Baret And Selda
: The Chamber Of LifeI remember that I lived nearly two months--or so it seemed--in that
other world. I was assigned an apartment near to Edvar's--Selda was
between us. Edvar instructed me in the details of the life I was to
lead. But he was a rather cold sort: his interests were ancient history
and archeology, and he would spend his mornings at work in the Library
of History or in his study, the rest of his time flying about the world
on
investigating the customs and records of other cities.
Selda devoted most of her time to me. It was she who took me from place
to place, showing me the natural beauties of that world. There were, you
see, not only gentle slopes and hill-tops. There were mountainous crags
as high and as wild as the Alps, forests as impenetrably deep and still
as the jungles of the Amazon, and rivers that rushed and tumbled over
rocks, or fell for thousands of feet from mountain cliffs.
The first time I went with her, she took me to a gigantic peak that
overlooked the sea. There was, of course, a small level place for the
airship to land. We left it there, and climbed on foot the last hundred
yards or so. Our way lay through the heavy snow, but it was not too cold
to be more than gloriously bracing, exhilarating. We wore our usual
costume of trunks and tunic.
We stood at the top and looked out over the grandest horizon I had ever
seen. To the east there lay the sea, deep and very blue in the sunlight.
The shore was just a dark line far away and below us. There was a long
strip of grass and field bordering the sea for miles, and behind that
the forest. Toward the north, the mountains crept out from under the
forest and moved down to the sea, rising until they became a vast
wilderness of cliffs and rocks, and hid the sea, with peak after peak
rising as far as the eye could reach into the snow and the mist. Then
the hills sloped down westward into a series of wooded valleys, through
which ran the wide river I had seen at my awakening, coming down from
the mountains and through the valleys until it flattened broadly out
into the low plains in the south and moved eastward to the sea.
Everywhere in the valleys and over the plains, I knew that cities were
scattered, lonely and tall like the one they called Richmond. But we
were so high in the mountains that they were invisible to us--perhaps a
keen eye could have found them, tiny white dots crouching upon the
earth.
I turned to Selda--and caught my breath. The wind, swooping up from the
sea, whipped her thin covering against her body and fluttered it like
the swift wings of a butterfly behind her. Her short, dark hair, too,
was lifted and blown back from her forehead, revealing the clean, soft
profile of her face. I had never seen a girl who stood so clean, so
straight. I watched her until she turned, too, and met my eyes. In them
I thought I detected something startled and unfathomable.
"My God!" I cried across the wind, "you are beautiful!" She frowned a
little, but her eyes still looked searchingly into mine. I stepped
forward, facing her. But I didn't touch her. I was afraid to touch
anything so clean.
"You belong here, Selda," I added. "The wind is a part of you, and the
mountains, and the sea. You shouldn't have to live in the midst of all
those people in the city. You belong here." She smiled faintly, looking
up at me.
"You belong here more than I do, Baret," she said. "You came to us, not
from the city, but from the hills."
* * * * *
We stood there, examining each other's eyes, for a long while. I wanted
to take her in my arms, but I didn't. I looked away at last, back at the
sea, puzzled and disturbed. I had never been aware of anything so fine
as this before, nor of anything so painful. Suddenly I found myself
wanting to be something, to do something--not for myself, but for her.
It was strange.
"Come," she said at last, "we had better go back."
"I'd like to stay here forever," I answered moodily, glancing around a
last time at the versatile horizon.
"So would I," she admitted. Then, in a low voice, she added, "But one
can't. One has to follow one's program."
We returned to the airship, raid rose into the cool, thin air. I stood
behind her on the way back, watching her slender body as she guided the
plane. Once in a while she would turn her head and look up at me over
her shoulder, then quickly look away again.
"Why is it," I asked her as we passed over the valleys and the river on
our way home, "why is it that these hills have such a cultivated
look--as though they had been laid out?" She glanced back, and smiled.
"They have been laid out," she said. "The hills, and the rivers, and
the tallest mountains have all been constructed by our landscape artists
in order to achieve their various effects. Even the line of the sea has
been determined and arranged by the artists."
"But why?" I said. "Wasn't it a frightful waste of energy?"
"It didn't seem so to us," she answered. "We had no further need to
cultivate the land except in small patches, when we learned the secret
of artificial food. And we wanted to have perfect beauty about us. So we
remodeled the outlines of the earth, and eliminated the insects and the
harmful animals and the weeds. We made the land clean and fine as it had
never been before."
"It must have been a terrific labor."
"It pleased us. Our instinct is to arrange and remodel things, to order
our life so that we know what it is and what it will always be." She
paused for a moment, and added in a low voice, "One is necessarily a
determinist here."
We said no more until our arrival in Richmond.
It is not my purpose to detail here all that happened during the time I
spent on that world. Most of it had to do with Selda, and our daily
expeditions about the world. This is not, after all, a love story, but
the account of a very strange experience; and, too, none of it was real.
During my last week, a series of strange moods and happenings
complicated my life. One day, after a visit to the sea with Selda, we
were walking back to our plane across the sand. Without any warning,
surrounded by the brilliant morning sunlight and the miles of sea and
beach, I struck my knee against something hard and immovable, and,
flinging out my hand to catch myself from falling, I clung to a hard
surface like an iron railing. For a moment I was stunned and confused.
The sunlight seemed to fade, and there was a vague hint of darkness all
about me, with black walls looming up on all sides. It was as though I
stood in two worlds at once, transfixed between night and day. Then the
darkness went away, the sunlight brightened. I looked around, and found
Selda watching me curiously, a little alarmed.
"What happened, Baret?" she asked, puzzled. I shook my head in
bewilderment.
"I seemed to stumble--" I said. There was nothing underfoot but the soft
sand, and where I had flung my hand against a sort of railing, there was
nothing either. We went back to the airship in silence, both of us
confused.
* * * * *
After that, with increasing frequency, there would come interruptions,
like iron bars striking dark, jagged holes in the tissue of life. From
time to time I heard inexplicable noises--the whirring of motors, the
skid-skid of tires on invisible streets, the rumble of carts around
corners of a world where there were no carts. Again and again those
moments of confusion would come over me, when I seemed to be looking
into two worlds at once, one superimposed upon the other, one bright,
the other dark with faint points of light in the distance. Once, walking
along the corridor beyond my room in Richmond, I collided with a man.
For a moment the corridor faded completely. I stood on a street with
dark houses about me. Overhead was the glow of a street-lamp, and a
milk-cart was just rattling away around a corner. A man with a
frightened face stood before me, his hat on the pavement, his eyes
staring. We looked at each other in astonishment. I started to speak.
Then he reached for his hat quickly, and brushed by me, muttering close
to my ear.
"For God's sake, look where you're going...."
I stood in the corridor again, staring. Down the corridor, coming toward
me, was a single figure--Selda. Behind me there was nobody. I went to
meet Selda, dazed and uneasy. I could still hear, close to my ear, an
echo of that muffled, hoarse voice that I had never heard before.
That was two days before the end. We were leaving the city on that final
bright morning, when a representative of the Bureau stopped us. I looked
at him inquiringly.
"I have come to tell you, Baret," he said, "that your departure is
scheduled for this evening." I drew back, startled, and looked at Selda.
"My departure?" I repeated in a low voice, hardly understanding. "So
soon?" I had forgotten that one day I should have to leave.
"It has been arranged," he said impersonally.
We bowed slightly to each other, and he went away. Selda and I stepped
aboard our ship in silence.
That time we flew up the river until we came to the foothills of the
mountains in the north. We landed in a little clearing by the river at
the foot of a waterfall hundreds of feet high, towering over us. The
forest stood about us on all sides, coming down to the river's brim on
the opposite bank and meeting it not far from us on the near bank. The
precipice, covered with moss and small bushes, stood above us.
* * * * *
We sat a long while in silence, before I said bitterly:
"So I must go."
She didn't look at me, but answered quietly, "Yes, you must go."
"I don't want to go," I cried, "I want to stay here!"
"Why?" she asked me, averting her face.
"Don't you know?" I said swiftly. "Haven't you understood long ago that
I love you?" She shook her head.
"Love is something that we don't know here--not until we have been
married and lived with our men. Sometimes not then." But she looked at
me, and I thought there were tears in her eyes. Suddenly the impulse I
had been resisting ever since the morning on the mountain became
insupportable, and I caught her in my arms almost roughly. Her face was
close to mine, and she closed her eyes. I kissed her, forgetting
everything but the knowledge that I had stumbled upon the sort of love
that doesn't pass away, no matter how long a man lives.
After a while, though, she drew away as if she resisted not my desire,
but her own.
"No--" she said in a low voice, "no...."
"But Selda!" I stammered, "I love you--I want to marry you." She shook
her head.
"No," she said again, "didn't you understand? I am scheduled to marry
Edvar."
At first I didn't know what she meant.
"Scheduled?" I repeated dully. "I don't understand."
"It has been arranged for years. Don't you remember what Edvar told you
about our marriages here, the very first day you came? I was destined to
marry Edvar long before any of us were born, before our parents, even,
were born. It's the way they order our lives."
"But I love you," I cried in amazement. "And you love me, too. I know
you love me."
"That means nothing here," she said. "It happens sometimes. One has to
accept it. Nothing can be done. We live according to the machinery of
the world. Everything is known and predetermined."
* * * * *
Suddenly, in the midst of what she was saying, close behind me there
sounded even above the roaring of the waterfall a raucous noise like the
hooting of a taxi horn. It was followed by a shrieking of brakes, and a
hoarse voice near by shouted something angry and profane. A rush of air
swept by me, and I heard faintly the sound of a motor moving away, with
a grinding of gears. I looked at Selda.
"Did you hear that?"
She nodded, with wide, frightened eyes. "Yes. It's not the first time."
Suddenly she rose, frowning, as if with pain. "Come," she added, "now we
must go back."
There was nothing else to do. We went back silently to the airship, and
turned its nose toward the city.
But when I left her at her apartment, promising to see her later, I had
one last hope in my mind. I went to the Bureau.
The Bureau was a vast system of halls and offices, occupying two floors
of the great building. I was sent from one automatic device to
another--there were no human clerks--in search of the representative who
had spoken to me before. Finally I found him in his apartment, down the
corridor only a hundred feet or so from my own. He was pouring over a
metal sheet on his table, where innumerable shifting figures were thrown
by some hidden machine, and he was calculating with a set of hundreds of
buttons along its edges. He spoke to me without pausing or looking up,
and throughout my interview he continued with his figuring as if it had
been entirely automatic--as perhaps it was.
"What is it, Baret?" he said I felt like a small child before the
principal of the school.
"I have come to ask you whether it is necessary for me to go," I
answered. He nodded slightly, never looking up.
"It is necessary," he said. "Your visit was pre-arranged and definite."
I made a gesture of remonstrance.
"But I don't want to go," I insisted. "I like this place, and I am
willing to fall into its life if I can remain under any conditions."
"It is impossible," he objected angrily.
"I have never been told why or how I came here. You said you would tell
me that."
"I have never been told myself. It is a matter known to the men who
handled it."
"If I went to them, surely they could find some way to let me stay?"
"No," he said coldly, "the thing was as definite as every event that
takes place here. We do not let things happen haphazardly. We do not
alter what has been arranged. And even if it were possible to let you
stay--which I am inclined to doubt--they would not permit it."
* * * * *
"Why not?" I asked dully.
"Because there is no place for you. Our social system has been planned
for hundreds of years ahead. Every individual of today and every
individual of the next six generations has his definite place, his
program, his work to do. There is no place for you. It is impossible to
fit you in, for you have no work, no training, no need that you can
fill. You have no woman, and there are no women for your children or
your children's children. You are unnecessary. To fit you in, one would
have to disrupt the whole system for generations ahead. It is
impossible."
I thought a moment, hopelessly.
"If I made a place?" I suggested. "Suppose I took someone else's place?"
He smiled, a faint, cold smile.
"Murder? It is impossible. You are always under the control of the
Bureau in some way, whether you are aware of it or not."
* * * * *
I turned away, a little dazed. The whole thing was inevitable and clear
as he put it. I knew there was nothing to be done.
I left his apartment, and went down the corridor to the landing stage.
No one interfered with my movements, and my commands were not
questioned. I ordered a plane, and gave my name to the girl in charge.
"Your destination?" she asked.
I said, "I am only going for pleasure."
"Your return?"
"Expect me in an hour."
I had watched Selda pilot the planes for so many weeks that I was
familiar with the controls. I rose swiftly, circled the building, and
headed north toward the mountains. I hadn't the courage to see Selda
again. It was only a little while before I came to the place by the
river where we had spent the morning. I slowed down, and flew over it,
just above the waterfall.
There was a landing-spot by the river just beyond the top of the fall. I
came to rest there, and left the machine.
I stood looking at the river for a moment. I don't remember that any
thoughts or emotions came to my mind. I simply stood there, a little
dazed, and very quiet, with a vague picture of Selda before my eyes. It
was a dream-like moment.
Then I slipped over the river's bank, into the water, and the swift
current, catching me up and whirling me around dizzily, carried me
toward the edge of the waterfall.
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Stapi is a village consisting of about thirty huts, built of lava, at the south side of the base of the volcano. It extends along the inner edge of a small fiord, inclosed between basaltic walls of the strangest construction. Basalt is a brownish... But I Don't Think
As every thinking man knows, every slave always yearns for the freedom his master denies him... "But, gentlemen," said the Physician, "I really don't think we can consider any religion which has human sacrifice as an integral part... By Proxy
By DAVID GORDON It's been said that the act of creation is a solitary thing--that teams never create; only individuals. But sometimes a team may be needed to make creation effective.... Mr. Terrence Elshawe did not conform to the mental pi... By The Brookside
Scarcely had she seen the doctor admitted and the house door closed when an approaching pedestrian caught her eye. She recognized him at once, and a little more color stole into her round cheeks, while an unconscious smile touched her lips. The g... By The Naya's Orders
A SHORT time only did we remain in doubt as to the intention of the populace. The suppressed excitement found vent even before the clouds of choking smoke had rolled away. The signal had been given, and instantly they responded with fierce yells, ... Cachalots And Whales
During the nights of the 13th and 14th of March, the Nautilus returned to its southerly course. I fancied that, when on a level with Cape Horn, he would turn the helm westward, in order to beat the Pacific seas, and so complete the tour of the worl... Camille Penurot
When Heideck and his prisoner, Penurot, reached the Gefion he found the Commander on deck, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour. He reported himself, and asked him to treat Penurot as a guest. "I was getting anxious about you," said the Capt... Captain Nemo's Thunderbolt
We looked at the edge of the forest without rising, my hand stopping in the action of putting it to my mouth, Ned Land's completing its office. "Stones do not fall from the sky," remarked Conseil, "or they would merit the name aerolites." A sec... Captain Servadac And His Orderly
At the time of which I write, there might be seen in the registers of the Minister of War the following entry: SERVADAC (Hector), born at St. Trelody in the district of Lesparre, department of the Gironde, July 19th, 18--. Property: 1200 fran... Captain Weston's Advent
"Bless my water ballast, but that certainly is a fine boat!" cried Mr. Damon, when he had been shown over the new craft. "I think I shall feel even safer in that than in the Red Cloud." "Oh, don't go back on the airship!" exclaimed Mr Sharp. "I... Captive
When Goork and his people saw that I had no token they commenced to taunt me. "You do not come from Kolk, but from the Sly One!" they cried. "He has sent you from the island to spy upon us. Go away, or we will set upon you and kill you." I ex... Captured
"Down deep," advised Captain Weston, as he stood beside Tom and Mr. Swift in the pilot house. "As far as you can manage her, and then forward. We'll take no more chances with these fellows." "The only trouble is," replied the young inventor, "th... Captured
As Thuria, swift racer of the night, shot again into the sky the scene changed. As by magic a new aspect fell athwart the face of Nature. It was as though in the instant one had been transported from one planet to another. It was the age-old miracle... Captured!
When I recovered consciousness I found myself lying in the sand with Mercer sitting beside me. It was still night. The tangled wreckage of our airplane lay near by; evidently Mercer had carried me out of it. I sat up. "I'm all right," I said....