces; it was Mulflar that had produced
those lightnings which Clay and I had watched in such fascinated
horror; it was Mulflar that had supplied the motive-power for the
land-battleships; it was Mulflar that had blown those gigantic machines
to tatters. And it was Mulflar that was responsible for even more
horrendous implements, which I was later to observe.
But before I report my discoveries in this regard, I must describe
other peculiarities of the chalk-faces. And I must tell of one
saddening conversation which I had with Loa and her father--a
conversation which crushed one lingering spark of hope that had
survived until then in the face of all discouragements.
This was in connection with my friend Clay. Hardly an hour went by but
that I thought of him and his disappearance; hardly an hour but that I
wondered whether he were alive or dead. True, I had heard nothing of
him; but he might have been safe and well only a stone's throw away,
and I would not have known it, since, at the time, I was confined in
the Professor's house as closely as in a prison. Consequently, as soon
as I was able to speak a few words in the native language, I asked
about my friend.
The result could not have been more disappointing. Both Professor
Tan Trum and his daughter looked astonished when they understood the
nature of my inquiry. "What!" gasped my protector, with a sincerity
that I could not question. "You say there were two like you? I wish
there were! That would double the opportunities for verification of my
theories!"
"Another like you?" questioned Loa, in milder tones; and then burst
into a giddy explosion of laughter. "Why, that's just too good for
words! I'm sure there couldn't be two like you in the whole deep world!"
Not knowing whether to take this as a compliment or not, I said
nothing, while the Professor continued.
"My dear friend, if another man like you had been found anywhere in Wu,
we would know of it instantly. The news would be flashed from end to
end of the country--just as your own arrival has been."
"My friend wasn't exactly like me," I explained, fighting against a
sinking sensation that all but overcame me. "He was taller, and his
hair was red--"
For the first time in my experience, the Professor bent nearly double
with laughter, his great ungainly frame rocking back and forth in
mirth. It seemed minutes before he and Loa could suppress their
merriment. "His hair was red?" echoed Tan Trum, riotously. "Red? Red,
you say? My dear man, who ever heard of red hair?"
And both he and his daughter went off again into spasms of laughter.
My only consolation was the reflection that, although Clay appeared
hopelessly lost, still, if he ever were found, I would hear of it,
since no red-haired man had ever been seen before in all the land of Wu.