I take up my narrative at a point some four or maybe five months (as you
here on earth measure time) after Nona and I entered the world of the
Marinoids. The human memory retains only high spots clearly; and those
four or five months held nothing which now impresses itself strongly
upon me.
You will recall that I had been knocked unconscious by a blow on the
head. When I recovered, the ruler of that world had passed on his way
and our captors were again dragging us forward.
We came presently to a city. A city, you say! A city under water! Why
not? By a city I mean a closely-knit collection of human dwellings where
a large number of people lived close together. Is that not a city?
This one was the capital of the Marinoid world. They called it Rax—a
brusk, somewhat guttural monosyllable which I write with those three
letters.
There we took up our abode with the leader of this Marinoid party which
had captured us. There we learned the Marinoid language, and became a
part of the Marinoid civilization—with friends and enemies, hopes,
fears and despairs.
As I have already told you, our own spoken language was no more than at
its beginning. We turned to that of the Marinoids readily; and within a
few months it was to all intents and purposes native to us. That you may
understand this point, I remind you again that our intellects were
matured but unused. We learned like precocious children.
More than that, this contact with other beings with minds like our own
brought us rapidly up from the primitive mental state in which I have
previously pictured us. We learned that one great trait of
civilization—deceit.
You will picture us then—Nona and me—as we were at the end of these
months with the Marinoids. We lived in a dwelling near the bottom and
outer edge of the city of Rax. The bottom of the city! A strange term!
Let me explain.
Here on Earth you live in a world you call three dimensions—length,
breadth and thickness. By that, you mean your bodies, and all material
objects comprise three dimensions. Perfectly right. But you live _on the
surface_ of a globe. In general—with exceptions of course—your actions
take place in but two dimensions. Your birds move in three dimensions
more than you do. And your fishes.
Fishes! There you see my point! In the Marinoid world of water, to move
vertically came as naturally as the horizontal movement. Hence, I say
the bottom of the city, for Rax had a vertical dimension almost as great
as either of its others.
The city was, I should estimate, of roughly circular form some quarter
of a mile long and nearly as broad. Like a huge, low cylinder standing
on end.
It was a fibrous city of growing sea-vegetation! Huge stalks planted
like a thick forest of trees in the sandy ooze of the water-bottom, grew
straight upward a thousand feet or more. Broad, leaf-like branches
spread from them at the top, sustained in an upright position by
air-bladders.
These upright stalks were the vertical girders upon which the fabric of
the city was built. For eight hundred feet up they were pruned of their
branches. Parasite growing vines had been guided laterally to connect
the vertical stalks. And upon these, other rope-like vegetation was
woven. The result was a series of tiers some twenty feet apart—one
above the other—forty of them from top to bottom of the city.
The tiers were further cut up into segments which served as houses. I
shall describe one in detail presently—the one they gave Nona and me at
the time our great event took place.
Throughout the city there were both vertical and horizontal streets at
intervals—up and down and along which the inhabitants swam or drifted.
And occasionally there was cubical open space—a sort of
three-dimensional park. One of these, the largest, occupied the exact
center of the city, with the ruler’s home contiguous to it.
* * * * *
Have I made myself clear? The fabric of this entire city—the very walls
and rooms of its honeycombed houses—was living, growing vegetation of
the sea. It grew rapidly. It was easily trained to grow in desired
directions. A third of a man’s lifetime, no more, would grow such a city
as this.
One species of vegetation? No, there seemed a hundred—each one of them
had its specific use and adaptability. It was curious stuff. You have
marine vegetation in your great oceans of Earth. You may conceive what
this was like. Tough, smooth, somewhat slimy main stalks. But
porous—like the stalk of your banana tree. The leaves were intricate
and beautifully shaped; and there were millions of tiny air-pods growing
everywhere.
When I first saw the city of Rax, I remember marvelling at the ingenuity
that could build it. But soon I marveled at the greater ingenuity that
could maintain its interior form. The main stalks changed little from
year to year. But a constant pruning, altering, uprooting and replanting
was necessary throughout every detail. The very walls of a man’s house
were of varying form. Yet, since each man was responsible for his own,
it was easily done.
Above the city, the great branches of the main stalks spread
out—green-brown wavering things, a lace-work of great ferns with
hundreds of pods twice as big as a man’s body—the air-bladders which
sustained the entire city.
I have said the water was calm. Not a ripple down here save those made
by the animate things themselves. Nature was passive. The half-twilight
never altered; the temperature remained always the same; no storms, not
a sound of the world disturbed its peace and calm.
Thus stood the city of Rax—tenuous, wavering gently throughout its
every fibre. A city which, with one of your Earth-swords, I could have
cut loose from its moorings and slashed to destruction. And you shall
hear how one day I did something like that to a similar city. Not
destroyed it indeed, merely—but first I must tell you what happened
before the coming of Boy—our boy, Nona’s and mine—our little son.