The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04

by Anthology

  The first objection is, that a Flatlander, seeing a Line, sees something that must be THICK to the eye as well as LONG to the eye (otherwise it would not be visible, if it had not some thickness); and consequently he ought (it is argued) to acknowledge that his countrymen are not only long and broad, but also (though doubtless to a very slight degree) THICK or HIGH. This objection is plausible, and, to Spacelanders, almost irresistible, so that, I confess, when I first heard it, I knew not what to reply. But my poor old friend's answer appears to me completely to meet it.

  "I admit," said he—when I mentioned to him this objection—"I admit the truth of your critic's facts, but I deny his conclusions. It is true that we have really in Flatland a Third unrecognized Dimension called 'height,' just as it also is true that you have really in Spaceland a Fourth unrecognized Dimension, called by no name at present, but which I will call 'extra-height.' But we can no more take cognizance of our 'height' than you can of your 'extra-height.' Even I—who have been in Spaceland, and have had the privilege of understanding for twenty-four hours the meaning of 'height'—even I cannot now comprehend it, nor realize it by the sense of sight or by any process of reason; I can but apprehend it by faith.

  "The reason is obvious. Dimension implies direction, implies measurement, implies the more and the less. Now, all our lines are EQUALLY and INFINITESIMALLY thick (or high, whichever you like); consequently, there is nothing in them to lead our minds to the conception of that Dimension. No 'delicate micrometer'—as has been suggested by one too hasty Spaceland critic—would in the least avail us; for we should not know WHAT TO MEASURE, NOR IN WHAT DIRECTION. When we see a Line, we see something that is long and BRIGHT; BRIGHTNESS, as well as length, is necessary to the existence of a Line; if the brightness vanishes, the Line is extinguished. Hence, all my Flatland friends—when I talk to them about the unrecognized Dimension which is somehow visible in a Line—say, 'Ah, you mean BRIGHTNESS': and when I reply, 'No, I mean a real Dimension,' they at once retort, 'Then measure it, or tell us in what direction it extends'; and this silences me, for I can do neither. Only yesterday, when the Chief Circle (in other words our High Priest) came to inspect the State Prison and paid me his seventh annual visit, and when for the seventh time he put me the question, 'Was I any better?' I tried to prove to him that he was 'high,' as well as long and broad, although he did not know it. But what was his reply? 'You say I am "high"; measure my "high-ness" and I will believe you.' What could I do? How could I meet his challenge? I was crushed; and he left the room triumphant.

  "Does this still seem strange to you? Then put yourself in a similar position. Suppose a person of the Fourth Dimension, condescending to visit you, were to say, 'Whenever you open your eyes, you see a Plane (which is of Two Dimensions) and you INFER a Solid (which is of Three); but in reality you also see (though you do not recognize) a Fourth Dimension, which is not colour nor brightness nor anything of the kind, but a true Dimension, although I cannot point out to you its direction, nor can you possibly measure it.' What would you say to such a visitor? Would not you have him locked up? Well, that is my fate: and it is as natural for us Flatlanders to lock up a Square for preaching the Third Dimension, as it is for you Spacelanders to lock up a Cube for preaching the Fourth. Alas, how strong a family likeness runs through blind and persecuting humanity in all Dimensions! Points, Lines, Squares, Cubes, Extra-Cubes—we are all liable to the same errors, all alike the Slaves of our respective Dimensional prejudices, as one of our Spaceland poets has said—

  'One touch of Nature makes all worlds akin.'" (footnote 1)

  On this point the defence of the Square seems to me to be impregnable. I wish I could say that his answer to the second (or moral) objection was equally clear and cogent. It has been objected that he is a woman-hater; and as this objection has been vehemently urged by those whom Nature's decree has constituted the somewhat larger half of the Spaceland race, I should like to remove it, so far as I can honestly do so. But the Square is so unaccustomed to the use of the moral terminology of Spaceland that I should be doing him an injustice if I were literally to transcribe his defence against this charge. Acting, therefore, as his interpreter and summarizer, I gather that in the course of an imprisonment of seven years he has himself modified his own personal views, both as regards Women and as regards the Isosceles or Lower Classes. Personally, he now inclines to the opinion of the Sphere (see page 86) that the Straight Lines are in many important respects superior to the Circles. But, writing as a Historian, he has identified himself (perhaps too closely) with the views generally adopted by Flatland, and (as he has been informed) even by Spaceland, Historians; in whose pages (until very recent times) the destinies of Women and of the masses of mankind have seldom been deemed worthy of mention and never of careful consideration.

  In a still more obscure passage he now desires to disavow the Circular or aristocratic tendencies with which some critics have naturally credited him. While doing justice to the intellectual power with which a few Circles have for many generations maintained their supremacy over immense multitudes of their countrymen, he believes that the facts of Flatland, speaking for themselves without comment on his part, declare that Revolutions cannot always be suppressed by slaughter, and that Nature, in sentencing the Circles to infecundity, has condemned them to ultimate failure—"and herein," he says, "I see a fulfilment of the great Law of all worlds, that while the wisdom of Man thinks it is working one thing, the wisdom of Nature constrains it to work another, and quite a different and far better thing." For the rest, he begs his readers not to suppose that every minute detail in the daily life of Flatland must needs correspond to some other detail in Spaceland; and yet he hopes that, taken as a whole, his work may prove suggestive as well as amusing, to those Spacelanders of moderate and modest minds who—speaking of that which is of the highest importance, but lies beyond experience—decline to say on the one hand, "This can never be," and on the other hand, "It must needs be precisely thus, and we know all about it."

  Footnote 1. The Author desires me to add, that the misconceptions of some of his critics on this matter has induced him to insert (on pp. 74 and 92) in his dialogue with the Sphere, certain remarks which have a bearing on the point in question and which he had previously omitted as being tedious and unnecessary.

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  Contents

  CAPTAIN GARDINER OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLICE

  A Secret Service Novel of the Future

  By Robert Allen (Allen Robert Dodd)

  Chapter I

  Mrs. Thornton Gives A Dance

  It was on one of the hottest nights of that unusually hot September that Mrs. Thornton gave a dance. The moist, lifeless air enveloped the earth like a heavy cloak and even the carefully shaded lights failed to conceal the lines of heat-weariness in the jaded faces of the guests. To Evelyn Thornton, in whose honour the affair was ostensibly held, the feverish rooms presently became unbearable, and abandoning the arduous duties of hostess to her mother and her younger and more energetic sister Mabel, she took refuge in the darkness of the small easterly veranda overlooking the beach. Light mist wreaths dimmed the splendid moonlight and gave a ghostly quality to the scene which transformed the indistinct line of the breakwater and its lighthouse into a monster of gigantic dimensions, gazing seaward with a baleful blood-red eye, and made of the commonplace tramp steamer labouring southward down the coast a veritable Flying Dutchman.

  "Oh, bother!" exclaimed Evelyn crossly; "I do believe that it's hotter out here than it is inside."

  "That's merely the illogicalness of overwrought sensibilities, my dear girl," replied a voice, seemingly at her very elbow; "I think you'll find if you stay out here —"

  "Of course that isn't what I meant exactly," the girl corrected herself hastily. "What I meant was— now I know you're laughing at me!" For the Captain's broad smile, which he had successfully managed to conceal in the darkness, had given way to unmistakably mirthful symptoms.

  "Please forgive m
e," he begged, as soon as he could regain his composure. "I've heard I don't know how many girls try to describe Jim offhand and I must say that most of them didn't even get as far as you did."

  "He is an awfully baffling sort of an individual to analyse," agreed Evelyn, mollified. "Please tell me what you think he is."

  "Isn't what you mean," said the Captain after a slight hesitation, "that although he's the kind of person you can always depend upon you feel that under his ordinary manner there's a power and force of character that you're conscious is there but have never seen because the proper circumstances have never arisen to call it forth?"

  "Perhaps you're right," she returned thoughtfully. "But when all's said and done, I can't help thinking of Jimmy as a man that very few girls would ever dream of falling in love with, but any girl would be fortunate to have for a friend. Now don't run right off and tell him that," she added hastily. "I don't suppose I really should have said it. But it's impossible for me to regard you as an absolute stranger after hearing Jimmy sing your praises so often. I imagine it's poor diplomacy to admit it, but for a long time I've had the most overpowering curiosity to find out what you were like and" — with some hesitation— "why you ever adopted your present profession."

  "You consider it such a strange one for a man to take up?" asked the Captain.

  "For a man with the intellectual gifts that Jimmy says you have—yes."

  "Then you believe I'd be of more use to humanity in the literary field or something of that kind than as an officer of the International Police?"

  "I've often wondered," said Evelyn, with apparent irrelevance, "just what use the International Police were to the human race anyhow."

  "I suppose you know what the men rather irreverently call the 'Police Creed,'" replied the Captain—"'To preserve the integrity of the civilised world; to uphold International treaties and agreements; to protect trade routes and lines of communication between the nations; to guard International peace and welfare.' Aren't those matters of some importance to humanity?"

  "I never heard that before," said the girl. "Yes, those things are all essential. But does it require such an expensive army and navy to secure them? Since the War of the Nations there's hardly been a ripple on the surface of the world's peace and I don't believe there ever will be in the future. Humanity learned its lesson then and it isn't likely to forget it. At least, you won't find many thinking people who will admit the possibility of any disturbance arising in years to come of sufficient magnitude to justify the maintenance of so large a force as the International Police. The world is too well satisfied with the benefits of peace and progress to ever want to interrupt them."

  "That sounds like my old friend Doctor Everard," remarked the Captain with some amusement. "Did you study under him at Vassar?"

  "It is Doctor Everard," admitted Evelyn, flushing slightly. "But I thoroughly believe in what he says, and I don't think I'm the only one."

  "No," said the Captain, "you're not—unfortunately."

  "Why 'unfortunately'? Do you believe there'll ever be another war?"

  "Yes," he replied quietly, "I do."

  "But the civilised nations—"

  "I wasn't talking about the civilised nations necessarily."

  "Well," said Evelyn meditatively, "you know what Doctor Everard says about the Eastern situation. 'By no flight of the imagination whatsoever can we conclude that the Oriental nations can ever constitute a menace to the civilised, Christian world. Even were they capable of threatening us by their power and organisation, the rapid advances that civilisation and Christianity are making throughout the Far East, the recognition of the substantial material benefits that peace and concord bring by the educated classes of the Oriental world, and the enormous potential power of the western nations would check any tendency to disturb present conditions even if the International Federation had no armed force whatever at its disposal.'"

  The Captain made a gesture of humorous helplessness. "I never attempt to argue with a disciple of Everard," he said. "He's too plausible."

  "Naturally," returned the girl in a satisfied tone, "because you can't. That's just the way with all you horrid old pessimists. You hint at awful impending disasters of all kinds, but you haven't got a single sound argument to back your statements up with."

  "I sincerely trust you are right," said the Captain soberly. "But it's just because I'm not satisfied in my own mind that you and Everard and the rest that think as you do are right, that I'm holding to my present job."

  "Of course," agreed Evelyn a little stiffly. "Every one's entitled to his or her own opinion."

  "Just so," assented the Captain, and catching the note of irritation in her voice, hastened to change the subject. "And speaking of the East in general, isn't that moonlight the most glorious thing you ever saw?"

  A light breeze had sprung up while they were talking, and blown the thin haze aside and the round circle of the moon now poured a path of splendour across the water to their very feet. The Captain arose and moved to the low railing of the veranda, where he stood drinking in the grateful breeze in long breaths. Evelyn came to his side and followed his gaze out over the gently heaving ocean.

  "It isn't going to last long," she said, pointing to the horizon, where a narrow bank of black cloud glowed at long intervals with the dull illumination of distant lightning.

  "It reminds me a little of the subject of our talk," said the Captain thoughtfully. "This beautiful, peaceful moonlight night with that storm cloud piling up slowly off there where only a few people notice it now. And plenty of people won't see it until it's too late."

  In spite of herself, Evelyn shivered slightly. She felt disturbed and uncomfortable and half angry with her companion for the unaccountable manner in which his words had upset her composure. She was about to suggest that they return to the ballroom, when a sudden burst of merriment stopped her, which was followed an instant later by the precipitate entrance of Jimmy Merriam and her sister Mabel upon the veranda.

  "Every one's busy having a good time in there," explained the younger girl, replacing a stray strand of her dark hair with a gesture wholly feminine and correspondingly alluring, "so they don't need us any more and Jimmy and I are going out in the motor boat for a little while. Better come along and be chaperon or Jimmy'll be proposing to me again. He's done it five times already this evening."

  "She said she'd never experienced the pleasure of rejecting any one," said Merriam with a good-natured smile, "so I thought it would be a shame to have her miss any fun if I could give it to her."

  Mabel Thornton laughed again and gave her escort a friendly pat on his plump shoulder. She possessed what her sister lacked to a great extent—a keen sense of humour, which often made her both the despair and admiration of the more serious Evelyn.

  "Do you think it's safe with that storm coming up?" asked the Captain.

  Merriam turned a weather eye on the distant cloud bank and studied it for a few seconds in silence.

  "That won't arrive for a couple of hours yet," he said finally. "We'll just run around inside the breakwater for a while and scoot for home when it gets close."

  "I'll take your word for it," said the Captain. "You're the nautical member of the party. Shall I get your cloak, Miss Thornton?"

  "I think Mabs has it," returned Evelyn. "Thank you—" as the Captain adjusted the garment about her shoulders.

  It was only a step to the boathouse and the party were soon slipping easily over the long swells as the swift little craft headed for the steady red glare on the end of the breakwater. Evelyn and the Captain sat silently in the stern, drinking in the glory of the night, while at the steering wheel Mabel and Jimmy discussed affairs in low tones. Intent on the pleasure of the moment, they scarcely noticed that the breakwater had been left astern and it was not until the breeze suddenly died away that Merriam, looking up, noticed that the cloud bank had enlarged until it now covered nearly half the sky. He rapidly spun the wheel and the obedient little cock
le-shell careened as she turned and headed back at full speed for the far-off shore line.

  "We've plenty of time to make it," he observed reassuringly, as they shot past the red beacon on the breakwater. "Is it all right to cut straight across, Mabs?"

  "I don't believe I would, Jim," she advised. "There isn't an awful lot of water over those shoals and the tide's still running out."

  Merriam glanced at the clouds, now rapidly mounting towards the brilliant moon and then out across the level expanse in front of him.

  "I guess I'll chance it," he said, as the wheel turned in his hands. "There ought to be three feet at dead low water and this boat could run in a gutter without hitting anything."

  They sped on for some moments in silence.

  "Jim," said Mabel anxiously. "I'd keep further out if I were you. There's a good deal too much weed around here for comfort."

  "Don't you worry, young lady," returned the helmsman. "We're practically across now—"

  A splintering concussion tore them from their seats. The light boat almost stopped, jumped forward again, and finally came to rest, her propeller grinding helplessly on the hard rock that held her. Merriam, with undisturbed presence of mind, shut off the motor.

  "Well," observed Mabel, breaking the silence, "you've done it now."

  Evelyn and the Captain came forward. "She's leaking pretty badly in the stern," the latter explained.

  "I don't think there's much danger of sinking," said Mabel rather grimly, "if that's any consolation to us."

  "It isn't that," said Merriam. "Look there!" He pointed upward. "In five minutes more it'll be dark as the inside of your hat. I can think without any effort at all of half-a-dozen places I'd rather be in than this boat when that squall breaks."