Limanora

CHAPTER XII
OOLOREFA

BUT by what magic had this wondrous jewel group of domes and spires and minarets grown upon the platform within these few alternations of sun and dark? From my own experience of bastioning the shore I was able to understand the rapidity with which the foundations had been laid. My wonder grew all the more at the marvellous piece of art that now stood upon them; every detail was so complete and so beautiful. The giant forest aisle of Cologne Cathedral, the mosaic splendour that had overawed me within St. Peter’s, the statued frost-work of Milan, seemed to me tawdry beside the colossal domes with their jewelled magnificence and the infinite variety in simplicity of the labyrinth of arcades and galleries and arches. Yet those were the fruits of a thousand years’ faith and work; this was the product of a few days. The more I thought of it, the more bewildered I was.

Thyriel divined my thoughts and saved me from my perplexity. “You have never seen the Ooloran,” she exclaimed. I asked her what it was. I could see that the word might be translated sonarchitect. Her description of it, though lucid as usual, did not convey to my slow thoughts a full idea of the instrument; and we got permission to visit Oolorefa, or the hall of architecture, the following day.

In the multiplicity of wonders throughout Limanora I had failed to notice this great edifice, although it stood on a level, symmetrically cut plateau, commanding all the region in which were gathered most of the exceptionally great and magnificent structures of the island, and was but one of a series of gleaming palaces which crowned the points of the rocky spurs of Lilaroma. In each palace was concentrated some one of the services that the new civilisation had to offer to the progress of the race. I had visited a few of them, and it was part of the programme of my education to make me spend such space and time in each as the desire or the necessity arose in my life; but it had never struck me to inquire how the marvellous buildings had arisen. Nor, though I had noticed the frequent change of outward shape and ornamentation of parts of the mansion of my proparents, had I ever had leisure or curiosity to find out the reason or source of the transformations. It was delightful to see the growth of the building and to remove into the new parts; and as silently and invisibly the sections we had left vanished. I had never time to grow tired of one chamber or set of chambers before another was ready for me. It was like the growth of a palace of dreams; but I soon accepted it as one of the magic habits of the island, a natural feature of my life, never rousing query and seldom awakening even thought. So much of new and striking was crowded into the days and months and years that large portions of the civilisation had to pass uncommented on and ultimately unnoticed.

With the same wonder with which in later life we begin to watch the marvellous workings of the functions of our bodies I entered on my new investigation. As we approached Oolorefa it seemed to me that we had made a mistake and come to the wrong building; for it rang with the most entrancing music and I thought that it must be the cathedral of the island. It had one vast central dome surrounded by countless cupolas, and as we skirted the edifice I heard underneath each of these smaller roofs sweet melodies sounding too low to be heard beyond its partition walls and almost drowned in the thunderous diapason of the central dome. These I took for chapels and fanes subsidiary to the great temple, round which they clustered.

We entered and I was amazed to find under what I had thought to be the temple of the island a great mansion, but dwarfed by the height and size of the temple roof. The fence enclosing it had just been shaken to dust by their new electric process for the atomising of irelium. What was to be done with the new structure? It was walled in by the giant cupola, and could not possibly be removed. The thought was beating about in my mind, but ceased before a sudden crash; I looked up and there, one complete and evenly cut quadrant of the dome had vanished, and the bright sun shone in undimmed by any medium. I again noticed something going on around us. Great flanks like the sides of a ship were fitted to the bottom of the new building, and along them underneath were adjusted huge floats. Wings were then attached to either side, and a strong wing-engine was placed in the body and two rudder-engines in the after-part of the raft. They were rapidly charged with electricity, the floats were exhausted of their heavier air, and up rose the whole structure through the huge aperture in the dome; and I could see its pilots guide it this way and that through the air to fit the unequal and varying wind that blew, till at last it disappeared round a shoulder of Lilaroma. I had run out of Oolorefa to watch the flight of the great mansion on its aërial raft, and when it went out of sight I returned, reflecting with a sigh of relief that this explained the magic growth of the house in which I lived; the additions had arrived and been fixed and adapted to the purposes of human habitation while I was sleeping or absent on my daily pursuits.

I was startled when I got back to find the dome complete again and preparation being made for constructing some other irelium shell. The fence-work had been raised. By its wall stood the key-board of a gigantic organ-like musical instrument, the other half of which was so arranged within the new framework that the whole volume of its sound should bear upon whatever the fence enclosed. A huge bell mouth opened out into the chamber; and I soon saw that out of this issued a snow-storm of irelium particles which floated lightly in the air. A peal of music rang out from the instrument, and I saw the dust motes settle rapidly into a symmetrical figure, that minute by minute grew into a gigantic nautilus shell. The musician who sat at the key-board watched the snow-whirl within and the magical rise of the walls. I perceived that the bar of music was repeated again and again, with gradual ingrafting of variation as the shell-like walls bent over. At a certain point where the whorl began to incurve backwards the strain completely changed and reminded me of a fugue. Back and forth it shot its monotonous shuttle of sound. I was spellbound by the cradling melody and the sinuous flexure of the vast conch. The completion of the process and the cessation of the music broke the spell, and I pressed near to ask explanations and to see the result. Some enchanter’s power must surely have drawn in the floating particles to the thin curves of the structure and held them there; for the motes continued to float unattracted, but in sparse and sparser cloud; and at last they ceased to move, and settled on the fence, dimming its translucence. I felt the metal floor grow first hotter and hotter, and then cooler and cooler till it was ice-cold. Within a fraction of an hour the whole process was complete; the fencing walls were shaken to dust, and there stood the gigantic nautilus perfect in its grace, clear as crystal but for the frostwork of nautilus patterns all over its surface. It was a new experiment in form for a winged ship of the air, and as I stood the wings were added and the engines put on board. The navigators embarked; a smaller quadrant of the dome crashed aside; and out by the aperture floated this huge air-bubble rainbow-lustrous in the sun.

Thyriel led me to the vacant space whence the airship had been launched; and there I was shown how powerful magnets made the snow-storm sweep so rapidly downwards and held the irelium dust in position, once it had taken shape. Then the alternate floors were exhibited to me, one emanating heat which melted the new structure into a permanency, and another that reduced the temperature below freezing-point and completed the architectural process by chilling the metal. There were other floors easy of substitution by means of leverage and the application of great force; as one was withdrawn, another was run into its place. One was suited for one chemical process, another for another. A second set were for applying to the walls of the new structure different forms or grades of electricity. A third set could infuse into them various kinds of concreting fluids to make them cohere when the heating and chilling process was likely to fail. This was the great Ooloran that I had come to see, and only the most skilled musician and architect was allowed to sit down at the key-board.

In order to show me the part that music took in this swift architecture, I was led round the circle of sub-chapels, that I had seen surrounding the great dome. In these were employed the various draughtsmen of Oolorefa. In the first we entered the experimenter was engaged in seeking the most beautiful form for a new mansion which was to be placed up amongst the snows of Lilaroma; it would have to withstand great gusts of wind and at times heavy drifts of snow; it would also have to bear a variety of high temperatures within in order to protect the dwellers from the bitterness of the night. The building was meant for those who had to watch the storm-cone and keep it in perfect working order. The draughtsman was using a miniature Ooloran, and deftly sounding various musical notes, and sometimes songs into its irelium dust whirlwind; but there was always one predominating note, meant to introduce into each experiment a feature that had been before tested and found suitable. He fixed his experiments by means of his small movable floors, and then placed the resulting forms in order along a shelf, attaching to each the score of music which had produced it. It was like a collection of toy observatories. Within a neighbouring compartment of like transparent walls another artisan submitted each of the models to the influences of stress and strain, of heat and cold, of snow pressure and tornado violence that the ultimate and full-sized mansion would have to undergo. One succumbed to the heat, another to the severe cold, a third to an avalanche from above, a fourth to a gust of wind. He marked the flaw in each and the influence that had brought it out, and handed the model back to the draughtsman, who at once corrected the note or notes in the score of music which symbolised the flaw. When the result of the experimentation was complete, the score of the music and the miniature fabric were sent to the central dome; and in less than an hour the huge mansion was on its winged raft speeding towards its destination far up the great mountain-slope.

I was led through the whole series of experimenting chapels; in each was there a miniature sonarchitect producing test forms for special purposes under the skilled hands of creative workmen and their pupils. In most of them new designs were being produced for private houses; for of these was needed the greatest variety, as each islander had his home renewed so frequently. I could not have conceived that so many different forms could be created for the same purpose; indeed the number seemed to be limited only by the possible combination of notes of music and the need of adapting each design to habitation and the habits of the dwellers. The skill of the artist lay in the selection of the proper forms out of the multitude he daily evolved, and in their adaptation to the necessities of Limanoran life. It was in these designs that the younger members of the architect families were engaged; thus they learned their art and developed their creative instincts.

Under some cupolas which we visited we found experiments on new designs for the large public buildings, and to these the wisest members of the families were applying their century-tried skill. As we approached any such chapel, we could hear the most elaborate and entrancing music, for the design in such cases was labyrinthine, and needed the noblest artistic faculties to select and develop it. The executive musical talent displayed and the talent of extemporaneous composition and modification would have been called genius in European communities; but this people had no word corresponding to the quicksand of meaning this word covers in Christendom. They knew the origin and growth of each faculty, even when exceptionally developed, too well to attribute it to an indefinable something which nature had somehow conferred upon a chance-chosen individual. They knew as exactly the causes that produced given effects in the human system as they could calculate the forces of the inanimate world, and had no belief in the power of nature to give to human work by some caprice more value than it deserved and that deranged all calculation. This criticism I brought down on me from my guide when I expressed amazement at the beauty of the music and the resulting design in one chapel, and attempted to translate the word “genius” into Limanoran. Such expressions, he persuaded me, are but the half-articulate escape-valves of wide-mouthed ignorance; they mean no more than a confession of blindness and incapacity, and should be rapidly rejected by every progressive civilisation. The musical and designing power of this particular Limanoran belonged to most in his family of his own age, and was merely the stage the art of sonarchitecture had reached in its development on the island. Wherever a nature especially adapted to the double art was found it was imported into the family to reinforce it.

In spite of the dissertation, I could not but listen, entranced by the intricate splendour of the music; and my eyes were riveted on the growing design within the receiver of the Ooloran. Yet when finished and tested it was found inadequate to the artist’s new conception of the utilities of the ultimate edifice. It was shaken again into dust before I left the workman, and its faults were noted and corrected in the score of music which he had before him. He had been years on this single design, which he had been moulding and improving every day; and he hoped soon to find a form that would be strikingly new and in every feature adapted to the purpose of the building.

I could well understand now that the new Oomalefa was no work of magic; but I was still unable to see how its vast proportions could have been shifted from its place of fabrication to its ultimate site. Thyriel led me to a new structure which had just issued from the central sonarchitect; and the master-workman bade me lean upon it; huge though it was, it shifted before my weight and I fell. It was as light as if made of silk, and we two could lift it from the floor. This explained the ease of rafting the great edifices through the air; but how did they resist the winds that blew, or the impact of wave and storm? I was led to a wall of Oolorefa itself; and I was bidden to raise one low parapet of it; not the application of my greatest strength could move it. My guide then waved what seemed to be a magnet above it, and bade me try again; it rose in my hands and my muscular effort landed me on my back. He showed me how the foundations of their buildings were powerful magnets, and how the fabric would be torn to pieces before it could be hoisted off them unless an equally powerful magnet was applied in another direction. I now understood the strength of their structures before winds and the rapid disappearance of Oomalefa after the earthquake.

But I had seen only one department of Oolorefa, that which consummated the work of the rest. One branch of the sonarchitect families was specially charged with experimentation on the materials for building. Irelium was the general name for the metallic combination of elements best suited to the state of civilisation they had reached; but there were innumerable modifications and grades of it, and there were more being discovered every day. We entered one magnificent building, and there found a dozen or more workmen, each isolated in a transparent chamber and busy with some combination of irelium and one or other of the stellar metals. Every star or series of stars had its own predominant and characteristic element or amalgam of elements; and it was a main duty of one of the chemical families of the island to examine every star for its new element and to find something corresponding to it in terrene matter. This section of the people studied with the most anxious care the products and the results of the leomorans; they visited almost hourly the mouths of the lava wells and watched the spectroscopic recorders of the fumes that rose out of them; for they seldom failed to find at one time or another some constituent of the interior of the earth corresponding to any new stellar element or metal recently discovered. Whenever it was found in any leomoran a chamber for its deposition was constructed and the clirolan was specially adapted to the preservation of all of it that issued out of the bowels of the earth. These new metallic constituents were called by the name of the stars in which they predominated, and were at once put into the hands of the sonarchitect families to be tested for structural utilities. It was thus irelium had been discovered, and thus they hoped to find materials still more plastic to their purposes. Already they had so modified their new metal by amalgamation with other stellar metals that they had fitted it to functions no metal had served before; it could be made flexible or tough, light or heavy, transparent or opaque, malleable or brittle, soluble before heat or water or electricity, or resistent to any or all of them; it was difficult to say what quality they could not impart to it; and here I could see the workmen testing new combinations in order to find new qualities or new grades of a quality already found. I stood and watched one who was trying an amalgam of a new stellar metal called vanelium with gold; he had already attempted to combine it with iron, silver, copper, irelium, and found it in each case either impossible or useless; but the reactions had pointed him to gold as its natural ally; and now, having found the two combine with ease, he was exhausting the various possibilities of combination in different proportions, and after submitting the new amalgam to his tests, was recording the results. It gave a marvellous toughness and elasticity to gold, so that, when beaten thin enough for a breath to raise it in the air, it could not be torn except by sudden and great mechanical force. Another workman near him was testing the effect of electricity on the various grades of the new amalgam and recording the results minutely. In each of the crystal chambers there were at hand supplies of all the forms of energy that might be needed, such as heat, cold, pressure, electricity. Each workman was isolated in order that the elements he used might not interfere with the experiments of his neighbour; but his workshop was transparent, that he might beckon for help at any moment, or exhibit to his fellows the result of any experiment without modifying the conditions or breaking the continuity.

A third branch of these families dealt with the adaptation of the new amalgams to the various structural necessities of the community; they found out which form or grade would resist the disintegrating influence or the power of water or of electric force; they tested what shape would best suit each grade, solid or hollow, cylindrical or spheral, cubic or rectangular, thin or thick, curved or rectilinear. Another branch devoted itself to the means of making the various metals or amalgams cohere either temporarily or permanently. A fifth studied the adaptation of the new discoveries to tools and machines and to the invention of new mechanical forms that would bring out their greatest utilities. To go through all the departments of this vast architectural workshop would need a week’s rehearsal. To my first view it seemed bewildering in its complexity of specialisation; but after closer acquaintance it became simplicity itself, in fact the only plan that nature itself could have pointed out.