H G Wells Omnibus, page 221
He was not really acclimatized to progress. He had always thought of Utopia as a tranquillity with everything settled for good. Even today it seemed tranquil under that level haze, but he knew that this quiet was the steadiness of a mill-race, which seems almost motionless in its quiet onrush until a bubble or a fleck of foam or some stick or leaf shoots along it and reveals its velocity.
And how did it feel to be living in Utopia? The lives of the people must be like the lives of very successful artists or scientific workers in this world, a continual refreshing discovery of new things, a constant adventure into the unknown and untried. For recreation they went about their planet, and there was much love and laughter and friendship in Utopia and an abundant easy informal social life. Games that did not involve bodily exercise, those substitutes of the half-witted for research and mental effort, had gone entirely out of life, but many active games were played for the sake of fun and bodily vigour… . It must be a good life for those who had been educated to live it, indeed a most enviable life.
And pervading it all must be the happy sense that it mattered; it went on to endless consequences. And they loved no doubt—subtly and deliciously—but perhaps a little hardly. Perhaps in those distant plains there was not much pity nor tenderness. Bright and lovely beings they were—in no way pitiful. There would be no need for those qualities… .
Yet the woman Lychnis looked kind… .
Did they keep faith or need to keep faith as earthly lovers do? What was love like in Utopia? Lovers still whispered in the dusk… . What was the essence of love? A preference, a sweet pride, a delightful gift won, the most exquisite reassurance of body and mind… .
What could it be like to love and be loved by one of these Utopian women?—to have her glowing face close to one’s own—to be quickened into life by her kiss? …
Mr. Barnstaple sat in his flannels, bare-footed, in the shadow of a stone Colossus. He felt like some minute stray insect perched upon the big dam. It seemed to him that it was impossible that this triumphant Utopian race could ever fall back again from its magnificent attack upon the dominion of all things. High and tremendously this world had clambered and was still clambering. Surely it was safe now in its attainment. Yet all this stupendous security and mastery of nature had come about in the little space of three thousand years… .
The race could not have altered fundamentally in that brief interval. Essentially it was still a stone-age race, it was not twenty thousand years away from the days when it knew nothing of metals and could not read nor write. Deep in its nature, arrested and undeveloped, there still lay the seeds of anger and fear and dissension. There must still be many uneasy and insubordinate spirits in this Utopia. Eugenics had scarcely begun here. He remembered the keen sweet face of the young girl who had spoken to him in the starlight on the night of his arrival, and the note of romantic eagerness in her voice when she had asked if Lord Barralonga was not a very vigorous and cruel man.
Did the romantic spirit still trouble imaginations here? Possibly only adolescent imaginations.
Might not some great shock or some phase of confusion still be possible to this immense order? Might not its system of education become wearied by its task of discipline and fall a prey to the experimental spirit? Might not the unforeseen be still lying in wait for this race? Suppose there should prove to be an infection in Father Amerton’s religious fervour or Rupert Catskill’s incurable craving for fantastic enterprises!
No! It was inconceivable. The achievement of this world was too calmly great and assured.
Mr. Barnstaple stood up and made his way down the steps of the great dam to where, far below, his little skiff floated like a minute flower-petal upon the clear water.
§ 3
He became aware of a considerable commotion in the Conference places.
There were more than thirty aeroplanes circling in the air and descending and ascending from the park, and a great number of big white vehicles were coming and going by the pass road. Also people seemed to be moving briskly among the houses, but it was too far off to distinguish what they were doing. He stared for a time and then got into his little boat.
He could not watch what was going on as he returned across the lake because his back was towards the slopes, but once an aeroplane came down very close to him, and he saw its occupant looking at him as he rowed. And once when he rested from rowing and sat round to look he saw what he thought was a litter carried by two men.
As he drew near the shore a boat put off to meet him. He was astonished to see that its occupants were wearing what looked like helmets of glass with white pointed visors. He was enormously astonished and puzzled.
As they approached their message resonated into his mind. “Quarantine. You have to go into quarantine. You Earthlings have started an epidemic and it is necessary to put you into quarantine.”
Then these glass helmets must be a sort of gasmask!
When they came alongside him he saw that this was so. They were made of highly flexible and perfectly translucent material… .
§ 4
Mr. Barnstaple was taken past some sleeping loggias where Utopians were lying in beds, while others who wore gas-masks waited upon them. He found that all the Earthlings and all their possessions, except their cars, were assembled in the hall of the first day’s Conference. He was told that the whole party were to be removed to a new place where they could be isolated and treated.
The only Utopians with the party were two who wore gas-masks and lounged in the open portico in attitudes disagreeably suggestive of sentries or custodians.
The Earthlings sat about in little groups among the seats, except for Mr. Rupert Catskill, who was walking up and down in the apse talking. He was hatless, flushed and excited, with his hair in some disorder.
“It’s what I foresaw would happen all along,” he repeated. “Didn’t I tell you Nature was on our side? Didn’t I say it?”
Mr. Burleigh was shocked and argumentative. “For the life of me I can’t see the logic of it,” he declared. “Here are we—absolutely the only perfectly immune people here—and we—we are to be isolated.”
“They say they catch things from us,” said Lady Stella.
“Very well,” said Mr. Burleigh, making his point with his long white hand. “Very well, then let them be isolated! This is—Chinese; this is topsy-turvy. I’m disappointed in them.”
“I suppose it’s their world,” said Mr. Hunker, “and we’ve got to do things their way.”
Mr. Catskill concentrated upon Lord Barralonga and the two chauffeurs. “I welcome this treatment. I welcome it.”
“What’s your idea, Rupert?” said his lordship. “We lose our freedom of action.”
“Not at all,” said Mr. Catskill. “Not at all. We gain it. We are to be isolated. We are to be put by ourselves in some island or mountain. Well and good. Well and good. This is only the beginning of our adventures. We shall see what we shall see.”
“But how?”
“Wait a little. Until we can speak more freely… . These are panic measures. This pestilence is only in its opening stage. Everything is just beginning. Trust me.”
Mr. Barnstaple sat sulkily by his valise, avoiding the challenge of Mr. Catskill’s eye.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE CASTLE ON THE CRAG
§ 1
The quarantine place to which the Earthlings were taken must have been at a very considerable distance from the place of the Conference, because they were nearly six hours upon their journey, and all the time they were flying high and very swiftly. They were all together in one flying ship; it was roomy and comfortable and could have held perhaps four times as many passengers. They were accompanied by about thirty Utopians in gas-masks, among whom were two women. The aviators wore dresses of a white fleecy substance that aroused the interest and envy of both Miss Grey and Lady Stella. The flying ship passed down the valley and over the great plain and across a narrow sea and another land with a rocky coast and dense forests, and across a great space of empty sea. There was scarcely any shipping to be seen upon this sea at all; it seemed to Mr. Barnstaple that no earthly ocean would be so untravelled; only once or twice did he see very big drifting vessels quite unlike any earthly ships, huge rafts or platforms they seemed to be rather than ships, and once or twice he saw what was evidently a cargo boat—one with rigged masts and sails. And the air was hardly more frequented. After he was out of sight of land he saw only three aeroplanes until the final landfall.
They crossed a rather thickly inhabited, very delightful-looking coastal belt and came over what was evidently a rainless desert country, given over to mining and to vast engineering operations. Far away were very high snowy mountains, but the aeroplane descended before it came to these. For a time the Earthlings were flying over enormous heaps of slaggy accumulations, great mountains of them, that seemed to be derived from a huge well-like excavation that went down into the earth to an unknown depth. A tremendous thunder of machinery came out of this pit and much smoke. Here there were crowds of workers and they seemed to be living in camps among the debris. Evidently the workers came to this place merely for spells of work; there were no signs of homes. The aeroplane of the Earthlings skirted this region and flew on over a rocky and almost treeless desert deeply cut by steep gorges of the canyon type. Few people were to be seen, but there were abundant signs of engineering activity. Every torrent, every cataract was working a turbine, and great cables followed the cliffs of the gorges and were carried across the desert spaces. In the wider places of the gorges there were pine woods and a fairly abundant vegetation.
The high crag which was their destination stood out, an almost completely isolated headland, in the fork between two convergent canyons. It towered up to a height of perhaps two thousand feet above the foaming clash of the torrents below, a great mass of pale greenish and purple rocks, jagged and buttressed and cleft deeply by joint planes and white crystalline veins. The gorge on one side of it was much steeper than that on the other, it was so overhung indeed as to be darkened like a tunnel, and here within a hundred feet or so of the brow a slender metallic bridge had been flung across the gulf. Some yards above it were projections that might have been the remains of an earlier bridge of stone. Behind, the crag fell steeply for some hundreds of feet to a long slope covered with a sparse vegetation which rose again to the main masses of the mountain, a wall of cliffs with a level top.
It was on this slope that the aeroplane came down alongside of three or four smaller machines. The crag was surmounted by the tall ruins of an ancient castle, within the circle of whose walls clustered a number of buildings which had recently harboured a group of chemical students. Their researches, which had been upon some question of atomic structure quite incomprehensible to Mr. Barnstaple, were finished now and the place had become vacant. Their laboratory was still stocked with apparatus and material; and water and power were supplied to it from higher up the gorge by means of pipes and cables. There was also an abundant store of provisions. A number of Utopians were busily adapting the place to its new purpose of isolation and disinfection when the Earthlings arrived.
Serpentine appeared in the company of a man in a gas-mask whose name was Cedar. This Cedar was a cytologist, and he was in charge of the arrangements for this improvised sanatorium.
Serpentine explained that he himself had flown to the crag in advance, because he understood the equipment of the place and the research that had been going on there, and because his knowledge of the Earthlings and his comparative immunity to their infections made him able to act as an intermediary between them and the medical men who would now take charge of their case. He made these explanations to Mr. Burleigh, Mr. Barnstaple, Lord Barralonga and Mr. Hunker. The other Earthlings stood about in small groups beside the aeroplane from which they had alighted, regarding the castellated summit of the crag, the scrubby bushes of the bleak upland about them and the towering cliffs of the adjacent canyons with no very favourable expressions.
Mr. Catskill had gone apart nearly to the edge of the great canyon, and was standing with his hands behind his back in an attitude almost Napoleonic, lost in thought, gazing down into those sunless depths. The roar of the unseen waters below, now loud, now nearly inaudible, quivered in the air.
Miss Greeta Grey had suddenly produced a Kodak camera; she had been reminded of its existence when packing for this last journey, and she was taking a snapshot of the entire party.
Cedar said that he would explain the method of treatment he proposed to follow, and Lord Barralonga called “Rupert!” to bring Mr. Catskill into the group of Cedar’s hearers.
Cedar was as explicit and concise as Urthred had been. It was evident, he said, that the Earthlings were the hosts of a variety of infectious organisms which were kept in check in their bodies by immunizing counter substances, but against which the Utopians had no defences ready and could hope to secure immunity only after a painful and disastrous epidemic. The only way to prevent this epidemic devastating their whole planet, indeed, was firstly to gather together and cure all the cases affected, which was being done by converting the Conference Park into a big hospital, and next to take the Earthlings in hand and isolate them absolutely from the Utopians until they could be cleaned of their infections. It was, he confessed, an inhospitable thing to do to the Earthlings, but it seemed the only possible thing to do, to bring them into this peculiarly high and dry desert air and there to devise methods for their complete physical cleansing. If that was possible it would be done, and then the Earthlings would again be free to go and come as they pleased in Utopia.
“But suppose it is not possible?” said Mr. Catskill abruptly.
“I think it will be.”
“But if you fail?”
Cedar smiled at Serpentine. “Physical research is taking up the work in which Arden and Greenlake were foremost, and it will not be long before we are able to repeat their experiment. And then to reverse it.”
“With us as your raw material?”
“Not until we are fairly sure of a safe landing for you.”
“You mean,” said Mr. Mush, who had joined the circle about Cedar and Serpentine, “that you are going to send us back?”
“If we cannot keep you,” said Cedar, smiling.
“Delightful prospect!” said Mr. Mush unpleasantly. “To be shot across space in a gun. Experimentally.”
“And may I ask,” came the voice of Father Amerton, “may I ask the nature of this treatment of yours, these experiments of which we are to be the—guinea pigs, so to speak? Is it to be anything in the nature of vaccination?”
“Injections,” explained Mr. Barnstaple.
“I have hardly decided yet,” said Cedar. “The problem raises questions this world has forgotten for ages.”
“I may say at once that I am a confirmed anti-vaccinationist,” said Father Amerton. “Absolutely. Vaccination is an outrage on nature. If I had any doubts before I came into this world of—of vitiation, I have no doubts now. Not a doubt! If God had meant us to have these serums and ferments in our bodies He would have provided more natural and dignified means of getting them there than a squirt.”
Cedar did not discuss the point. He went on to further apologies. For a time he must ask the Earthlings to keep within certain limits, to confine themselves to the crag and the slopes below it as far as the mountain cliffs. And further, it was impossible to set young people to attend to them as had hitherto been done. They must cook for themselves and see to themselves generally. The appliances were all to be found above upon the crest of the crag and he and Serpentine would make any explanations that were needful. They would find there was ample provision for them.
“I have come to my last clean collar,” said M. Catskill.
“For a time. When we have our problem clearer we will come again and tell you what we mean to do.”
“Good,” said Mr. Catskill. “Good.”
“I wish I hadn’t sent my maid by train,” said Lady Stella.
“I have come to my last clean collar,” said M. Dupont with a little humorous grimace. “It is no joke this week-end with Lord Barralonga.”
Lord Barralonga turned suddenly to his particular minion. “I believe that Ridley has the makings of a very good cook.’”
“I don’t mind trying my hand,” said Ridley. “I’ve done most things—and once I used to look after a steam car.”
“A man who can keep one of those—those things in order can do anything,” said Mr. Penk with unusual emotion. “I’ve no objection to being a temporary general utility along of Mr. Ridley. I began my career in the pantry and I ain’t ashamed to own it.”
“If this gentleman will show us the gadgets,” said Mr. Ridley, indicating Serpentine.
“Exactly,” said Mr. Penk.
“And if all of us give as little trouble as possible,” said Miss Greeta bravely.
“I think we shall be able to manage,” said Mr. Burleigh to Cedar. “If at first you can spare us a little advice and help.”
§ 2
Cedar and Serpentine remained with the Earthlings upon Quarantine Crag until late in the afternoon. They helped to prepare a supper and set it out in the courtyard of the castle. They departed with a promise to return on the morrow, and the Earthlings watched them and their accompanying aeroplanes soar up into the sky.
Mr. Barnstaple was surprised to find himself distressed at their going. He had a feeling that mischief was brewing amongst his companions and that the withdrawal of these Utopians removed a check upon this mischief. He had helped Lady Stella in the preparation of an omelette; he had to carry back a dish and a frying-pan to the kitchen after it was served, so that he was the last to seat himself at the supper-table. He found the mischief he dreaded well afoot.
Mr. Catskill had finished his supper already and was standing with his foot upon a bench orating to the rest of the company.
