THE BAT-WINGS
When I waked, the long night was far spent, and the moonlight had left
the window. My companion’s hand was still laid closely upon the injured
foot, and as I stirred, her thought met me.
“I have much to tell. Lie still, and listen.
“First, of ourselves. It is true that your body is, to me, a thing both
absurd and repulsive. But should this divide us? My own body does not
wear out, and, if injured, in most cases can be repaired, though not
easily. I know that I exist independently of it, and that I am separate
from it, even though I am in it, perhaps, for ever.
“Your body is of little use, and you control it imperfectly. It needs
constant repair, and it is of a kind that wears out very rapidly. What
you do afterward, or whether you continue at all, is doubtful even to
yourself, though in that, I suppose, you are misled by your body’s
impermanence. Whether you could be provided with such a body as mine, or
whether you could use it, I do not know. My Leaders might, but in such
matters we have little knowledge. The Dwellers know much of these
things, as you will understand from what I am about to tell you. If you
have the courage to ask them, they can tell you much, if they will; but
they may destroy you at once, if they think it needful.
“Still, you have little to lose, for such a body cannot be of much
account, even to its owner, and it may be worth attempting. If you
should succeed, we could be companions for always, for it seems to me
that there are ways in which you are greater than I. If I dislike the
body in which you live, it should have no power to divide us. I may
dislike the killing-pens, but do I therefore dislike my Leader because
she is in them? I know that you dislike my body also, because it is
strange to you, though it is in all ways better made, and is perfect for
the uses for which I need it.”
I answered, “I do not think my body is of little account, and I have no
mind that the Dwellers should destroy it, till I have an assurance of
something better, which you cannot give. It is true that in some ways
you repel me, and that I know best how well I love you when we are both
in darkness. But what you say is right, and generous also. My foot feels
well, and I am refreshed and rested. Tell me what you have learnt, and
we will decide what can be done before morning finds us.”
She replied, “I have been told much by my Leader, and some of the things
are very strange. You may understand them better than I do. She is in no
fear for herself, and might have escaped before, had she been in haste
to do so. She was caught in a deep pit, the top of which was covered
over, in a way the Killers use to capture their prey. As she fell, she
found that many of the strangling-cords, of which you have had some
experience, closed round her. They are like living worms, having no
head, but with an instinct to bind anything which they strike, or which
strikes them. The Killers know how to carry them safely. It is from
these that we have most to fear, if we should be attacked again, or
should ourselves attack them. They all have these cords, which they keep
with them both night and day.
“She was not strangled, but was so tightly bound that she could not
escape when they found her a few minutes later. Had there been more time
for thought she would certainly have seen a way to escape them. She
found her will had no power whatever against the cords. They had no
minds that she could subject to hers. There is such life in the
oceans--too low for us to influence it. That is a mystery to us, but I
cannot talk of it now.
“When the Killers arrived, she confused them for a time by the serenity
of her mind, but, as more collected, and they became very eager to
capture her, as a strange prey for the coming feast, she found it
increasingly difficult to hold them back, and she determined to save her
power and to see what they would attempt.
“They then bound her with many ropes and removed the cords, (which relax
after a time, and are useless till their vigour returns), and carried
her to the pen, where she has remained ever since. As its only exit is
through the bars of the floor, and the vat beneath is flooded with the
boiling water, they left the ropes loose, so that she was soon able to
free herself. In this they showed their stupidity. Because the boiling
water would kill such things as themselves they supposed that it would
kill her. So she resolved to wait till the bars should be withdrawn, and
learn what she might of the strange world she had entered.”
“Do you mean,” I asked, “that the heat of fire or water has no power
over your bodies?”
“No,” she said, “of fire I know less, but water of such heat would
destroy us if we were to attempt to breathe it. There are boiling
springs beneath the ocean, and it was in one of these that the one
damaged her body beyond remedy, of whom I told you. But we often swim
those springs in safety. No water of any temperature can penetrate our
fur, nor can it be injured by such means. We have, therefore, to swim
with closed gills and eyes, and with other precautions. We cannot
breathe or see, nor dare we attempt either until we are quite sure that
we are in cooler water again.
“My Leader’s intention was not easy. It was to dive blindly into the
boiling water as soon as the bars were withdrawn; to swim to the nearest
side of the vat where it extends beyond the pens that are built above
it; to clamber out of it, and trust to her speed for safety. She had
considered every possibility, and had decided that she could do it, so
that it concerned her mind no further. Our coming has altered this.
“It was the thought that I may have to swim in such water, and shall be
injured, that caused me to blame my own folly when I allowed the arrow
to graze me. In such event the scars on my right arm would give me
trouble sufficient, though they are not as a fresh wound.
“Being in the pens, and having resolved on her own course of action, she
attempted to establish communication with the creatures which were in
the other compartments. She found, after a time, that she was able to do
so. She learnt that they are not creatures of this age at all, and they
are so like you in mind--(though in some ways baser)--that when I told
her of you she first supposed that another of their kind had escaped the
custody of the Dwellers.
“They told her this. In the interior where they live, the Dwellers have
captive specimens of the inhabitants of many bygone ages. These they
keep under such conditions as approximate to those from which they come,
so that they may study their habits and acquire their knowledge, if they
should have any which may be worth recording.
“Sometimes, part or all of a collection of these specimens are condemned
to destruction because they do something which the Dwellers regard as
intolerable, though it may be, to them, a natural action.
“The nine creatures now awaiting death have been condemned in this way.
My Leader tells me that they are not worth saving, as you will agree
when you hear their own account of their condemnation.
“They say that they were the controlling race on the earth’s surface
about 200,000 years ago. When I learnt this I remembered that you had
said that you came of a race 300,000 years more ancient, and I asked my
Leader to inquire whether the Dwellers had any specimens of your race
also.
“They replied that they did not know, as they had never left their own
reservation until this undeserved (as they considered) catastrophe had
fallen upon them, but from their own knowledge of the civilisations
which had preceded their own, they should think it unlikely. They said
that the time mentioned was one at which there was a race of men
existing for a short period, too transient and too barbarous for the
Dwellers to be likely to consider them worthy of any study. Of all the
myriad creations that the earth has known before and since, they were in
some ways the most abortive. Although they only occupied, at their most
numerous time, about one-half of the earth’s surface, they are believed
to have destroyed themselves for fear of their own fecundity. They
killed each other in many violent ways, and rewarded those who devised
fresh methods for their own destruction. The stench of their diseases
rose in the sky till the other planets protested, and there would
certainly have been a Divine intervention, had they not destroyed
themselves, as I have told you.
“All this may be true, or not. You can judge of that. The creatures that
tell it believe themselves to be much better, but are of a very filthy
kind. Their appearances may be better than yours, but their minds are
worse. I will show them to you, as my Leader has given them to me.”
She then gave me a picture which was as vivid in her thought as though I
stood at the side of the killing-pens, and looked through the steam at
those who were confined within them.
The first I saw was of the size and shape of a man, the body very
thickly and grossly formed, and of a dark sepia colour, irregularly
blotched with yellow, in some places as light as sulphur.
It sat cross-legged. It had a heavy head, which hung forward; the nose
was very large and horny, like a vulture’s beak. The natural impression
of the face was rapacious and cruel, but it had now an appearance of
abject and hopeless misery, which was almost comic, through all its
tragic reality.
It had large bat-wings, wide open on either side, and as it crouched
thus, with wings extended, it appeared to me as though it were seeking a
space beneath an umbrella which was not sufficient to cover it.
There were six more of these creatures--all males. There were two
others--one male, one female--alike, except that their faces, though
equally brutal, were less intelligent, and that their wings were closed
when I saw them.
My companion interpreted--“The seven were judges, and the two were
witnesses in a recent trial which has brought them all to this end, very
justly. The seven cannot close their wings, which are broken at birth in
recognition that they are of a high caste which does no work.” (I
thought of the finger-nails of a Chinese mandarin, but I was too much
interested in the tale which her Leader had obtained from them to break
her thought to discuss it.)
“The other two can use their wings, but they do not fly as a bird does.
They can use them only to flutter up to the perches on which they sleep.
It appears that there is some reason in their own land why they should
not sleep on the ground, but it was not explained.
“The two came before the judges with a complaint against a female of
their kind. She had been short of food, which, it seems, is divided
among them according to certain duties which they fulfil, which are
sometimes very difficult to complete, or from attempting which they
might even be forbidden by others who have more power than themselves.
“Lacking food, and knowing that these two had it in plenty, she asked
them for some, which they refused to give. She then took it, while they
were absent.
“The judges did not punish these two who had refused food to the one who
needed it, and who were not ashamed of the tale they told.
“They decided that the one who had taken the food she needed should be
beaten.
“They did not know that there was any world beyond that in which they
lived, or that the Dwellers existed.
“But the Dwellers had watched them, and it appears that they were
appalled at the wickedness of the creatures that they had caused to
continue, when nature would have destroyed them. They intended at first
to end the colony, thinking that they had no right to let such creatures
live, whatever they might learn by observing them, but in the end they
relented.
“They have removed these nine for the fate they merit, and have deputed
one of themselves to endeavour to teach the first decencies of existence
to the remainder of their kind.
“The Dwellers can be very merciful.”
I answered, “The tale is strange enough, but it contains some things
which are less so to me than they must be to you, for I have known of
such in my own time and race. But there is one thing that puzzles me.
When these creatures have fallen into the boiling tanks, and their
bodies have become sodden with heat, and the Killers have sucked them
in, it will be an end of their bodies surely, and the bodies of the
Killers (who may be no better, though, it is true, we know no such thing
of them, as you have told of these) will benefit.
“But that is their bodies only. If these creatures exist apart from
their bodies, what is gained?”
She said, “If you cannot answer that, neither can I. It is a thing of
which I have never thought till now, for all this is very new. The
Dwellers, who have many thoughts, and who do things, may know, but I
begin to suppose that, though they are so much greater than you, they
may sometimes change and blunder, as you do. I have also blundered since
I followed you in the doing of new things. They may know what you ask,
but, for me, it is too difficult.”