CHAPTER XIV
THE SUN GOD
Strangely enough, I, who have an exceptional memory for spoken words,cannot, by any effort, recall what Edmund said, as his face beamed inupon us. I have only a confused recollection that he spoke, and that hiswords had a marvelous effect upon my broken spirit. But I can see, as ifit were yet before me, the smile that illumined his features. My heartbounded with joy, as if a messenger had come straight from the earthitself, bearing a reprieve whose authority could not be called inquestion.
Jack's joy was no less than mine, although he had not suffered mentallyas I had done. And the sight of Ala was hardly less reassuring to us, butto find Ingra, too, present was somewhat of a shock to our confidence inspeedy delivery from trouble. And, in fact, we were not at oncedelivered. We had to spend many weary hours yet in our dark prison, butthey were rendered less gloomy by Edmund's assurance that he would saveus. The confidence that he always inspired seems to me to have beenanother mark of his genius. We had an instinct that he could do in anycircumstances what was impossible to ordinary men.
At last the welcome moment came, and we were led forth, free, andrejoined Edmund, Henry, and Juba in our apartments. Then, for the first,we learned what we had done, and how narrow had been our escape from aterrible doom. It was a new chapter of wonder that Edmund opened beforeus. I shall tell it in his own words.
"When I returned to the palace and found you missing I was greatlywrought up. Immediately I applied to Ala for aid in finding you. She wasquickly informed of all the circumstances of your arrest, and I saw atonce, by the expression of her features, that it was a matter of theutmost gravity. I was not reassured by Ingra's evident joy. I could readin his face the pleasure that the news gave him, and I perceived thatthere was again opposition between him and Ala, and that she was trying,with less success than I hoped for, to bring him round to her view.
"With no little trouble I finally discovered the nature of your offense.I understood it the more readily because I had already begun to suspectthe existence among these people of a strange form of idolatry, in somerespects akin to the earth-worship of the cavern dwellers. I have toldyou that certain things had led me to think that they occasionally seethe sun here. It is a phenomenon of excessive rarity, and wholegenerations sometimes pass without its recurrence. It is due to anopening which at irregular periods forms for a brief space of time in thecloud dome. I imagine that it may be in some way connected with sunspots,but here they have no notion of its cause, and look upon it as entirelymiraculous.
"Whenever this rare event occurs it gives rise to extraordinary religiousexcitement, and ceremonies concerning which there is some occult mysterythat I have not yet penetrated. I suspect that the ceremonies are notaltogether unlike the Bacchanalian festivals of ancient Greece. At anyrate the momentary appearance of the sun at these times is regarded asthe avatar of a supreme god, and their whole religious system is basedupon it. So universal and profound is the superstition to which it givesrise that the most instructed persons among them are completely under itsdominion. The eagle-beaked individual who condemned you, and whom I havesince seen, is the chief priest of this superstition, and within hissphere his power is unlimited. It is solely to the belief--which, throughAla, I have succeeded in impressing upon him--that we are _children ofthe sun_ that I owe the success of my efforts in your behalf. Withoutthat you would surely have been sacrificed, and we with you.
"One of the forms which this superstition takes is a belief that theanger of the sun god can be mollified by offerings of images, made in hislikeness, which are first consecrated by the chief priest, and then hungup on the walls of certain small temples, which are scattered through thecity, and are always kept open to the air under the guard of a minorpriest and his attendants. A whole family, as I understand it, deemsitself protected by one of these images, which are made by artists whonever touch any other work, and which are only granted to those who haveundergone a painful series of purifications in the great temple. Thepreliminary ceremonies finished, the images are suspended, and at certaintimes those to whom they belong go and kneel and pray before them, asbefore their guardian saints."
"What a fool I was not to understand it," I murmured.
"You will understand now," Edmund continued, "how serious was Jack'soffense in insulting a priest, and laying impious hands upon a sacredimage, belonging, no doubt, to a family whose antiquity of descent wouldmake our oldest pedigrees on the earth seem as ephemeral as the existenceof a May fly; for I am convinced that here life has gone on,uninterrupted by wars and changes of dynasty, for untold ages.
"It is a marvel that you escaped, for already they were preparing theawful sacrifice. The chief priest was amazed when an interposition wasmade on your behalf. Such a thing had never been known, and, as I havesaid, it was only by acting upon his superstition that I succeeded, withAla's assistance, in obtaining a reprieve. As the case stands, we findourselves occupying a dangerous eminence, which it may be difficult forus to maintain. I must beseech you to be on your guard, and to act onlyunder my direction. It is all the more serious for us because I amconvinced that Ingra has no faith whatever in the legend which protectsus. He persists in believing that we are simply interlopers from the darkhemisphere, and the opposition between him and Ala has now become sosharp that he would gladly witness our destruction. I am sure that hewill do his utmost to unmask us, and thus send us to our death."
"But--" I began.
"Wait a moment," said Edmund, "I have not yet finished. I must now tellyou who Ingra is. _He is the destined consort of Ala._ That explains hisinfluence over her. From what I can make out, it appears that he is ofthe royal blood, and that the marriage of the queen is arranged, not byher preference, but by an unwritten law, administered by the chiefpriest. She has no choice in the matter."
"I should say not," broke in Jack. "She never would have chosen thatjackanapes! If you hadn't spoiled my aim I'd have relieved her of theburden."
"Not another word of that!" said Edmund severely. "In no manner, not evenby a look, are you ever to express your dislike of him. And remember, youmust govern your very thoughts, for here they lie open, as legible asprint."
"Hang me," growled Jack, "if I like a world where a man can't even thinkhis own thoughts because his mind goes bare! Take me back where you haveto speak before you are understood."
"When you have wicked thoughts don't look them in the eyes," said Edmund,half smiling, "and then you will run no danger. It is through the eyesthat they read. Now, to resume what I was saying, I am more than everanxious to recover the car, and to find the materials that will enable meto repair its machinery. With it in our possession, and in good shape, weshall be in a position to run away whenever it may seem necessary to doso, and in the meantime to impose our legend upon them by the possessionof so apparently miraculous a means of conveying ourselves through space.It will be overwhelming proof of the truth of our assertion of an originoutside their world, and perhaps, upon the whole, it is just as well thatthey should think that we belong to the sun, of whose existence they havesome knowledge, rather than to the earth, of which they know nothing, inspite of the inkling that Juba succeeded in conveying to them."
"The car is here, isn't it?" I asked.
"Yes, it is in the great tower, but it is useless in its presentcondition."
"And what materials do you want to find?"
"Primarily nothing but uranium. They understand chemistry here. They havethe apparatus that I need, but they do not know how to use it as I do.The uranium certainly exists somewhere. They mine gold and silver, andother things, and when I can find their mines, without exciting theirsuspicion, and can get the use of a laboratory in secret, I shall soonhave what I need. But I must be very circumspect, for it would not do tolet them perceive that chemistry really lies at the basis of our miracle.It is this necessity for secrecy which troubles me most. But I shall finda way."
"For God's sake, find it quick," Henry burst out. "And then get away fromthis
accursed planet."
Edmund looked at him a moment before replying:
"We shall go when the necessity for going arises, and not before. We havenot yet seen all the interesting things of this world."
I believe that even Jack and I shared to some extent Henry'sdisappointment on hearing this announcement. We should have been glad toknow that we were to start on the return journey as soon as the car wasin shape to transport us. But the event proved that Edmund's instinctwas, as usual, right, and that the things which were yet to be seen andexperienced were well worth the fearful risk we ran in remaining.
While Edmund undertook the delicate inquiries which were necessary inorder to determine the direction that his search for uranium should take,and to enable him to conduct his chemical processes without awakingsuspicion as to his real purpose, we were left much of the time in chargeof a party of attendants who, by his intercession, had been selected toact as our guides when we wished to examine the wonders of the palace andthe capital. Sometimes he accompanied us; but more often he was with Alaand her suite, including her uneludable satellite, Ingra.
"I bless my stars that he doesn't favor _us_ with his delightfulcompany," was Jack's comment, when he saw Ingra tagging along after Alaand Edmund.
I privately believed that Ingra had his spies among our attendants, but Iwas careful not to mention my suspicions to Jack.
But, oh, the delight of those excursions! Those streets; and those aerialtowers, which rose like forests of coral in a gulf of liquid ether! Theyshine often in my dreams. A thousand times I have tried to put intowords, simply for my own satisfaction, a description of the things thatwe saw, and the impressions that they made on my mind--but it isimpossible. I understand now why the tales of travelers into strangelands never convey a tithe of what is in the writers' minds; theysimply cannot; the necessary words and analogies do not exist. I can onlyuse general terms, ransacking the vocabulary of adjectives--"beautiful,""wonderful," "fascinating," "marvelous," "indescribable," "magical,""enchanting," "amazing," "inexplicable," "_sans pareil_"--what youwill--but all that says nothing except to my own mind. Only the languageof Venus could describe the charms and the wonders of Venus!
There was one thing, however, which was sufficiently comprehensible--_thegreat library_. Edmund was not with us when we paid our first visit toit; but he had predicted its existence during one of our conversations,when we were talking of the silent language.
"This people," he had said, "has a great history behind it, extendingover periods which would amaze our disinterrers of human antiquity, butan intelligent race cannot make history without also keeping records ofit. Tradition alone, handed on from mind to mind, would not answer theirrequirements. The possession of the power to communicate thought withoutspoken language does not presuppose a power of memory any more perfectthan we have. The brain forgets, the imagination misleads, with them aswith us, and consequently they must have books of some kind--whichimplies a written or printed language. It is probable that this languagedoes not correspond with the very meager one of which we occasionallyhear them pronounce a few words. The latter is, I am convinced, used onlyfor names and interjections, and sometimes to call the attention of theperson addressed, while the former must be a rich and carefullyelaborated system of literary expression, which may not be phonetic atall. We shall find that this is so; and there are unquestionablylibraries--probably a great imperial library--devoted to history andscience. There must be schools also."
Thus Edmund had spoken, and thus we found it to be. The great library wasin a building separate from the palace. It was admirably lighted fromwithout, and its nature was apparent the moment we were led into it. The"books" were long scrolls, which might have been taken for parchment orpapyrus, and the characters written on them resembled those of theChinese language, but worked out in exquisite colors, which mightthemselves have had a meaning. The rolls were kept in proper receptaclesunder the charge of librarians, and we saw many grave persons at desksporing over them. Absolute silence reigned, and as I gazed at the scene Ifound admiration for this extraordinary people taking the place of theprejudice which I had recently been led to feel against them.
Jack, unusually impressed, whispered to me that Edmund must have beenplaying us some Hindoo bedevilment trick, for he could not believe thatwe were actually in a foreign world. The same impression came over me.This was too earthlike; too much as if, instead of being on the planetVenus, we had been transported to some land of antique civilization inour own world. But, after all, we _knew where we were_, and as therealization of that fact came to us we could only stare with increasingastonishment at the scene before us. I may say here that Edmundsubsequently visited this great library, and also some of the schools,and I know that he made notes of what he discovered and learned in them,with the purpose, as I supposed, of writing upon the subject after hisreturn. But the expected book, which would have supplemented andclarified much of what I have undertaken to tell, with but a halfunderstanding of what we saw, never appeared.
Our wonderful excursions came to an end when Edmund at length announcedthat he had obtained the information he needed, and that we were about tomake a trip to some of the mines of Venus.
"I have discovered," he said, "that Venus is exceedingly rich in theprecious metals, as well as in iron and lead. They mine them all, andwe shall visit the mines under Ala's escort. My real purpose, ofcourse, is to find uranium, of whose properties, strangely--and for usluckily--enough, they seem to have no knowledge. Nevertheless, they arecapital chemists as far as they go, and possess laboratories providedwith all that I shall need. They refine the metals at the minesthemselves, so that I am sure of finding everything necessary to do mywork right on the ground. The substance which I obtain from uranium is soconcentrated that I can carry in my pocket all that will be required torepair the damage done to the transformers in the car. A carefulexamination, which I have made of the car, proves that the terrificshocks the machinery suffered in the crystal mountains caused an atomicreadjustment which destroyed the usefulness of the material in thetransformers, and while I might, by laboratory treatment, possiblyrestore its properties, I think it safer to obtain an entirely freshsupply. We shall start with the queen's ship within a few hours; so youhad better make your preparations at once."