CHAPTER IX
I take up my narrative at a point some four or maybe five months (as you here on earth measure time) after Nona and I entered the world of the Marinoids. The human memory retains only high spots clearly; and those four or five months held nothing which now impresses itself strongly upon me.
You will recall that I had been knocked unconscious by a blow on the head. When I recovered, the ruler of that world had passed on his way and our captors were again dragging us forward.
We came presently to a city. A city, you say! A city under water! Why not? By a city I mean a closely-knit collection of human dwellings where a large number of people lived close together. Is that not a city?
This one was the capital of the Marinoid world. They called it Rax—a brusk, somewhat guttural monosyllable which I write with those three letters.
There we took up our abode with the leader of this Marinoid party which had captured us. There we learned the Marinoid language, and became a part of the Marinoid civilization—with friends and enemies, hopes, fears and despairs.
As I have already told you, our own spoken language was no more than at its beginning. We turned to that of the Marinoids readily; and within a few months it was to all intents and purposes native to us. That you may understand this point, I remind you again that our intellects were matured but unused. We learned like precocious children.
More than that, this contact with other beings with minds like our own brought us rapidly up from the primitive mental state in which I have previously pictured us. We learned that one great trait of civilization—deceit.
You will picture us then—Nona and me—as we were at the end of these months with the Marinoids. We lived in a dwelling near the bottom and outer edge of the city of Rax. The bottom of the city! A strange term! Let me explain.
Here on Earth you live in a world you call three dimensions—length, breadth and thickness. By that, you mean your bodies, and all material objects comprise three dimensions. Perfectly right. But you live on the surface of a globe. In general—with exceptions of course—your actions take place in but two dimensions. Your birds move in three dimensions more than you do. And your fishes.
Fishes! There you see my point! In the Marinoid world of water, to move vertically came as naturally as the horizontal movement. Hence, I say the bottom of the city, for Rax had a vertical dimension almost as great as either of its others.
The city was, I should estimate, of roughly circular form some quarter of a mile long and nearly as broad. Like a huge, low cylinder standing on end.
It was a fibrous city of growing sea-vegetation! Huge stalks planted like a thick forest of trees in the sandy ooze of the water-bottom, grew straight upward a thousand feet or more. Broad, leaf-like branches spread from them at the top, sustained in an upright position by air-bladders.
These upright stalks were the vertical girders upon which the fabric of the city was built. For eight hundred feet up they were pruned of their branches. Parasite growing vines had been guided laterally to connect the vertical stalks. And upon these, other rope-like vegetation was woven. The result was a series of tiers some twenty feet apart—one above the other—forty of them from top to bottom of the city.
The tiers were further cut up into segments which served as houses. I shall describe one in detail presently—the one they gave Nona and me at the time our great event took place.
Throughout the city there were both vertical and horizontal streets at intervals—up and down and along which the inhabitants swam or drifted. And occasionally there was cubical open space—a sort of three-dimensional park. One of these, the largest, occupied the exact center of the city, with the ruler’s home contiguous to it.
Have I made myself clear? The fabric of this entire city—the very walls and rooms of its honeycombed houses—was living, growing vegetation of the sea. It grew rapidly. It was easily trained to grow in desired directions. A third of a man’s lifetime, no more, would grow such a city as this.
One species of vegetation? No, there seemed a hundred—each one of them had its specific use and adaptability. It was curious stuff. You have marine vegetation in your great oceans of Earth. You may conceive what this was like. Tough, smooth, somewhat slimy main stalks. But porous—like the stalk of your banana tree. The leaves were intricate and beautifully shaped; and there were millions of tiny air-pods growing everywhere.
When I first saw the city of Rax, I remember marvelling at the ingenuity that could build it. But soon I marveled at the greater ingenuity that could maintain its interior form. The main stalks changed little from year to year. But a constant pruning, altering, uprooting and replanting was necessary throughout every detail. The very walls of a man’s house were of varying form. Yet, since each man was responsible for his own, it was easily done.
Above the city, the great branches of the main stalks spread out—green-brown wavering things, a lace-work of great ferns with hundreds of pods twice as big as a man’s body—the air-bladders which sustained the entire city.
I have said the water was calm. Not a ripple down here save those made by the animate things themselves. Nature was passive. The half-twilight never altered; the temperature remained always the same; no storms, not a sound of the world disturbed its peace and calm.
Thus stood the city of Rax—tenuous, wavering gently throughout its every fibre. A city which, with one of your Earth-swords, I could have cut loose from its moorings and slashed to destruction. And you shall hear how one day I did something like that to a similar city. Not destroyed it indeed, merely—but first I must tell you what happened before the coming of Boy—our boy, Nona’s and mine—our little son.