CHAPTER IV.
Again for weeks I watched the station. My assistants 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 assistants 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 passed 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 passing 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 abasement and passion 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 passed 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 manuscript 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 assistants, 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 noble symbolic figure in white or colored marble.
"Light fell in a torrent of glory through the faintly opalescent glass 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 assorted 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 glass 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 glass, 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.
"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 space 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 Agassiz, 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 noble rooms with lovely colors, and the clear white tables, beautifully spread with fruit, seemed to chasten appetite 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 illustrious 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 glasses, 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 clusters 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 assemblage 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 associated 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 noble 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 clusters 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 canals 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 refreshing 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 rushing 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 acquaintanceship 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 Canal.
"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 albums 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 circumstances and avocations.
"The keeping, indexing, compiling, illustration, 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, Tintotita, 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.
"The photograph of each visitor is taken, and a process quite like our collodion or wet process is used. The portraits are more permanent than with the perishable dry plates. It is a curious thing to learn that for 100 years these records and pictures have been taken, and that there are on Mars hosts of unidentified spirits, who entered its wondrous precincts before that time.
"The duration of life in Mars is very various. There seems here an undiscovered law, and a group of observers in Mars are to-day trying to penetrate this mystery. It is asserted that there is evidence that Egyptians of the ante-Christian epoch are to-day living in Mars, but their identification is now almost impossible. On the other hand, it is a fact ascertained and recorded that in one hundred years many Martians die, while others scarcely survive the ordinary limit of our human life on earth. This gives a great interest to Martian society. Here for ages have possibly flown disembodied spirits from our earth; in their reincarnation they have assumed the features and faculties of youth; they have also, under changed conditions of life, and moderated functions and activity in living, been physically, perhaps mentally, modified. Their own memory of their past on Earth, however vivid, and then in exceptional beings, has slowly disappeared or left only vague cloud-like waverings and congeries of reminiscences.
"So that great human souls that have entered Mars in the early centuries of our earth's historic periods may be living here almost unrecognized. They have drifted into occupations suitable to their genius in some of the many great cities, and no vestige of their past remains. The system of the Registeries is scarcely a century old, and while now from the marvellous industry and persistence of the investigators, the great ones of the neighboring worlds, and even the most obscure are in some cognizable way identified, yet from the long ages before that there is almost no authentic registration.
"This is more to be regretted as the law of life on the planet might then be better formulated. Essentially it seems necessary for existence here to be in unison with the conditions; contentment means longevity. Of course, the remarkable men and women I saw at the Patenta were all well known. They had made themselves known, and not only were their earthly names and lives put down on the pages of the Registers, but all their knowledge had been as inquisitively and scrupulously impressed. Nor is this all. From many worlds and earths there is flowing constantly to this planet new, strange, wonderful beings. Here is a cosmos of races, tastes, nationalities, destinies, civilizations, and instincts, from whose amalgamated and fused vortices of tendency this marvellous life has been formed.
"However completely the mere memory of detail vanishes, the traits of nature remain, and these mingling beings present a kaleidoscope of contrasted or blending talents. But union of beings comes in here as in our States to combine all together and create this unique expression of social beauty, tenderness, scientific power, progress and spiritual exaltation. Marriage is here as with us, and love holds its deathless sway among the white and noble Martians as on earth, while the affection of friendship seems to weave every atom of society to every other atom in a social texture over which only moves the refining powers of thought and aspiration.
"Mars does indeed seem a sort of Paradise, for it is quite certain that the best, the truest, the deeper and emphatic souls come here; and while a sort of sin or social incompatibility is found here, and there are crimes, and while death and sickness and accidents occur here, as I have told you, yet these things have a moral or mental, rather than physical expression. At least, in a great measure, and they are rare. No! accidents of matter pertain to Mars; its materiality is complete. As I send this to you I feel my warmth, the heat of my body, the expiration of my breath, the movements of my eyes, the beating of my heart, all, all, these bodily phenomena seem unchanged—their physiology is changed, their corporate reality seems the same, their corporeal consequences are different. But I cannot explain clearly this to you. Do I know it clearly myself?
"I was questioned by the Registeries, both of whom had come from the earth, though in them, as in all the less highly endowed, memory was fading. Because of this, Registeries quickly succeed each other, since the later arrivals from the other worlds are better adapted to elicit the information needed from the new spirits. And this applies to other worlds, to Mercury and Venus, etc., whose Registeries are, so far as possible, appointed from previous occupants of those spheres.
"The larger, far larger percentage of spirits come from the three planets, Mercury, Venus and the Earth; but there are singular inexplicable arrivals from distant stars, and of these the records are in many instances of extraordinary wonderfulness. I must not pause to recount this. I know it very imperfectly.
"My examiners had little to do. My memory seemed of great power, and I told them the story of our experiments, discoveries and our compact to communicate with each other. This portion of my story was listened to with admiration. Chapman, my guide, and the two Registeries leaped to their feet, exclaimed with delight and embraced each other in ecstacy. 'At last! At last!' cried out all of them, while hastily calling officers of the building to them they rapidly explained my singular announcement. It seemed to run like fire through the throngs. A great crowd was soon pressing in upon us on every side, while the Martian ejaculation 'Hi mitla' rang in all directions. I was astounded. What was this strange excitement, and why had my simple tale awakened this fierce commotion?
"My guide noting my dismay and alarm, laughingly explained the reason of the confusion. 'For years and years,' he said, 'it has been hoped by the Martians to send some message to the Earth. We understand wireless telegraphy, we can bridge almost infinite distances with the monstrous waves of magnetic disturbances, it is possible for us to generate. We have bombarded the earth with magnetic waves, but no response, no single indication has been returned to us that our messages were received. Our knowledge of the earth language is complete, even our knowledge of the telegraphic codes is partially so. But we have hopelessly repeated, are even now repeating these efforts.
"'You, my friend, are the first man from Earth who tells us that wireless telegraphy is understood upon Earth, that receivers have been invented; but above all it amazes and transports us to know that you have perfected means, before leaving the Earth, to have such messages as you may deliver from Mars properly received. There is, though,' he exclaimed, as he turned to the eager, shining faces about me, 'still a grave doubt whether our good friend can assure us of the ability of the Earthlings to send us back any communication. They may be unable to force through this enormous distance waves of sufficient magnitude to reach us.'
"There was a loud murmur of disappointment, mingled with exclamations of dissent and reproach. Once more I was plied with questions, and then, my son, there came to me, singularly clouded in forgetfulness until that instant, the memory of that fruitless message which we received about a year before my death on Earth.
"I arose, and amid a hush of expectation excited by this motion, accompanied as it were with a gesture inviting silence, spoke aloud in English:
"'My friends, I recall a night in August, 1890, in the Earth's chronology, when my son and myself, then hoping against hope that the carefully adjusted receiver we had, would ever be called upon to herald a message from another world, were suddenly surprised to see and hear the register of our instrument move and sound. It was indeed animated by some extra terrestrial power. Could that power have come from your Mars; were we the first to receive one of your messages that you have so long been raining on the Earth?'
"I looked around in enthusiasm, and with a conscious sense of companionship, pride and affection. I do not think I was altogether understood, except by a few, but the contagion of my own pleasure seized the multitude, and a great melodious shout arose, while cries of 'Hi mitla' echoed in the Hall, and then, carried away with an emotional impulse, these excited Martians broke into a song, a swinging chant, that brought to the doors of the room new accessions of spectators whose instantaneous sympathy was expressed by the added volume of sound they contributed, until beneath the vibrant power of the great chorus the building seemed itself to tremble.
"And then a curious and astounding thing happened. My old acquaintance, Chapman, leaped up in the dense clusters, and springing on a table shouted, 'To the Patenta.' The words seemed understood by almost all. I was seized by powerful arms, swung upon the shoulders of two splendid, vigorous youths. While by one impulse the throng surged through the doors in a sort of triumphal progress, I found myself moving in the midst of the excited populace up a broad avenue to the central hill of the city again, which was crowned by the many towers, halls, domes and aggregated arms and facades of the wonderful Patenta, the great communal home of Experiment and Observation.
"The clamor of our approach brought to the scene the dwellers in the houses and the wanderers in the streets. And amongst the great density of forms and faces I saw the phosphorescent figures of many forming spirits swept on in this friendly anarchy of delight and anticipation.
"My son, as I send these words out into the ether-filled realms of space across the millions of miles that intervene between that speck of light on which even now I know you lament my departure, and this new home of mine, which to you also is but a speck of light, I feel in a desperation of doubt that you will never hear them.
"How thrilled and awe-struck I became as I gazed around me, and looking over the surging mob beheld their multitudinous lineaments, the faces of the races of our earth, its many nations, the faces of men or women who had lived in Venus, in Mercury, in the fixed stars, perhaps, as we call those globes from whose lambent surface light reached the earth after the expiration of a century of years. What a beautiful exhilaration of feeling it imparted, these flushed and shining faces, the liquid eyes of the south now charged with the fires of transporting expectation, the steady gaze of blue-eyed northerners firm and rapt and steadfast; the power of huge, colossal frames of muscle, the sinuous activity of spare and slender forms all attired in that consummate garb of blue and white, their caps of metal reflecting the light in cerulean lustres.
"On, upward, we moved, impelled by an impulse quite indefinable but sufficient to condense about us by its contagion the Martian populace, quick, responsive, inquisitive, intelligent and excitable as children. We were approaching the Patenta by an ever widening avenue, our rustling approach announced by a chant of vociferous and yet melodious notes.
"The avenue of Approach is known as the Imprintum. On either side rose lines of marble columns, their lofty capitals crowned with statues, their bases clustering with marble groups, while breaking now and then the white monotony, spiral and intertwining pillars of colored glass sprang into the air, like titanic tropical vines holding in extended fingers the balls of phosphori.
"The pavement we trod was made of blocks of the phosphori, and at night this magnificent, indescribable and transcendent street becomes a path of flame, showering upon the files of silent marble statues above it the splendor of this spectral effulgence.
"As we came near the buildings of the Patenta our outcry and the sonorous pulsations of the singing brought to its windows and doorways the many workers in the laboratories, lecture halls, and offices. We were regarded with wonder. But there seems present amongst these people a telepathic power, not perhaps what we call that in the Earth, but an intuitive construction of meaning upon the passing of a word or a hint. Forerunners furthermore had given some account of the strange new spirit from the Earth, who had prearranged with people on the Earth itself, to return to them, if possible, messages of his experiences after a human death. It had been the dream of the Martians, the sensation of their daily lives, the hope of returning to their former dwelling places, some token, word, salutation, indeed to somehow begin that almost apocryphal conception of binding the Universe into a conversational unit.
"No marvel that they were now excited, transported; no wonder that I, the accidental being, who falling in their world, as it were, from outside, should be the agency to lead to the eventual conquest of these great designs.
"On we swept like a tide that advances upon a coast, encompasses each salient rock, island and projection, and evading it by embracing it, rises still further into the bays and harbors, and brings the full tide at last to its most remote limits. So columns and stairways, halls, and wings, and arms, of buildings successively were surged round, and the vast complex pushed its way to the great Hall of Attention.
"This enormous structure was built somewhat to one side of the great Observatories. It was rectangular, elevated and attained to by stairs on every side. It resembles a huge Grecian temple, but the interior treatment was quite contrasted. Externally it was made of the white phosphorescent marble with colonnades of columns of the blue metal supporting its projecting roofs. I was carried as by a cataract of waters up its stairways. Already its bronze gates were swung wide open, and through them the Martian army passed with impetuous stride. Learned men, the leaders and great physicists, many of those I had seen in the morning had reached the Hall. These were constantly augmented by new arrivals from the more distant Schools of Philosophy, Design and Art, while streaming in at every door came the joyous multitude, and the great vault of the Hall of Attention resounded with the rolling chorus.
"It was a moving, an impossible spectacle. The balconies swept upward to a wall of polished granite. They were supported by columns of mosaic marble; the floor of roughened glass was concealed with benches of a gray stone, whose backs were carved in a tracery of branches, over which were thrown pale yellow rugs or shawls; the broad ceiling was divided into deep, rectangular recesses plafonded with opalescent glass, and these recesses were made by the intersection of huge girders of the blue metal, while provisions were made throughout for electric lighting by tall glass cylinders, which glow like pillars of lambent flame, and stood upright, affixed to the walls at regular intervals, or concealed in cavities along the ceiling, or grouped like the fasces of the Roman lictors, at the railings of the balconies.
"A wide platform occupied the center of this vast auditorium, and upon this I was carried as by a wave of the sea. Here I touched the floor; the accompanying crowds dispersed through the hall, which became filled, and as it filled some unnoticed signal ushered the glow of the electric ether in the cylinders, until a glory of radiance mingled with the sunlight and illuminated the audience, whose songs had died away, and who sat in attitudes of attention, their faces upturned, their blue caps shining resplendently, like a surface of tempered steel.
"I stood alone with my former guide, and Chapman. I felt moved by some singular enthusiasm; the exaltation of the moment possessed me, and unannounced, as yet unquestioned, I rose to my full height upon a narrow rostrum in the platform, and turning from side to side spoke with an elation that seemed to propel my ringing words over the great assembly with the power and shock of a trumpet:
"'Men and women,' I cried, 'I have reached your wonderful world from that habitation of mortal men known to many of you as the Earth, where death ceaselessly destroys generation after generation, and only the incessant processes of birth as quickly renew the falling ranks of life. To us on earth, the disappearance of those we love and cherish, the sundering of ties which a lifetime of love and companionship has established, the sharp vanishing away into nothingness and silence of the faces and spirits of the great and glorious, the good, the helpful, the true and noble, has made death an awful, hideous, to some a hopeless mystery.
"'We stand on earth speechless before the unseen power which snatches from our caresses all that we most cherish, all that makes our life there worth living. There is no solution of the mystery, no voice, no return, no message, only a blankness of doubt, misgiving and desperate yearning in those who must continue. There is indeed with those on Earth a partial confidence by reason of religious faith, but strong as that seems to be, the endless succession of centuries, each crowding the viewless habitations of the dead with the still more and deeper streams of disembodied souls, unaccompanied by any response, any utterance or return, limit or telltale apparition, has somehow filled all minds with a creeping wonder if even the assurances of Revelation can be believed.
"'Dying on the Earth may have continued in historic, and what is called prehistoric time, for over 50000 years, and yet from those unnumbered millions not a cry or a whisper, note, or vision, is heard or seen to betray their destiny, if destiny beyond the grave there is.
"'But back of Religion, back of experience, back of rational doubt or infidelity, the heart keeps up its importunate cry of hope. We dare not crush out within us the sweet thought of reunion. Upon that earth I lost a wife, who summed up to me everything of value, virtue, and beauty human life can claim. The passionate desire to regain her, the defiant mutiny of my heart against any thought of her annihilation, made me turn to the shining hosts of heaven for reassurance. In them somewhere I believed the vanished soul of my companion had flown. This wonderful world was known to me, and what the wise men of the Earth said of its possible population. It was then that with my son I devised, following certain suggestions, a system of wireless telegraphy. We have both, my son and myself, felt certain that some disturbance was recorded by our instrument from some planet beyond the earth. From that moment my son and myself felt convinced that we might be permitted to bring about a release of the inhabitants of the Earth from the narrow limits of its own surface, and launch out upon the spaces of the universe the messages that would return to us with some news of other worlds, or bring assurance that the Death of the world was but the swinging door to some new existence.
"'Men of Mars, that Death which tore from me my wife set his seal at last on me, but before the summons was executed, I had made arrangements in every possible detail to communicate with my son. We agreed upon a cypher, and I have so imprinted each measure of our compact upon my memory that all of it is as clear to my mind as it was before I left the Earth. Give me possession of your great instruments, let me bridge the millions of miles to our earth, and in an instant stir the populations of the Earth into fierce attention, so that from now on through all the coming years you Martians shall speak with the people of the earth and again from Mars, as from some relay station, messages shall pass outward to the stars, and thus from planet to planet the reinforced utterance may pierce the universe of worlds.'
"I finished; a great shout arose from the immense multitude; with one impulse the light blue metal caps were swung from their heads and tossed upward, while the cheers passing out into the streets were caught up, and in refluent waves of sound rolled back upon me like the murmur of a distant storm at sea.
"I do not think I was quite understood, but the chief feature of my speech was realized, and the Martians, quick to respond to any suggestion, and inflammable of nature, had become enthusiastic over the prospects of this new revelation.
"I stood an instant uncertain what I should do, or what new development would follow my evident popularity. Suddenly a strong, ringing voice spoke from the gallery immediately in front of me. It said—I could not quite separate the speaker in the moving throng: 'Come to the Manana.'
"Chapman and my friend whispered together 'Volta,' and then turning to me told me to follow them. I followed. Already the hall had become partially emptied, and we pushed onward amongst radiant men and women, who received me with smiles and gestures of approval. Once outside the Hall of Attention, we hurried through some narrow corridors, up winding stairways, until at length we emerged upon a lofty platform carrying a railing about it, and so elevated above all the surrounding buildings of the Patenta that my glance seemed to sweep the circuit of the City, and swept outward over a rolling and low country through which ran wide mirror-like ribbons of water, the great canals of Mars, while afar off melting into the crystalline hazes of the horizon rose dark masses of mountains.
"I stood an instant stupified and overcome. The deep voice of a salutation came to my ears, and turning I saw the face of Volta. Beside me was a large induction coil, and above it two huge plates of copper about ten feet apart. The next instant a flash passed between the electrodes, and I was caught and turned aside with my companions. The light of the spark was intense, and the spark itself of great dimensions.
"Volta then spoke: 'My friend, your arrival on the surface of our planet is a sensation. We are all delighted. You have solved our difficulties. With this transmitter you can yourself send to the earth the message you wish. And this receiver will catch the waves of the smallest amplitudes.'
"He pointed to a singular train of tubes, each filled apparently with a shining line of straw shaped metallic bodies. This was raised by some silk cord passing to a pulley and arm, perhaps a hundred feet above us.
"Volta spoke with difficulty; he seemed preoccupied, and after I was shown the transmitter, and its mechanism was explained, he took my hand warmly, pressed it between his own, and then speaking in the Martian tongue to Chapman, left us.
"I then sent you, my son, my first message. What pleasure! The great sparks flashed magnificently. Chapman and my friend were in ecstacies. I worked steadily until the night. And when all was over I waited until the stars came out, until again the City of Light shone like some huge, myriad faceted stone, and then there came, while Chapman and my friend stood mute beside me, your faint response.
"I scarcely caught the lisping ticks, but they came, and it seemed indeed as if the power of the Creator had passed into the hands of men.
"With a joy too deep for the futile hopelessness of words to express, we both descended from the high station and through the great halls. I found my way to the charming, peaceful room above the glowing city and fell asleep with prayers upon my lips for all the dead and dying upon the Earth.
"The next day as I awoke I found my friend and Chapman waiting for me. I felt wonderfully refreshed, and the exultant mood of the Martians possessed me. I sang with an interior tumult of excitement. I drew before my mind the beauty of your mother reincorporated in this gay, lovely world of Mars, so full of power and light and youthful impulse. Again I sang, and it was the very air your mother so often played to me, 'Der GrŘne Lauterband,' of Schubert. A few passers by, below my window, caught the refrain, my voice rose higher and higher, and their disappearing figures seemed to carry the merry, hopping notes far away. How fair and glorious it all was!
"And I was to visit Scandor, to visit the beautiful Martian country, the mines, the huge fossil ivory deposits, to sail on those canals, whose resplendent lines we had detected from the earth.
"My door was shaken, and almost as if yet living on the earth, I cried out 'Come in.' Chapman and my friend entered with laughter and congratulation. Chapman spoke first: 'Dodd, you are summoned to the Council of the Patenta. All are anxious to see you. At present it is hoped you will not push further the matter of the telegraphy with the Earth. The disturbances in Pike increase daily—flashing stars seem to emerge from nothing, meteoric showers, like a rain of sparks rush across the fields of the telescopes, gaseous disengagements from what seem like shining nuclei, shoot upward for thousands of miles from their surfaces; all is chaos, and these disturbances have been noticed in other regions of the heavens. Again spirits have ceased arriving at the Hill of the Phosphori, the Chorus Halls are almost empty, and the singers have no employment. Such a dearth of spirits has not been known before for months. It is not uncommon for long intervals to occur when only a few spirits arrive, but now there are none.
"'The Registeries report that many lately reincarnated spirits speak the languages of Venus and Mercury, and tell of the terrific physical convulsions in both planets, that wars are raging in Mercury, and a singular plague devastating Venus. The country people have sent in word by the canals that rockets in clusters covering hundreds of square miles are arising from Scandor. The cause is unknown, cannot even be surmised, and last night Herschell and Gauss, at the big telescopes, detected a comet charging towards us with an incredible velocity. The Council believe I should at once start for Scandor to bring the month's report, and these new excitements, to the paper Dia, while they urge that you should recount to the governors at Scandor your story, and the marvellous fact of the answer sent back from the Earth to you by your son. We will go, after an audience with the Council, together, and because of some need of more stone from the quarries, we will stop on our way out and leave orders at Mit and Sinsi, where the quarries are. The trip is full of beauty and wonder, and Scandor, I am told, is Heaven itself.'
"He paused. I thought there was a shade of disappointment in my friend's face, as Chapman drew me to one side, and I stepped quickly back to him, and said: 'Will you not go with us, too? You first cared for me and brought me food and raiment.' His eyes were again bright with peace. 'No, my new friend, I cannot go now. I am waiting, waiting here at the City of Light, watching the spirits, if perchance my son from your earth is amongst them. Surely he will come some day, and then my happiness will be all God can make it.'
"We hurried away to the Chamber of the Council. Once more through the devious paths of the great groups of buildings which make up the Patenta, between the flowering trees and the tulip flowered vines we made our way, with feet so buoyant and so strong that we seemed almost to fly.
"The Chamber of the Council of the Patenta was a beautiful room. It was one of the few great chambers in the City of Light, dressed in color and tapestries. A deep carpet of scarlet Talta wool covered the floor, and there hung at irregular intervals from a silver cornice deep green curtains. The furniture was very wonderful. A dark wood, like teak, opulently fitted with silver, formed the great table that occupied the center of the room, as also the heavy chairs on which were placed cushions of a golden yellow silk. There were no windows in the room. The light entered from above through two simple round apertures covered with white glass. Book cases stood about the room filled with large folios, which, as I observed from a few spread upon the table, were not printed books, but filled with writing in a round, clear hand, legible at some distance.
"But the most extraordinary feature of the room was a marvellous colossal figure at one end of the room, in a recess richly hung with green tapestries. It was cast in silver upon which dull shades and frosted and polished surfaces were appropriately combined, as their position required, in the portrayal of a Being of incredible benignity of expression, attired in flowing robes with an outstretched hand, his face invested with a harmonious union of power and sweetness. Beneath it upon the enormous black pedestal the letters in silver were conspicuous—Tarunta—the Deity. This amazing creation arrested the attention of my friend Chapman, and myself, and we stood half spell-bound under the influence of its seraphic and potent beauty.
"The next moment we were conscious of the throng filling the room. There were many of the great physicists and chemists and astronomers and observers whom I had seen at the breakfast in the Dining Hall the previous morning with a few others who were the first men I had seen in Mars wearing the expression of age. They almost seemed venerable. I remembered then what I had learned on my arrival at the Patenta—that age and death also supervene in Mars.
"I was observed at once, and friendly hands were extended to me from all sides. I was led to the head of the table. There I was invited to enlarge my story as given in the Hall of Attention, and I was told to tell it in English. A scribe near me conveyed to pads of paper my narrative.
"When I had finished an audible murmur of approval filled the room, and the most aged of the older men arising, and speaking in Martian, translated to me by the scribe, said:
"'My friend, you have delighted us. The time is approaching when we can, I trust, receive such visitors from all the worlds, and gradually bring it to pass that the visible universe may be bound together through the power and sympathy of language. The Council desires that at present you refrain from sending your second message until you have visited Scandor, and seen something of this new world upon which you have so auspiciously alighted.
"'Heroma (Sir, Sire, etc., etc.), Chapman will accompany you. The government at Scandor should be apprized of certain strange celestial conditions, and we are in receipt of news that at Scandor also unusual things are happening. While all we know or have observed could be transmitted to Scandor, and all their own knowledge in turn sent to us by wireless telegraphy, for reasons which we are not at liberty to explain at present, it has been thought best to send the approved diary of the Patenta to the government, and also learn in return, by word of mouth, what has transpired at our capital. It will afford you some opportunity to visit the Martian Mountains, and be more informed for the second message you are expected to transmit to the Earth when you return.'
"After a few salutations, in which interview I found myself face to face with the reincarnated forms of some of the greatest scientific thinkers who have lived upon our globe, I left the Council Chamber with my friend and Chapman, to prepare for our coming journey. It was then that I entered more deeply the City of Light, and saw the unspeakable splendor of the Garden of the Fountains.
"The Garden of the Fountains lies over toward the great Halls of Philosophy, Design and Invention, whose domes and temple-pointed roofs of copper and blue metal I could easily discern. It covers over half a square mile of space. It is supplied with water from an enormous lake resting in the hollow of an extinct volcano, fifty miles to the east of the City of Light, at an elevation of 5,000 feet. A great conduit or water main, as we would say, conveys the water to the garden. The Garden is built actually upon piers of concrete and stone, connected by arches of brick, and through the subterranean chambers, thus formed, the division of the streams is made, and there controlled. The whole was designed by the great Martian artist, Hinudi, whom some aver is the reincarnated Leonardo da Vinci of our Earth.
"The Garden is approached through a labyrinthine avenue made up of Palms, which on that side of the City seem to be plentiful, and over these palms in extraordinary profusion the vines of the red flowered honeysuckle. You cannot see beyond the wall of green on either side in this winding way, and only as you gaze upward does the eye escape the imprisonment of its surroundings, where above the waving summits of the palms you see a lane of the bluest sky.
"As you draw near the debouchment (into the garden) of this oscillating road, the splash and roar of falling waters invades your retreat. And then suddenly as if a curtain had arisen or dropped to the earth you emerge upon a great marble terrace of steps, and before you is spread a forest of geysers distributed in entrancing vistas in a lake of tumbling and scintillating waters. The scene is amazing and transporting. Rushing jets of water are enclosed in hollow pillars of glass, whose lines are ravishingly combined in the separate clusters of fountains.
"The heights of these fountains vary from 150 to 200 feet, and they are arranged in a peculiar disorder, which, however, conforms to an elaborate plan. The water rises in these colored tubes in green columns, then breaks into sheets and bubble-laden cataracts of spray above them, pouring far outward like blazing showers of little lamps in the full sunlight. Many of the tubes are inclined, and the ejected shafts of water collide above them, producing explosive clouds of shattered vesicles of moisture that float off or drop in miniature rains over the lake. This wildness of fountains extends over many a mile. All the jets are not in tubes. Many uncovered fountains are interjected amongst the glass pillars.
"The pillars vary in form, and have much diversity of aperture, so that the water shoots from them in every posture and form. It makes a bewildering picture. The exposure of water in the great lake or pond which holds these fountains is broken with waves, and the tempestuous scene with the constant excitement of the rising and flowing avalanches of water creates feelings of abounding wonder. The marble steps extend around the lake, and behind them on all sides rises the wall of the palms, beaten into motion by the wind blowing ceaselessly. The esplanade-like margin between the top step and the palm enclosure accommodated great numbers, while the benches in retreating alcoves, were also filled.
"It was a varied, exhilarating scene. The moving throngs, the wonderful confusion of the spouting fountains in their chrysalids of glass against the sky line, the perpetually waving fronds of the palms!
"We hurried to the pier of the Registeries after Chapman had secured the sealed envelope, in which were placed the communications to the government at Scandor. The canal which enters the City of Light at this point is divided into a number of branches whose confluent arms, about a mile from the City, unite into two parallel canals whose course we were now to follow to the City of Scandor. The small boat we entered was a curious vessel of white porcelain, broad and short, with raised keel, prow, and expanded stern.
"It was moved by some motor, electric in nature. A pilot took his place at the bow, and, under a canopy of silk, in the light of a setting sun, followed by the music of the City, we passed away from the City, which, even as we left it, slowly, in the descending darkness of the night, began to kindle into light, and send upward into the velvet zenith its phosphorescent glows."