CHAPTER III
SLEEP, REST, AND FLIGHT
I COULD not but surrender myself into the hands of men whose wisdom seemed to me to approach omniscience; and this I was the more inclined to do that I felt, instead of exhaustion from their operations on my brain during sleep, the greatest sense of exhilaration I had ever experienced in my life. They acted on the principle of giving complete rest to one set of nerves and tissues by stimulating the others. They could produce the deepest sleep in all the brain- and nerve-centres by gathering the life-energy that remains during sleep into one minute point, which they stimulated by magnetism.
They smiled at the clumsy methods of resting that Western civilisation had adopted, the awkward, unyielding beds and chairs and sofas, and the wasteful and futile attempts at exercise that were meant to give rest. Ages ago they had banished dancing and all corybantic amusements as extravagant waste of tissue, destroying a hundred cells or nerves for every one that they saved or invigorated. All frantic and violent exercise encouraged the animal part at the expense of the progressive: it mangled and rent the delicate tissues of the brain and heart, and sent the currents of sustenance into the muscles and bones of the legs and arms. The riding and hunting and athletics of the aristocracies only helped the animal to persist, and clearly identified their ancestry with the conquering nomad hordes that swept down on the peaceful plains and destroyed primitive civilisations. Exercise, they held, should help, on the one hand, to increase the store of energy to be transformed into the higher elements, and on the other to rest the spiritual forces and faculties.
Rational rest was one of the great secrets of the prolongation of life. There was a latent passion in living things for rest: and this rose to its highest in man. To balk it was to shorten the career of all the powers. And they had set themselves to understand this passion and the methods for its satisfaction as one of the first duties of an advancing people. They knew that there never could be any complete rest for a living system short of death. Even in the soundest sleep the functions proceeded, though feebly, and there was a misty consciousness of existence; else it would lapse into annihilation. They realised that they must provide for many gradations of rest between the edge of death and the borderland of full activity. Nor should any portion or element of the human system go long without its period of rest and its period of exercise.
On these principles they built their methods of alternating rest and activity, all duly subordinated to their great aim,—the advance of the higher nature. The only reason for muscular pursuits was that the intellect and the imagination might be relaxed and the higher energy reinforced. Even the loftiest thought resulted in certain waste products, that, if left to accumulate, would soon clog and stifle it. This waste must be carried off by reposeful exercise of the lower and more physical organs. All the lower elements which remain to mingle with those of a higher plane after they cease to be needed as regenerators of energy grow at once poisonous and must be removed by exercise.
For many months I occupied one of their beds, half hammock, half framework, made of soft, flexible stuff that looked like metal, yet yielded like down. These beds were hung not only at the four corners, but along the two sides, so that the body lay in a kind of groove; yet, by a second series of rests, the material was kept from contact with the sides of the body or from any pressure upon it. Within this groove was laid an air-cushion of still softer and more elastic material, which fitted itself to every irregularity of the body and to its various changes of position. The pillow was of the same soft network, and so shaped as to fit the head. I afterwards found that through the whole fabric of the pillow passed a mild current of positive electricity, that drew the energy from the nerve-centres of the head, and soothed every tissue to rest. The framework of the lower portion of the bed was charged with the mildest currents of negative electricity, and thus the circulation and the life were kept up, however deep might be the sleep. The sense of exhilaration and replenished stores of energy with which I rose each morning was enough to make me enamoured of life. Day by day I grew lighter in step, and seemed to walk and rest on air. It was the grosser particles of my system that were being withdrawn from it by this nightly process of rest. I gained energy and lost weight till I felt that I could soon rise on wings. I noticed before long that I had acquired the tripping, elastic gait that I had remarked in Noola. My movements and footfall came to leave almost no impression on my senses, and I could have played the ghost with appalling effect in the superstitious atmospheres of my native land. I did not seem to grow much smaller in bulk; yet in a year or more I must have weighed one half what I did when I arrived. Whether they applied some other degravitating process to my bones and tissues besides the magnetic sleep I never ascertained. But they had the power of reducing their own weight considerably in a few moments. It seemed as if their bones were hollow like those of birds; for I could lift even the largest of them with my one hand; and they had some reserve store of an element lighter than air in their bodies, which they could increase and distribute over their system at will. When they were asleep I found I could raise them as lightly as a feather, but when awake they could, whether by muscular effort or by some other process of their bodies, prevent me lifting them even the fraction of an inch from the ground. They seemed able at a thought to increase their weight tenfold, and though they had wonderful strength of muscle, I am certain that was not all, for I observed they made little use of it on such occasions.
It can be easily imagined then how little friction of the body there was during sleep; indeed, they never moved whilst resting, for there was no need of relieving the tension of any part. I enjoyed still more another kind of rest they had; it was half chair, half bed, and consisted of an incline of the softest netting made out of their usual metal and in such a way that the body could not collapse when loosed in sleep. Even pleasanter was the swing-sleep; here a huge magnet kept the supple incline gently swaying whilst at the same time it drew the blood from the head. The float-rest was as pleasing; in this the head rested on a floating pillow whilst two air-cushions stretched along one side of the body and supported it on a network held between them. But the most complete of all rests was that in which the Limanorans were supported in the air by a cloud of sweet-scented and wholesome gas blown from innumerable jets with steady power; electric fences kept it from spreading into the atmosphere around. I never reached that power of reducing myself in weight so that I could enjoy this rest. It needed fine skill of poise to climb to this bed and remain there, and I was ever afraid of falling.
The same physical incapacity prevented me from reaching the most graceful and soothing of all their combinations of exercise and repose. This was the wing-rest. I had often seen the albatross, as it followed in the wake of our yacht, swoop down and float up the curves of the wind without apparent effort, its broad wings motionless but for occasional adaptation, like sails, to the changes in the strength or direction of the breeze. I had never expected to see human beings master this bird-power over the air; but it became the commonest sight in the breezes of the dawn and the sunset to see old and young of both sexes in Limanora fasten great wings to their arms and feet, and, charging their small wing-engines with new stores of energy, sail up underneath the chameleon clouds, and float hither and thither like spirits of the storm. This was part of their night’s rest and their morning’s exercise; and they used to descend from it with heightened colour in their cheeks and the look of profound repose in their eyes. The long training they had had from youth in the management of their wings and in gauging the force and current of the winds had made their skill and knowledge habitual, if not instinctive. They could shut their eyes and rest their intelligence as they floated up and down the levels of the breeze; their wings seemed to be at peace. I can find no analogy in my own experience for their delight in the swift-curving movement but my youthful enjoyment of skating before the wind for miles over clear ice. It was a gladness merely to watch them sport amid the rays of the growing or lessening sun. Often would they time their movements to some rhythm, and flash through intricate evolutions like rooks in the evening air. Again half of them would fold their wings and be borne by the other half with a speed and lightness almost as great as when flight was unburdened. All mere earthly amusements and exercise had ceased when the secret of flight had been mastered.
For generations their biologists, anatomists, and physicists had studied the wing-power of animals with a view to the practical mastery of it for the Limanorans themselves. Their chief guide towards the analysis was the study, not of birds or insects, but of the bat. They measured the force of the strong chest muscles that enabled it to move its wings with such rapidity; this could be done to a nicety by means of their refined instruments for gauging latent power, whether in tissue or nerve or muscle. They calculated the number of beats it could make in a minute. They measured the spread of the wings and the weight of the body. Thus they came to an almost constant equation of wing-power to size and weight. The physicist and mechanic were then called in; but they would have been helpless without the new metal, irelium, and their power of concentrating great power into small space. This metal was extracted by a process from common earth, but could also be found pure some miles down in the earth. It was perhaps the first essential to the rapid advance of their civilisation because of its extreme lightness and strength, and still more its wonderful flexibility and elasticity when mixed with certain proportions of other substances. It could be made into the most delicate membrane, fine as gauze and yet tough and resistant as leather. It formed the material of their most massive engineering works, and of their lightest draperies and garments. Nothing could surpass its adaptability to all purposes of civilisation.
It was out of this that they were able to make their wings which seemed so fragile and yet could bear the force of the wildest storms. It would stand stiffly on its framework against the strongest pressure, and yet could be expanded balloon-wise from within. The only means of disabling these wings was perforation by a hard, sharp point. This could never occur in the air except from the beak of a bird; and then they could still use their spread as a parachute to break their descent. Another quality this metal had was its transparency, and their flight was somewhat concealed from the sight of gazers below by the colour they took from their atmospheric surroundings; it was difficult to distinguish them from a floating cloud or a darker patch of grey or blue sky. The wings could be easily folded or expanded, so flexible was the material; and, when the Limanorans landed from their flight, scarcely a minute elapsed before the huge sails, framework and all, had been furled and had disappeared in the ordinary outline of their bodies.
And these bodies differed as much as their natures from those I had been accustomed to see. They were short and squat; and this, with their broad chests, great heads, and long arms, would have led Europeans to call the Limanorans gnomes. Muscles and bones that in other men had been of little importance had grown into what we should have called abnormal size and strength. But after I had met the power of their eyes and felt the beauty of the natures that shone in their faces, their bodies seemed to me the normal garment of the highest human spirits; and I came to understand the high purpose of every change they had brought about in their forms and features. Without their broad chests they could never have had such expansible lungs or such powerful heart-action essential to easy flight, as well as to the lightning sweep of their thoughts and energies and the rapid advance of their civilisation. The pulse could be seen in many parts of the body, it was so strong; and its beats were twice as frequent as in my own. The great heat of summer was to them little inconvenience; they could thrust their arms into what seemed to be boiling water without shrinking; and they could bear a degree of cold far below the lowest temperature I had ever felt, for the high temperature of their bodies made them capable of enduring far greater extremes of climate than any race I had ever known or heard of. But their breathing was much less frequent than mine; they seemed to take in enormous draughts of air at each inspiration and to retain stores of it in their system. They continued at their ease in difficult atmospheres and exertions long after I had begun to pant and gasp for breath. The spaces within their bodies that had once been wholly filled with the organs of digestion and discharge had evidently been largely utilised for their marvellous expansion of lungs and heart.
Another purpose that their huge chests served was to bear the strain of the great muscles that controlled their arms, and of the powerful engines that, strapped on to them, gave the strong and swift beat to their wings. Their arms were moulded on lines of similar strength; for they had to bear the strain of the forward stroke of the wing, whilst also having to manipulate by means of the long and sinewy fingers its great folds in the backward sweep; and, when more expanse was needed during calmer weather or when resting in the sky, the arms had to thrust out and to bear long rods that in their turn bore expansions of the wings like the studding-sails of a ship. The thumb of each hand was kept free for the management of their breast and shoulder-engines; and it had become by exercise more vigorous and more flexible than the ordinary human thumb. In each armpit was carried a small engine that could be used either as subsidiary to the great breast-engine or for the partial or complete furling of the wings. Beside it was a storage-battery, in which could be generated by the movements of the arm more electricity to supply the central power, thus enabling them to extend their flight through long periods. If they became tired they could expand and inflate their wings with a gas made much warmer by the heat of their bodies than the surrounding atmosphere; then throwing themselves on their backs they could rest or rise in the air as on a balloon.
In slow or ordinary flight, or when the wind was not high, they could steer themselves rudely by manipulating the outer folds of their wings with their fingers. But if they wished to fly swiftly, or in some other direction than the wind would bear them, they could push out a tail-like membrane of irelium from between the feet and move it hither and thither by the sinewy power of the heels. The great toe of each foot was also much developed by long use for stretching out and managing the wings; it had become more like a thumb, capable of seizing and manipulating cords or membranes. It was this, added to the lightness of their bodies, that gave them their springy gait, and made them seem when they walked as if they scarcely touched the ground; they could skim like a bird close to the earth by using only the outer folds of their wings and the tip of the great toe for propulsion.
Much though my weight was reduced, and ardent though I was in my attempts to come up with their mastery over the air, I was seldom able to do more than quicken my pace in running and rise in short, clumsy, laboured flights on their wings like a callow nestling fallen from its nest. I was soon exhausted by my efforts, even when aided by my ultimately deft management of the breast-engine and the shoulder-engines; for my lungs were short of compass, my heart soon beat too rapidly for the strength of its tissue, and my arms and fingers and great toe soon grew weary of the work they had to do. Nothing but the selection and adaptation of my ancestry could have made me capable of progressing physically to their level. Their past had been a rapid and deliberate process of adjustment to new and higher ideas of life, one of the main aims being this new mode of locomotion in order to give them command of a sphere that other men had abandoned to the birds and insects; for it was but one of the corollaries of the great purpose of their existence, which was to master or eject the grosser elements of their system, that they might rise into a more ethereal or spiritual life. By the power of flight they seemed to gain independence of the earth, greater freedom of movement, and an approach to that frictionless, untrammelled motion through limitless space which thought gives a foretaste of.