Part 6 (1/2)
”It formed an equally striking scene. I turned to my companion and asked him how it was that the mathematicians, chemists, physicists, astronomers, were so crowded together. He said, 'The Patenta covers, with all its buildings, a s.p.a.ce about one mile square, and here in laboratories and in the great observatories these men have flocked because of a sympathy in their tastes and talents. Although astronomy is the great profession, and, as I will show you, the marvels of the Universe are being more and more fully known, yet the study of the elements and the laws of matter is popular and also followed unremittingly. It is true that we know these people are from your earth; they have reported all that to the Registeries, to whom I will soon conduct you; they yet retain strong memories of the earth, though it is confined more largely to knowledge than to experience. In some, the Martian life and habit has almost obliterated their earthly notions and designs. It is singular that of the scientific workers of the earth the astronomers, physicists, and chemists alone reach Mars. The biologists, zoologists, botanists, geographers, and geologists rarely are booked at the Registeries as coming from the Earth. Their lives may be prolonged elsewhere, they seldom reach us.
”'There are some exceptions. The plants of Mars are numerous, its rocks and animal life curious, and they are well understood. A few doctors from the earth are here, but medicine and surgery are not so much needed, yet in the study of life our philosophers have made great strides. Your thinkers and poets, artists, composers, dramatists, musicians, come here, but of all the wonderful students of Nature the earth has produced, as far as I know or have heard, Lamarck and Aga.s.siz, Owen, and Cuvier alone have been reincarnated on our globe. And the warriors and generals of the earth are unknown here.'
”We had reached a table unnoticed, unheard. There was a constant rush of words about us. The melodic charm of the Martian tongue, like the soft vocalization of Italian pleased me. If the Martians are without books or papers, they possess all the resources of conversation. Animation, pleasure, salutation, cheerfulness and joy was everywhere, the perfume of flowers filled the air, the shafts of sunlight broken into the most enticing iridescence filled the great n.o.ble rooms with lovely colors, and the clear white tables, beautifully spread with fruit, seemed to chasten appet.i.te into something ethereal and rare.
”As we stood an instant at our places the people arose, and from some distant and concealed place, so situated I afterwards learned, as to gain access to all the dining halls, there came a swell and burst of jubilant music. It was so fresh and free and bewitching in its glee and ringing cadences, so consonant and accordant with the glad and ill.u.s.trious feeling of the place and time, that my heart seemed to leap within me; and then it softened, and changing into notes of melodic gravity, ended in a splendid outcry of soaring, piercing notes--the salute to the morning. Long after the voices had finished, the rolling notes of an organ continued the loud outburst.
”As we sat down, the conversation was again resumed and I noted then the singular clearness and suavity of this Martian language. I must hasten my narrative. I have so much to tell you. We ate the great cereal of Mars--the Rint--a delicious food, in which, as it seemed to me, the substance of a sort of rice was mingled with a creamy exudation in all of which was enclosed the flavor of the orange and the peach. This, with a fruit, a kind of milk, and many wines, forms the nourishment of the Martians. The fruits are most various, and every hidden or patent fancy of the gourmet seems elicited or satisfied in them. I cannot now describe them even if I recalled them. One commended itself to my taste strongly, a sort of nodular banana, holding a fragrant nucleus, like a large strawberry immersed in a savory juice, and coated with a rind stripped from it by the hand. It is of most stimulating qualities. It is called Ana.
”Few implements are in use; the Rint is taken in short spoons and the fruit is usually manipulated with the fingers. The milk and wine are drunk from the most ingeniously devised and ornamented gla.s.ses, napkins of the Tofa weed are used, a pale green cloth, and large bowls of acidified water in which floats a morsel of soap are served at the end of meals. Great variety prevails, and individual fancy, taste, desire, or invention sway as with you on earth.
”The breakfast over, the companies arose and moved out in cl.u.s.ters and trains to the avocations of the day. Many of these workers in the Patenta have houses throughout the city, while others living singly congregate in the numerous apartments, and enjoy these commons. The extraordinary a.s.semblage I saw here is repeated in the other great communal halls where the artists, philosophers and inventors congregate.
But the Halls are of quite different construction in each quarter of the City.
”Accompanying or a.s.sociated with these Halls are the Courts of Announcement and Recreation. Here lectures, conferences, entertainments, are given, and the people of the City flock in droves not infrequently accompanied by numbers of the new Spirits who here are often enabled to gain their final solidification; '_Gell_' as the Martians say.
”My companion led me out of the Hall. Men and women were moving slowly in various directions and as we made our way over the campus and between the many n.o.ble buildings I saw many of the lambent spirits half emergent into fleshly shapes accompanied by the watchers, who are in great numbers in the City, carrying over their arms the white and blue dresses with which to clothe them as the spirits fall into solid forms.
”Amongst these buildings I easily noted the marvellous observatories where objectives twenty feet in diameter are used with which the astronomers actually discern the life of our earth. The reports they make from week to week of their inspection of the Solar system, and of the commotions, changes, births and demolition of Stars, are the sensations of Mars. These Reports are read aloud in the Halls of Announcement and Recreation. But astounding beyond belief, they photograph the surfaces of these distant bodies, and report in moving pictures the disturbances of the cosmic universe. No wonder that the whole Mind, as it were, of Mars is concentrated on the fabulous results of their cosmic studies.
”We descended from Patenta Hill in an avenue that led between the white columned houses with their spheres of Phosphori and their umbrageous squares around them. It was a season of flowers, though I understood that by the use of fertilizing injections the number of flowers in a shrub and even in an herb can be here greatly multiplied. The windows of the houses were open and their sills crowded with blossoms. The use of the red blossoming vine was strangely extravagant. In many cases it had thrown its branches over an entire house, clambering over the roof and encircling the phosphoric cage, so that the white house was dissected by its twigs and tendrils, while the red honeysuckle flowers depended in cl.u.s.ters from the walls, the roof gutters, and the light house globes above them.
”The Court of the Registeries was a long low structure made of the prevalent white stone with a roof of what seemed to be red copper. It was built upon one of the ca.n.a.ls which here enter the city and formed one side of a long pier or dock to which and from which interesting little boats were constantly approaching and as constantly departing.
”A hum of business and everyday work surrounded the place, and it seemed refres.h.i.+ng to note the stir and bustle of affairs. Streams of people were entering the Court as we arrived. They were inhabitants and watchers bringing the new incarnations to the Registeries to have their origin recorded if they could recall it. Indeed many spirits fail utterly to remember their former condition, and happen, as we might say, upon Mars, unexplained and inexplicable. They even are without speech and learn the Martian language as a child learns to talk.
”We pushed in with the jostling crowd, and even as I entered I could hear the murmurous chant of the Chorus Halls, borne hither-ward on the morning wind. It now seemed a long time, although but one day apparently had elapsed since I sat, a trail of luminous ether, undergoing the strange process of materialization.
”How incredible it all was, how incomprehensible. I pinched myself until I could have cried out with pain, and at that very instant a voice saluted me, calling me by name and a rus.h.i.+ng figure encountered me. I stood transfixed. Before me was Chapman, the mechanic, workman, and photographer for Mr. Rutherford, in New York in the seventies, a man whom I knew well, from whom I had learned much, and whose skill helped so largely in the production of Rutherford's negatives of the Moon. My repulsion was over in an instant. I clasped him heartily. It seemed so good, so human, to embrace something in this strange world. An equal resistance met my own. We were indeed substance.
”'Mr. Dodd,' exclaimed my old acquaintance, 'are you here? This is wonderful. Have you just become one of us? What luck! what a great providence for me! I am in the observatory. Must sail to-morrow to Scandor to report a sudden confusion in Perseus. They call it here _Pike_. You shall go with me. I have a long leave of absence I will show you many marvels. And you can tell me everything about Tony. He was a baby when I knew you.' Turning to my smiling companion, he spoke in Martian, of which to give you some semblance I cipher these words: 'Aru meta voluca volu li tonti tan dondore mal per vuele vonta bidi ami.'
”I returned Chapman's hearty salutation. I yet retained the human speech of earth and I was struck with the miraculous incident that in the planet Mars, in a populous city, I was addressing a friend in the English tongue.
”But the joy of it was inexpressible. Oh, the sweetness of old acquaintances.h.i.+p in strange, and as here, impossible surroundings! I gazed on him with unspeakable curiosity. I talked to him just to hear my own voice and his in response, to realize if words were still words with the old meaning, if the intangible mutation I had undergone was a reality, if I was indeed alive, if my lungs and throat, the configuration of my mouth, the vocalic impact of the air, was a fact, a sound, a meaning, or whether it all was some phantasmagoria, beautiful and fair indeed, to be dispelled with a shock of annihilation.
”No! we were breathing, sensate things, were human kin and kind. The sudden vertigo sent me throbbing, like a stricken animal, against the high pillars of the room we had entered, and a reflex tide of emotion swept over me in a storm that shook me with convulsive sobs.
”My companion handed me a black wafer. I took it, it dissolved, a fierce acridity seemed formed in my mouth, and in an instant I felt strong and bold.
”The Registeries were offices in the alcove-like openings in the sides of this very long building. In the same building were the Courts, which are few, and here the rooms for the reception and storage of supplies for the City. The Hall of Registeries is prolonged into a series of huge buildings extending along the walls of the Ca.n.a.l.
”I was led by my unknown friend and Chapman to one of these recesses on which I recognized a globe of our earth with its continents in relief.
Here upon simple tables were spread great bound books made up of thick creamy leaves of white paper. These were the Registers. The original home, planet, world, or star, from which each emigrant spirit had departed was, as far as possible, determined, and appropriately recorded. The details of their lives were inquired into, the condition and history of the sphere they had left examined, and thus by the revision and comparison of these narratives the history of the various worlds was in a fair way known, almost as accurately as their present inhabitants knew them.
”The alcoves of the Registeries were really ample rooms. Cases holding voluminous records were ranged upon their walls; maps, charts, even paintings and drawings, as made by the arriving spirits hung upon the walls, and in broad alb.u.ms were gathered the portraits, in small size, of the incarnated persons. The Registeries were young men who, from long intercourse with the affairs and occupants of each of the different extra-Martian bodies, whence spirits came, had become familiar with their languages and circ.u.mstances and avocations.
”The keeping, indexing, compiling, ill.u.s.tration, of these extraordinary records is a difficult and inexhaustible task.
”The results are often reproduced to the Martians in lectures, bulletins, or in sections of the great newspaper Dia.
”The young men approached us as we entered the room, and after saluting my guide and also Chapman with the Martian cry, Tintot.i.ta, led me to a chair, and giving me one of the black wafers, whose acidity had a short time before so vigorously renewed my consciousness, began their inquiry.