the parent-body of all the infinitesimal particles of this remarkable
substance that had recently been found in different parts of the world.
The mysterious properties of radium, he said, were only dimly understood
as yet by physicists who had experimented with it. Apparently it was a
mineral; but as it revealed a constant and amazing activity, throwing
out a force that so far had baffled analysis, there were those who
held that it was a living, or, better yet, a life-giving substance.
The existence of this immense body of radium here, in the center of
the cave, explained, to the satisfaction of Leighton, much of the
strange phenomena they had seen. Here, obviously, was the source of
the soft, diffused light that had puzzled them ever since they passed
through the Condor Gate; and it was to this center of energy that
they must attribute the increase in buoyancy and physical well-being
experienced the further they penetrated into this subterranean world.
The peculiar growths, also, half vegetable, half mineral, that had given
the appearance of groves and gardens to certain portions of the cave
through which they traveled, were undoubtedly due to this marvelous
force, occupying the same relative position towards subterranean life
that the sun did to the outside world of nature. Moreover, Leighton
firmly believed that the supremacy of radium as the life-giver in this
cave, involved the existence, as they would discover, of other phenomena
having still more subtle, even psychic, qualities. Narva grunted
significantly at this observation, and Una confirmed the truth of it by
relating how the floor of the court where they were standing had, only a
short time before, reflected a series of pictures of events taking place
in the outside cave, by means of which they had been able to follow
Leighton's approach to the palace and watched the collision of his party
with that of Raoul. It was through this peculiar photographic power of
radium, indeed, that Sajipona could discover whatever was taking place
in the remotest regions of her domain. This information did not surprise
Leighton in the least. On the contrary, he appeared to take it as a
matter of course, one of many marvels that might be expected in a land
run, so to speak, by radium.
Absorbed in the discussion of these matters, no one noticed the entrance
of Sajipona. The queen, coming from the apartment where she had left
David and Raoul, was not in a hurry to make her presence known, and
lingered long enough behind the others to enjoy the curiosity and wonder
with which they were regarding the globe of light above them. She now
advanced smilingly, addressing herself particularly to Leighton, whom
she complimented for his shrewd guess as to the nature of the force
pervading and governing the cave. Indian though she was, inheritor of a
realm that, in all its customs and beliefs, was primitive, distant from
the civilizations found elsewhere in the world to-day, she had heard and
studied enough of Europe and America to be familiar with some of the
momentous discoveries of modern science. Hence, she had been quick to
grasp the fact that this subterranean sun, worshiped by her ancestors
ages ago as the Life Giver--the God that, according to Indian legend,
resided under Lake Guatavita--was nothing more nor less than an immense
body of radium, the most precious substance known to man, the scarcity
of which had led scientists to ransack the uttermost parts of the earth
in the hope of adding to their store of it. Here it had always been, the
one priceless possession of her people, enabling them to live apart,
independent of the world that threatened at one time to exterminate
them. How this radium had come there originally she could not tell. It
was the result, doubtless, of hidden forces about which philosopher and
scientist are as yet ignorant. Or, it might itself be the architect of
the subterranean world whose extent and manifold marvels had amazed the
explorers. By means of this radium force, as Una had told them, she was
able to see what was happening in any part of the cave, even throughout
that dark region lying beyond the Condor Gate--an incredible statement,
as it appeared to Leighton. For they had been in this outer cave and
discovered in it neither the light nor the warmth they had enjoyed on
this side the Condor Gate. Hence, argued the savant, this outer cave
appeared to lie entirely beyond the zone of radium influence. Sajipona
smiled at Leighton's objection and asked him if nothing had occurred in
the outer cave, while he was there, that he had been unable to explain.
They had been through so many marvels in so short a time that the
explorers looked at each other doubtfully. Mrs. Quayle answered for
them.
"Yes, the terrible stone that pulled off my jewelry, and then dragged
gold up from the lake outside--how was that done?" she asked, still
smarting, apparently, from the indignities she had suffered.
"Oh, that was merely a powerful magnet that attracts gold instead of
iron," explained Sajipona, as if such trifling matters were scarcely
worthy to be ranked with the other marvels of the cave. "This magnet
played a great part, centuries ago, in gathering together all the wealth
of my ancestors from the Sacred Lake where it had been cast during the
Feast of the Gilded Man. To-day it is never used because all the gold
has been taken out of the lake. But--was there nothing else mysterious?"
"Caramba!" ejaculated Miranda, "I know! When we come in from the
outside, all is open; we can come in and we can come out. And then, this
little old woman is frighten, and I take her out. That is, I think I
take her out. But the wall is shut, and we cannot see where it is. We
are in prison. Who did that? There is no one there."
Sajipona laughed.
"Yes, that is it! No one was there--except Radium, the influence from
the great globe hanging above us. Here, you see, it does many more
things than it does in your outside world. It is really the eye of
the cave--and sometimes the arm. Although its light does not, as you
know, extend into the outer cave, it reflects here, within this circle,
whatever is lighted up beyond there. When you came in with your torches
I was able to follow you by this means--very obscurely, of course,
because torches throw only a small circle of light. I could hardly make
you out, but I felt sure who you were. I was expecting you. And then,
because I needed you here and feared you might grow tired of so long a
journey, I shut the entrance to the cave so you could not escape. That
is where radium works like an arm. It can carry an electric force, an
irresistible current, without using wire. For our own safety we have
this force connected with the entrance to the cave. When that entrance
is open and we want to close it, this force is released and moves a
great rock that glides into place across the passageway, where it seems
to be a part of the wall on either side."
This dissertation from Sajipona on the uses to which radium had been
put in her kingdom was amazing enough to Leighton's trained, careful
mind. In his own studies of radium activity he had failed to find
any indication of the possibility even for the development of the
sensational features that were now given to him as accomplished,
familiar fact. For one thing, science was restricted in its experiments
by the small quantity of radium within its reach. Here the amount,
estimating the size of the fiery globe above him, was measured by the
hundreds of tons--a fact, of course, that must greatly increase the
field over which radium might be made to operate. Nevertheless, except
for this vague theory that an unknown power could be developed from a
great mass of this marvelous substance, suspended in a great chamber,
or series of chambers, not subject to the ordinary outside influences
of heat and light and air, it was difficult to find a reasonable
explanation for the things that Sajipona told him and that he himself
had seen. Most astounding it was, also, to a modern scientist, brought
up in the methods and limited by the views of his age, to discover
here a development in physics, beyond the dreams of the most daring
investigator, that actually belonged to a primitive race, and was first
practiced by them in a period and country without scientific culture.
The whole affair, indeed, furnished an instance where science seemed to
overstep the borderland of the miraculous. It was as marvelous, after
all, as the familiar achievements of wireless or the cinema would have
been if suddenly presented to the world of half a century ago.
Enjoying the savant's bewilderment, Sajipona described more of the
cave's wonders. Her forefathers, she said, had discovered a way to
imitate the changes from day to night by a simple process of veiling
and unveiling the ball of radium. This was found necessary in order
to create the right variations between growth and a state of rest in
vegetation. When circumstances made it desirable to use the cave as a
permanent habitation, it was found that this variation from light to
darkness was indispensable to human welfare. Without it there could
be little of the happiness that comes from the storing up and the
subsequent expenditure of human energy. Discovering this, certain wise
Indians among the cavemen of the past made further experiments in
the regulation of light and heat. Among other things, these pioneers
in a new science found that the color rays emanating from radium had
different properties--some being more life-giving than others--and
that by controlling these rays it was possible to create and develop
various kinds of subterranean plants. They firmly believed, also, that
by working along these lines it would be possible to arrive at new
animal forms. Some remarkable experiments were made in this direction,
but the results were too indefinite for practical purposes. The whole
problem was therefore abandoned years ago, its unpopularity having been
increased by the religious prejudice excited against it. This intrusion
of what he regarded as blind superstition upon the profitable labors of
science incensed Leighton, who muttered imprecations on the idolatries
of barbarians. But in this he was checked by Sajipona, who declared that
the religious beliefs of her people were in no sense more idolatrous
than many of the beliefs current in the outside world. They had their
fantastic legends, it is true--like the story of the god who, through
the ascendancy of an evil rival, had been imprisoned for ages at the
bottom of the Sacred Lake, whence he had been released by the prayers
and sacrifices of his followers. Such legends the more enlightened
regarded purely as fables, within which were conveyed certain truths
that were of lasting value to mankind. The ignorant probably failed to
recognize these truths underneath their coverings of legend. But it was
not merely the ignorant, it was those who possessed a higher religious
sense who were revolted by the effort to create animal life through
artificial means. This feeling of antagonism arose simply because in the
last of the experiments attempted by the Indian wise men, certain forms
were developed, giving feeble signs of life, and indicating unmistakably
that if they were ever endowed with a complete, independent existence,
they would become a race of malevolent beings, a menace to all existing
institutions and peoples. Hence, these wise men were counseled by the
more practical and simple-minded of their contemporaries to abandon the
rôle of creator, leaving the production of life to the rude and bungling
methods to which Nature was accustomed. They were loath to yield in
this, but public opinion became too strong for them; the religious
element conquered--and these savants of old turned their attention to a
new problem that had already been suggested by their partial experiments
in the creation of life, and that promised something really worth while.
This new problem involved the regulation of man's moral and intellectual
natures, not through the teaching of ideas, but by the employment of
physical and chemical forces.
It had been discovered long before that the Radium Sun controlled the
subterranean life coming within its influence. But as this sun was
itself capable of regulation, many novel--and safe--departures in human
development were made possible by an intelligent practice of the new
solar science. Here again, as in the experiments with plants, it was
the variation of colors, of light and darkness, that furnished the
key to what the Indian savants were after. Thus, it was learned that
certain radium colors had an affinity for certain moral attributes.
These moral attributes could, for this reason, be greatly increased by
placing the man or woman to be operated on in a properly regulated color
bath. Unfortunately, these wise men had not continued their experiments
with this Theory of Colors after reaching the first few crude results.
They lost interest in the subject when its intensely practical nature
became apparent. Hence, a complete classification of all the colors and
combinations of colors, with their moral and intellectual affinities,
was still lacking. But enough was discovered to be of real, positive
benefit in the education of the cavemen and in keeping order among
them. People who were harassed by domestic troubles, for instance,
were put through a course of color treatment; wives who were tempted
to leave their husbands, or husbands who got tired of their wives (as,
it seems, they sometimes did in the Land of the Condor) were plunged
into color-baths, varied according to the exact nature of the complaint
from which they were suffering, and kept in these baths until they were
brought back to a reasonable frame of mind. And then, in matters that
affected the well-being of the whole community--matters that in the
outside world would give rise to various political panaceas--it was a
simple application of the Color Theory that would straighten things
out. It was found, for instance, that yellow rays from the Radium
Sun stimulated generosity. Thus, in the case of a man whose intense
acquisitiveness threatened to monopolize the wealth of the community, a
steady application of yellow rays was sure to be beneficial, if not to
him, at least to those about him.
A case of this kind, indeed, had been recently operated on in this way.
The patient had accumulated such vast wealth that he had grown to be a
public inconvenience. As his business dealings, however, did not come
within reach of the criminal law, and as his wealth was thus due to
his natural bent for finance, the courts could not touch him. He was,
therefore, placed--not by way of punishment, but as a mark of public
esteem--in a bath of yellow light. The effect was extraordinary and
bore out all the claims of the originators of the Color Theory. He had
not been in this yellow bath more than a few hours before he began to
part with his wealth. On the second day he became more reckless in his
benefactions, and this frenzy for giving away what he had before so
jealously guarded from his neighbors, increased at so rapid a rate that
by the end of a week his entire fortune had passed, through his own
voluntary act, into the hands of the government and various benevolent
institutions. When he had nothing more to give, it was decided that he
had had enough of the yellow treatment. He was then released from the
honors the State had showered upon him, and passed the rest of his life
rejoicing in his penniless condition.
Then, there was the case of a man who had grown tired of his wife, and
who had outraged the sense of the community by leaving her. He was
captured and placed in a bath of green light. In a very short time
he got over his roving propensities and became so persistent in his
attentions to his wife that, in order to give her some peace, he was put
into another bath having a slightly neutralizing effect on the first, or
green, bath. Thus, the marital troubles of this couple were completely
and finally straightened out and they lived amicably together without
the tiresome intervention of mutual friends, or of the law courts.
The interesting possibilities of this Color Theory in penology and
in the regulation of domestic affairs, did not escape Leighton. He
had himself believed that in the latest discoveries in physics there
might be found a connecting link between the science of matter and the
science of mind. His natural skepticism, however, did not allow him to
accept too readily all of Sajipona's amazing statements. He doubted
her real knowledge of these abstruse subjects. She spoke of these
matters, indeed, crudely, not with the familiarity as to detail of a
trained scientist. What she said had all the simplicity, and much of
the fantastic absurdity, of a fairy tale. But beneath its extravagance
there was enough substance to her story, and the theory upon which
it was based, to make it worthy a scientist's consideration. For one
thing, it changed completely the notion Leighton had already formed
of this subterranean world. The story, for instance, of the chastened
millionaire took into account a complex social system that was utterly
unthinkable in a region so confined territorially, so limited, by
reason of its peculiar situation, as regards human activity, as this
so-called Land of the Condor. The inhabitants of the cave, from what
he had seen of them--in the straggling village they had passed through
with Narva, and among the followers of Raoul--gave no indication of a
culture superior to that shown by people just emerging from savagery.
These cavemen, certainly, had not reached that stage of enlightenment
from which is developed the millionaire capitalist of whose interesting
ventures in monopoly Sajipona had told them. In the ill-fated Anitoo,
however, and his men, and in the people surrounding Sajipona, there was
evidence of social and mental superiority. The two men who served as
the queen's ambassadors in the garden, and who were distinguished from
the rest by their red robes, belonged either to a priesthood, or to
some order that placed them intellectually above the common rank. They
were undoubtedly learned far beyond the Indian average. One of them,
indeed, was with Sajipona in the court, and prompted her more than once
during her explanation of the Radium Sun and its uses. He spoke in a
low voice, and in a language unintelligible to the Americans. From his
bearing and fluency of speech, Leighton concluded that he was one of the
commonwealth's so-called "wise men," an investigator, possibly, in those
physical and psychological phenomena that held out such tantalizing
promise of new conquests in the domain of human knowledge.
Sajipona was quick to perceive the difficulties arising in Leighton's
mind in regard to her narrative, but she referred to another occasion
a description of the science, religious beliefs, social institutions
and customs of the subterranean people. In attempting such a task, she
declared that the priest at her side, whom she addressed with befitting
reverence as Omono, Teacher of Mankind, would be far more capable than
she. For it was Omono, with his companion, Saenzias, who received and
carried out the laws and traditions of their race--always subject, of
course, to her own authority--and it was by them that these laws were
further perfected before being passed on to the two priests who would
succeed them in administering the affairs of the kingdom.
"You are puzzled, naturally," she said, "to hear of the existence of
wealth and poverty, charitable institutions and governments, science
and religion, in a kingdom whose boundaries are within the walls of a
cave. But you have seen only a small part of this Land of the Condor.
On every side it extends many miles further underground. And in the
South from here, not a great distance, there is a vast region--unknown
to the rest of the world--filled with mountains, fertile valleys,
rivers, and bodies of water strewn like jewels over plains that yield
an abundance sufficient for all mankind. This land is at the mouth of
our subterranean world. It lies in the heart of that region marked
'unexplored' by your mapmakers. We have no fear that it will ever pass
from our hands, that it will ever be more than a blank patch on your
maps, for on every side it is defended by unscalable cliffs of snow and
ice. It can be reached only through this ancient cave. Perhaps, in the
ages to come, when the people of the outside world and of this race that
has lived here in an unbroken line as far back as the memory of man can
go, have been perfected, these barriers will be thrown down. Such has
been the prophecy of some of our wise men; and to-day Omono and Saenzias
tell us that this final period of perfection is rapidly approaching. It
may be that before you go out again into your own world, you will see
more of the wonders of this Land of the Condor, and of the unknown Land
of the Sun that lies at its door. There are cities out there, built
with an art that is only rudely possible in our underground home. Here,
you are amazed at the cunning of some of our work. You wonder that a
race of moles could conjure wealth and beauty out of a cavern that is
never opened to the airs of heaven. But in our Land of the Sun there are
marvels far greater than these. In both regions you will see the work
of the same people; but here where you stand is the center of our race,
or--as you would call it--our seat of government. It is here, because of
the Radium Sun above us, that we find our strength. But it is outside,
in the Land of the Sun, that the millions who call me their queen, are
working out the destinies of future generations. Before these last
years your people and our people have kept apart. You were ignorant of
our existence, and we held aloof from you, remembering the cruelty and
injustice of which you were guilty centuries ago. But the time has come,
so Omono and Saenzias declare, when our two worlds must venture the
first step in the knowledge of each other. Through me this experiment
will take place. You are instruments in it. To-day decides the success
or failure of our plan. The wealth of our kingdom we have guarded all
these centuries, not for ourselves only. To increase it we must share
it with the outside world. But if the outside world is not ready, if it
still exists merely to plunder the wealth others have gathered, we will
wait, if need be, for another flight of centuries."
Sajipona's announcement aroused an immense curiosity among the
explorers. What did she mean? they asked each other. How was this
working out of their mutual destinies to be accomplished at this
particular time and through them? From Narva they had heard vaguely
of a festival that was to be celebrated--and now they learned that the
hour for it was at hand. Sajipona told them this, and as the information
followed immediately upon what she had let them know of her aspirations
regarding the future of her people, they concluded that in some
mysterious way, the festival and the fate of this subterranean kingdom
were bound together. They waited to hear more but, apparently, Sajipona
had finished all she had to say to them. Turning to Una, she led her
apart from the others. The two talked earnestly together, the one
protesting, the other entreating. Finally, Sajipona appeared to succeed
in her request, whatever it was, and taking Una's hand walked with her
to a distant part of the hall. Here a door was thrown open. Una entered
the apartment beyond, the door closing behind her. It was all so quickly
done, the others barely realized that Una had left them before they were
rejoined by Sajipona, who spoke to them as if nothing had happened.
"Let us go," she said. "The festival is ready. There is no time to
lose."
XXIII
THE GILDED MAN