The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars Part 5

"The man arose and left the room. In a few moments he returned followed by a boy and a young woman bearing a basket. They spread a yellow cloth upon a small ivory table and set down two plates of the bright blue metal; upon one they placed a pile of small round cakes and on the other a number of red and yellow gourd shaped fruits. At a signal from my companion I arose and sat at the table.

"He remained at the window and continued: 'While you break your long fast, let me tell you what I know about this new world which will now be your home for a long time. You will learn all, but I am not watching to-night. In seeing you and hearing the familiar English speech I am moved myself by currents of retrospection; my earth home comes back to me. I will satisfy your curiosity, and, you in turn, must tell me what has happened in the old home.'

"He paused; from the streets of the city rose a sacred song. It came like a slowly increasing torrent of sound, soft and low, rising with impetuous fervor until it seemed to engulf us in its melodic tide.

Individual tones were heard in it, but its solidity and ma.s.s were most impressive. I shook and trembled beneath the impact of its vibrations; in its surging glory of sound I became fully reincarnated. I awoke naked and ashamed. The man saw my confusion. He hurried to a niche in the wall and handed me the tunic of the Martians with its girdle of blue cord and its cap and shoes of the blue metal exquisitely wrought and light. I put them upon me and lifting the cakes and the mellow-soaked pears to my lips, listened.

"'The Martians,' he continued, 'are both a natural and supernatural race. The natural race are largely prehistoric, though many yet exist; the supernatural race are made up of beings from other worlds and a great majority come up from the earth. How reincarnation first began on Mars is unknown, though the natural people, the Dendas, have traditions about it, vague and contradictory. It must have been slow. The supernatural people thus brought to Mars have created its civilization, discovered the phosphori, and established Music, which is so much of their life, and accelerated in the way you have learned the process of materialization.

"'They built this City of Light from phosph.o.r.escent stone quarried from the Mountains of Tiniti. Formerly the spirits came helter skelter to Mars all over its surface and went wandering about, helped to reincarnation by the various villagers or citizens. The great new improvement in the last half century has been the creation of the receiving station at the Hill of the Phosphori, the building of the Chorus Halls, and the establishment of the City of Light. Light draws the spirits, and though spirits reach other points of Mars, the centralization of Light here, draws most of them to this side. The Martians are not immortal. They vanish in time.

"'As reincarnated all spirit becomes young but nourishment has undergone a change. The physiological process is singular. I need not dwell upon it. Evaporation replaces defecation. Love enters the Martian world, but it has lost much of the earthly pa.s.sion. The physiological effects are also different. There are no children here.

"'We live in the tropical regions mostly of Mars, and the polar and north temperate zones are empty. The natural Martian races are found more plentifully there. They are strong and small and work under the supervision of the supernaturals. They are like the earthlings and eat meat. Our food is bread and fruit. Our language does not lend itself to composition; it only sings. Literature, as we knew it on earth, does not exist here. The natural Martians have tales and stories and plays and some books. These things no longer interest the supernaturals. Our life is quite simple, almost expressionless, except for the power of our music. The souls from different parts of the earth recognize each other and converse in human language, but, unless practiced, it is forgotten and our euphonies take its place. I have used my earth language with a friend and still speak English well.

"'We have art here, but it is almost wholly sculpture and architecture and design. Color, except in gla.s.s, does not greatly please the Martians and there are few painters. They survive from other worlds, but cannot secure pigments, and draw only in black and white for the most part.

They are cartoonists, as we would say, on the earth. But we grow fruits and flowers, the former in varieties and richness unknown upon the earth and the latter in delicate tints with blues and yellows, the only primary strong tints the Martians admire.

"'Mechanical invention is discouraged, except as it a.s.sists astronomy.

Astronomy is the great profession. Cars, railroads and conveyances, as you say on earth, do not exist. We walk or sail and float upon our ca.n.a.ls. Our industry is agriculture and building. Architecture is studied and advanced beyond all you have ever known on the earth. Mars is filled with beautiful cities. Its whole government consists in a council at the City of Scandor, from which representatives issue to its various departments. One is here in the City of Light. His motives are always just. There are no parties, for there are no policies. Life is so simple. Beauty and knowledge only rule us. Character, as you, as I, knew it on the earth, does not exist. There are no temptations, and we live as children of Light, in a sort of childhood of feeling, with great gifts of mind. But even living is n.o.ble. There is indeed rivalry. Yes, envy is with us. We worship G.o.d in great temples in services of song.

Sermons are never heard.

"'In this city the great designers live, also the men who work at the deep problems of life and thought and matter; and the sculptors. It is the next largest city to Scandor. Scandor is far away. I never saw it.

Gla.s.s work is done here and throughout Mars. Making the blue metal which you see, quarrying stone and ore and coal for the smelters and gla.s.s factories, the fabrication of dress material and fabrics for houses, making our boats and ca.n.a.l ships, cutting down the forests in the Martian highlands, cultivating fruits and flowers and the great wheat fields are the chief industries, and there are lesser lines of work, as the potteries and the instrument makers.

"'There are no industries in the City of Light. It is employed as I told you. Its population is constantly changing, for spirits like you are reincarnated here, and these new mult.i.tudes come and go. To-morrow, the ships on the ca.n.a.ls will carry many away. The spirits, as you did, when they enter the city, wander as they will; they enter the houses, the workshops, the laboratories, everything in obedience to their instinctive choice. The people of the City of Light are therefore largely engaged in caring for them as they fall into bodily forms, clothing, feeding, housing them.

"'Each householder and all citizens report to the Registeries what spirits have come to them, and whence they came, and the great diversion and entertainment of our people is to listen to the stories of other worlds, which these new arrivals bring. Memory does not survive long and they soon forget their past history. It is best so, except in fugitive and dreamlike fragments, unless they are great.

"'According to their desire or apt.i.tudes, the spirits are sent away when Martianized to the different parts of Mars, and many stay here with us in the workshops and laboratories.

"'Besides Music, the people of Mars delight in recitation, and in the City of Scandor I hear there are great theatres or public places where recitations and concerts and even n.o.ble operas are held. Many of these are brought to us by great spirits from other worlds, their own works in poetry or prose or music. In Scandor there are great orchestras with all the instruments we had upon the earth, and the paper, Dia, is published there, which is read everywhere in Mars. There are few books, no schools in the common sense. The thinkers have a.s.semblies and there are announcements and explanations of discoveries.

"'Our life in many ways is like the life on earth, but less active, more contemplative, and sin and money-making are almost absent. The wicked of all sorts have one fate; they are fired off the planet. We can overcome the attraction of gravitation by our Toto powder. These executions are strange to earth eyes. You will see them. The Toto powder is also a motive power.

"'We have a medium of exchange, silver, and there are rich and poor with us, but no poverty. There can be no armies nor navies. The government carries on extensive works of improvement and keeps the ca.n.a.ls and pays its laborers. The government supports this City of Light and the people here are paid for the number of spirits they care for and a.s.sist.

Happiness reigns on Mars, but it is a pensive happiness. We never, because of the singular physiology of our bodies, can know the boisterous and pa.s.sionate joys of earth, neither do we know many of the ills of the flesh. We have sickness and there are accidents. We have a death, but it is like evaporation. We decline again after a long life to the spirit stage and vanish. So there are partings here, and the old sadness of the end as on earth; but the gaiety of children, the ambition of youth, the devotion of parents is unknown.'

"His voice sank, he bent his head upon his hands, and a sort of tremor ran through him, and when again he looked upon me his eyes shone with moisture, and the hot tears ran down his cheeks. Memory might be fleeting on Mars, but the loved ones of the earth were yet remembered, and the abysses of the eternal void of s.p.a.ce could never be crossed by the wave of speech or recognition. This was the pathos of the Martian life.

"I was shown by him, as the slowly arising sweetness of fatigue showed itself within me, to a bedchamber of charming simplicity. The graceful bedstead of the blue metal was covered with snowy covers, curtains hung at the windows also white. The furniture of the room was of a sort of pale, red wood obtained in the great Martian forests where the trees known as the Ribi grow, whose leaves and flowers have a pink tint, which in seasons of fruitage is more intense, and present enormous areas of extraordinary beauty.

"This room was at the top of one of the many branching wings of this composite astronomical laboratory. To reach my room we walked through hallways all illuminated with the phosph.o.r.escent glowing b.a.l.l.s while the radiant patterns in the walls shone also with a pale beauty. These b.a.l.l.s possess a wonderful lighting power and besides their self-illumination can be stimulated into the most intense brilliancy by electric currents with which the Martians are profoundly acquainted. The electrical displays on Mars surpa.s.s description and the waves of magnetism I am now utilizing to send to you these messages are ten miles in amplitude.

"I fell asleep, quickly lulled into an almost death-like slumber by the cadence of innumerable fountains. Near the _Patenta_ is the Garden of Fountains, which I shall tell you about in another message. It was the plash and rivulous current of these water courts that brought on sleep.

"I awoke when the Martian dawn was coming on. Slumber had given me the last rea.s.surance of ident.i.ty of body, and I awoke with a delightful sense of health and youth. I stood at the wide window near my bed and gazed out upon the yet luminous City of Occupation. The picture was of surprising strangeness and beauty. Far off, until melting into the encroaching edges of an outer blackness, the City extended its folds and surfaces of light. The streets were empty, the music of the Chorus Halls stilled. Here and there, a spirit was moving slowly through the streets, a half-made Martian; a breeze soft and salubrious stirred the thickly leaved trees and the firmament shone with the larger stars, beginning to pale before the rising sun. As the sun rose higher, the effulgence of the City died away, the light of the same great orb which brings the dawn to you, covered with its rays the white and glorious City, the music seemed again revived, and from the doorways of the houses I could see forms issuing, while far off the Hill of the Phosphori raised its gla.s.s domes in the air, where the h.o.m.ogeneous tide of spirit was undergoing differentiation, as we might say, into separate cognizable, discreet beings. An unspeakable delight filled me. I felt the power of mind and with it the radiant energy of manhood."

No more words came. The message ended. Not a motion or sound succeeded this wonderful trans-abysmal dispatch.

Well, here, at last, was the long expected, impossible, amazing reality.

When I had deciphered the last word, when I had it borne fully in upon me, the significance of it all, I turned to the one natural effort to answer this Martian communication. I sent out from the battery of our transmitter the longest wave of magnetic oscillation I could emit. The message was simple: "Have received all. Await more. Transmission perfect."

CHAPTER IV.

Again for weeks I watched the station. My a.s.sistants relieved me, and amongst them was now included Miss Dodan. It was only a few days after the Dodans found me at the register, absorbed in receiving my father's message, that Miss Dodan called. She ran toward me at the open door of the station, her face fixed in an anxious expression of half-alarmed expectation.

"Did you really, Mr. Dodd, hear anything? Is it true that something came from your father. Oh, tell me, can it be possible?"

I took her clasped hands in my own, looked into her face and told her everything. She was the first visitor to the station since the day of the marvellous experience. My a.s.sistants had promised secrecy, which I reinforced effectively by doubling their salaries. I felt I ought not to have revealed this thing to Miss Dodan, and when in the first impulse of confidence everything so unwittingly pa.s.sed my lips, I took her arm in mine and walked out upon the broad plateau toward the opposite end where our smaller experimenting station had been built.

"Miss Dodan," I said, "I am going to ask a great favor of you."

"Yes," she answered, half musingly, for the tremendous fact I had related had half robbed her of her consciousness of pa.s.sing things.

"I want you solemnly for the present to promise me not to reveal the strange thing I have told you. It would hardly be believed. No, I am sure it would be laughed at, and I would become in the eyes of everyone a foolish, impossible dreamer. This would give me a deep sorrow. My father's name would be dragged into the mire of this common ridicule.

You revered my father."

I bent more closely over her, I felt her breath upon my cheeks, her eyes seemed fixed in mine, and then I did what I had never done before, I kissed the lips of a woman and it was also the lips of the woman I loved. There was no resistance, no withdrawal; a tremor--was it pleasure?--seemed to disturb her for a moment and again I kissed her.

This time with a quiet effort toward release she separated herself from me, and while I still held her hands, our walk stopped and we faced each other, just where looking westward the spires, and flocking houses of Christ Church came fully in view.

"Miss Dodan," I began, fearful to use her first name through a reluctance that was itself the expression of the deep love I bore her, "Miss Dodan, I may for some time yet be engaged in this now imperative work. I cannot, you know, now leave it. It is the most marvellous thing the world has ever known. It means so much to me, indeed to us all.

These messages are erratic--fitful. I have now waited for weeks for a renewal of these strange communications and there is nothing. But in the midst of this, a distracting love for you seems to unnerve and torment me. I beg you to wait until those days may come when I can show you all the devotion I yearn now to give you, but must not, for every moment that voice may reach me from beyond the grave, and I would be recreant to the most sacred obligations, and deep responsibilities that seem now to shape themselves before me, to our common humanity, if I forfeited an instant of inattention. I beg you to remember all this and wait, wait, until the depthless power of my love for you can be made clear."

I would have sunk upon my knees in the abas.e.m.e.nt and pa.s.sion of my desire for her, had she not suddenly drawn me to her, flung her arms about my neck and placed her head where--well, I am no connoisseur in love scenes--but that day Agnes Dodan, without a syllable of sound gave her heart to me.

We pa.s.sed back in silence, and when she left me the fluttering handkerchief that had so often waved back its salutation on the winding distant road was now in my hands, and its signals sent by me came to her from the plateau. It was the simple pledge of our mutual love, a pledge that even now as I prepare these last pages of a ma.n.u.script that is a testament to the world, soothes my pain and renews the happiness of that day, forever and forever lost.

The next message came a few days after my interview with Miss Dodan. It was a rainy day in November--the spring time of that Southern land. The register was heard by one of my a.s.sistants, Jack Jobson, a man who had unremittingly taken my place when I was absent, and who seemed more than anyone else dazed and wonder stricken over the experience we had. He came running to me, a wild terror in his face, exclaiming, "It's going again, sir. Hurry! It's running slow." I sprang upstairs, and before I had reached it heard the telltale clicks. It was not altogether a sheltered position, and as I reached the table I felt the bleak and chilly air penetrating the crevices of the window, a raw ocean breeze that in a few instants crept through my bones. But I was again unconscious of everything; that marvellous ticking obliterated all thought of earth, its affairs, accidents, dangers, loves, hopes, despairs, all forgotten, swallowed up in the immeasurable revelation I was about to receive.

The second message began at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of November 25, 1893, two months exactly after the first. Its very opening sentences I failed to get. It lasted late into the morning of the next day. The strain of taking it was somehow singularly intense upon me. I was taken from the table the next morning unconscious. I had fainted at the close.

It began, as I received it, a few opening sentences having been lost:

"...was sent to you I was in the City of Light, and now I am in the City of Scandor.

"The morning of that wonderful night in which I became a flesh and blood Martian, strong and young and beautiful, dawned fair. My friend came for me, and we went together to the great 'Commons' of the Patenta, a superb hall where all the professors, investigators, and students in the great Academy sit at many tables. This huge dining room is at the center of the group of buildings which make up the Patenta. Corridors lead into it from the four sections of the Patenta, and as we entered, from the different sides there were many men and some women taking the ivory chairs at the side's of the long tables of marble, on which rose in beautiful confusion of color crowded vases of fruits.

"Surrounding the room are niches instead of windows, and in each niche one n.o.ble symbolic figure in white or colored marble.

"Light fell in a torrent of glory through the faintly opalescent gla.s.s compartments of the ceiling, from which, at the intersection of the broad and long rafters of blue metal, hung chandeliers formed in branching arms with cup-like extremities, and holding spheres of the omnipresent _phosphori_.

"I stood a moment with my companion at the entrance of the great dining room, and watched the groups and individual arrivals, as they a.s.sorted themselves into companies or engaged in some short interchange of greetings. It was a very beautiful scene. The faces of all were wonderfully clear and strong, and in the commingling of forms, the bold, intellectual features of some, the more rare, delicate outlines of other faces, the flowing of the graceful tunics and robes, the pleasant, musical confusion of voices, with the quick, glancing movements of attendants, the heaped up chalices and baskets, vases and broad spreading plates of fruit, the many carelessly arranged and profuse bunches of radiant flowers in tall receptacles of gla.s.s or alabaster, in all this, with the strong, simple architectural features of the Hall, the eye and mind and senses seemed equally stimulated and satisfied.

"Amongst the glorious throng my companion pointed out to me many of those great men and women whom I seemed to know by their writings and portraits when on the earth. At one table sat Mary Somerville, Leverrier, Adams, La Place, Gauss and Helmholz; at another Dalton, Schonbeim, Davy, Tyndall, Berthollet, Berzelius, Priestly, Lavoisier, and Liebig; here were groups of physicists--Faraday, Volta, Galvani, Ampere, Fahrenheit, Henry, Draper, Biot, Chladini, Black, Melloni, Senarmont, Regnault, Daniells, Fresnel, Fizeau, Mariotte, Deville, Troost, Gay-Lussac, Foucault, Wheatstone, and many, many more. At a small table immediately beneath a dome of gla.s.s, through whose softly opaline texture an aureole of light seemed to embrace them, sat Franklin, Galileo and Newton. It would be impossible to describe to you my amazement at the astonishing picture.

"It almost seemed as if the air vibrated with the excitement of its impact and use, as these giant minds conversed together. Endowed again with youth, scintillating, brilliant, the flush of a semi-immortality impressed upon their faces, which again bespoke the eminence of their intellects, in picturesque and effective, almost pictorial groupings, this wondrous gathering filled me with new rapture. My comrade led me to other branching halls similarly occupied. Chemists were here conspicuous--Chevreuil, Talbot, Wedgewood, Daguerre, Cooke, Fresenius, Schmidt, Avogadro, Liebig, Davy, Berthollet, and many, many more.