The Great Fog (10 page)

“‘I think I could stay here for good,' I remarked one day when the king penguin and I returned from a survey that now had given me a pretty comprehensive idea of the place.

“‘We have naturally considered that that might be your wish,' he replied with his usual quiet manner of anticipating my thought. ‘But before you could think of that you would have to know a great deal more about this place. I suppose there is no place in the world where so much seems to be presented and, in actual fact, so little is given away.' The third eyelid flickered several times before he resumed. ‘You see, though you have seen what I grant is a wonderful appearance, you have, in point of fact, not the slightest idea of what is behind all this.'

“I thought he was going to give me a lecture on the simple life, good, free government, and the general need of being less human and more birdlike. But I was mistaken. He meant, as he always did, precisely what he said. That place was odd, odder than it was lovely, and that is saying as much as one can. His next remark, though a question, was a bit uncanny.

“‘Have you ever heard of arctic hysteria?'

“I said I had heard that living north of the arctic circle even the toughest men might become odd and excitable, and might even see and hear things that weren't there. ‘Yes,' said the wise old bird, ‘it's true. No doubt, we are very considerably acclimatized and yet, even we have to take care.'

“Then, seeming to change the subject, he asked another question: ‘Are you interested in mutations?'

“Again I was able to say that I supposed I knew as much as the next field naturalist about the things that hadn't been discovered about the important problems of breeding. This led to a third question:

“‘Have you studied cosmic radiation?'

“There, at last, I was able to give a flat ‘no.' Then he did allow himself to do a bit of linking up:

“‘All three are very close to each other and I may say that there lies our main interest.'

“Of course, all this from a bird was still rather a shock to me, but—save for human high-brow moments like that—I was already getting to think that behind that massive bill and baldly staring bird's eyes there was a man's mind looking out at me; indeed, I might say a mind certainly better than most men's.

“‘Take the cosmic radiation first,' he remarked in his quiet, slightly quacking lecturer's voice. ‘You have gathered, of course, that we are right on the South Pole. As I remarked to you some while ago when congratulating you on arriving when the visibility conditions are so good, what you see, and see through, is the aurora australis, the cosmic radiation which pours in at either pole and which, after three or four collisions, at last hits things slowly enough for us to see the luminous echoes, these southern lights. I am sure now that it is this radiation that causes polar hysteria. The tremendous electrical charge, as one would expect, upsets a nervous system not used to being exposed to it. Indeed, I am now sure that we ourselves, though acclimatized to the place, couldn't live here with this radiation if it were not for the fact that the volcanic heat throws up that cover of cloud or mist. In it, the radiation is screened. So we get a constant illumination and are safe from the invisible rays. I feel sure that a clear sky could not sufficiently screen out the deadly short rays.'

“‘But what's that got to do with mutations?' I said. I had noticed that the flora was very odd. As far as I could remember, I hadn't seen a bush or a shrub or any grass that I could identify, though some looked like queer derivatives of forms with which we are familiar.

“‘Everything,' was his reply. ‘Literally, it accounts for everything; for the way we live; for the reason we are undisturbed; for the simplicity of our way of life, which, grant me, you find a little homely?'

“Perhaps rather unnecessarily I said, ‘You must explain.'

“Again came a question: ‘Did you notice the animals which drew your sled?'

“I remarked that I had seen them ahead of me in a poor light but when I was up and about they had been led away.

“‘Well, to be brief—for you don't need more than the outline to form a general opinion—our principal interest has been in the problems and possibilities of directed breeding. As you'd probably suspect if you thought it over, this place has a very high mutation rate because every living thing is being bombarded with rays that strike right at the nucleus of the chromosomes, right at the genes. As a consequence, we suffered for ages from the appearance of freaks—wild mutational sports. This was not particularly dangerous to us, however, since our oily feathers give us much protection, and when the egg is hatching, its shell, being of lime, protects it. And even then, the egg is always fully covered by one of the parents. But with plants and other animals it was very confusing.'

“I remarked that I had noticed a number of plants that seemed very odd to me. ‘And not merely plants,' he remarked. Pushing aside some grass with his foot, he seemed to be watching the ground with that extraordinary concentration peculiar to birds. Suddenly he pounced on something with his beak. When he turned to me, he was holding in it, with delicate care, a small lizard. Then, rapidly slipping the small animal between two of his fingers and holding it close to me, he remarked, ‘Do you notice anything odd about this little creature's scales? Look particularly down toward the tail.' I scanned it with care. ‘Some of the scales have curious fringed ends,' I replied.

“‘That's it,' he remarked, with vivid interest. ‘You see the significance? It is, of course, of great interest to us. For here, you see, is a lizard, beginning—as we believe
we
began millions of years ago—to transmute scales into feathers. This little creature is an actual mutation. If it doesn't knock up against some canceling mutation, I shouldn't be surprised if it turns into some creature like the Archaeopteryx—the first feathered lizard—and so give rise to a whole new family of birds. It was because we were always coming across things like this,' he said, gently putting the small creature on the grass again and letting it run away, ‘that we decided to learn about mutation and radiation. That's our great—our pre-dominant, interest now. Indeed, I think we may now say that we have at last succeeded in making the great tempest that spins through Space crack some of the nuts of knowledge for us. First, naturally we experimented with plants. We found out how and when to expose them to the sky: the proper time of the year—as the radiation fluctuates—and how far up in the altitude range. I think it's quite likely we should never have gotten as far as we have had we not also discovered that some of the rocks here are highly radioactive in themselves. It was this discovery, I believe, that was decisive. It allowed us, in the end to balance one charge against another, as it were. In consequence, we can now produce what we might, I believe, call results of precision. That's why I asked you if you had noticed the sled animals. They are some of our products. In a word what has become our absorbing aim is to see whether we can untie some of the knots into which evolution has wound itself. As you know, all animal and plant life is inevitably becoming more and more specialized, and eventually, if things are not unraveled, there will be no further possibility of originality or freedom left to any species. Even if they do not become extinct because of their powerlessness to respond creatively to their environment, they will become living fossils, incapable of enjoying any enterprise, liberty, or creativeness. What we then do is to regeneralize the creature which has become specialized. Those animals which drew you—well, come along and see the kennels.'

“He had been leading me up a slope, and I saw, in front of me, lines of low hutches. Then he gave his low penetrating whistle and out of the small doors, bounding and dancing on their hind legs, came some of the most live and active creatures I had ever seen.

“‘They were seals once,' he remarked, ‘but, you see, they are now regeneralized.'

“And they were! Here was something which beat H. G. Wells's ‘Dr. Moreau' all hollow. The front flipper had become, or perhaps I ought to say, had gone back to being, a kind of broad powerful hand enabling the creatures to bound along in the way that made the progress of the sled so swift and so pulsing. Their carriage and gait were similar to powerful large-headed kangaroos.' They stood up with their hands on his shoulders, their bright eyes darting all over the place and a strange variety of cheerful noises coming from their mouths.

“‘I know what they mean,' he remarked. ‘In another generation or so, if we don't stabilize the experiment at the present point, they'll be speaking. On the whole, though, I think they'll be happier as creatures mainly of emotion and action rather than of thought and organization. Even when you give freedom, one freedom means that you must deny yourself another. In a society such as ours, tied by a true co-operation, perhaps it is better that some should have the utmost freedom of thought and others an equal and compensatory freedom of feeling. You see, as seals, they had in them, a very strong endowment of kinesthetic apprehension. In them life probably expresses itself most fully in movement.'

“He said something to them, and they raced away back to their homes. Then, turning to me, ‘You see, this is why we don't need machines and never again shall. For what are machines but clumsy, stiff, artificial hands put upon our hands—just as a mutilated creature might be given an artificial limb. But if you can grow whatever you want, why toil to make it of clumsy, dead material? That's our goal—to win back the freedom that we, the warm-blooded creatures, lost when we emerged from the reptile stage. We can already make quite good replacements of the lost parts of limbs. I see, too, that you've noticed we have recovered our fingers. That was one of our first distinct triumphs.'

“He stated his proposition very quietly, and the example he had given me in these charming seal creatures was certainly not alarming. Yet when I thought it over, a hundred odd questions came surging into my mind. My first effort to state my puzzlement was, perhaps, a little crude. ‘Do you really know what you're up to?' I asked him. ‘I mean, have you really found out what life wants to do and how to bring it to its goal?'

“He didn't seem to be surprised at my question; on the contrary, I think he was rather pleased. What he said was:

“‘Well, now you'll find a visit to the hospital quite interesting, I believe. I think tomorrow we'll spend the morning in the hospital and then in the afternoon you'll be able to appreciate the laboratory all the more; as you might expect, they are adjoining.'

“The next day we took a trail that led us to the other side of the crater. Not long after we had passed the lake, I saw a series of buildings on a spur. After a few more hundred yards of walking, it was clear this was not a village but a series of special houses. We were greeted at the door by the creature who evidently had this whole department in its care. My guide and he exchanged some remarks, and, throwing open a door, he took us into a ward.

“‘This is Ward Number One,' said my instructor. ‘It is the accident ward.'

“As I looked down the row of couches, I saw that not only were they occupied by those bird creatures, but that there were also some couches on which lay the seal creatures and several other forms of animals I had not seen before.

“‘We are carrying out repairs here,' he said, turning to me. ‘Would you step over here and look at this case?' With his hand, he raised the paw of one of the seal creatures. ‘It was crushed very badly,' he explained, ‘under a stone. It was not a case of just healing a serious lesion, but of making the whole hand-pattern repeat itself—as it does in the womb.'

“I looked down at the hand, and, true enough, through the broken tissue it was clear that certain growing edges were beginning—I can use no other word—to sprout.

“‘If you will step over here,' he said, ‘you'll see the same process of repair advanced about two weeks.' He held up a hand on which curious, dwarf fingers were appearing and the old, broken tissue was withering away as though it were dead skin of a blister. ‘Of course, once we have the right stimulant to set the full repair process going, accident restoration is the simplest of all our work.'

“By this time we had reached the end of the ward, and his hospital superintendent had thrown open the door of what I suppose should be called the small operating theater. A patient was on the table and, through various filters and from various tubes, an injured limb was being radiated.

“‘Most of the light,' he said, ‘is brought through certain filters direct from the sky and, of course, to balance it, we have in these other tubes wave lengths of other intensities derived from the radioactive rocks. Here, I think we may say, we have instruments of such delicacy that we can really touch the mainspring and the minute but powerful generators of life itself.'

“The next door opened into another ward.

“‘These,' said my companion, ‘are more interesting; biological problems. These are not accident cases. Here we are attempting to unravel the mystery of disease.'

“‘Most of them,' I remarked, ‘look old.'

“‘Yes,' he remarked, ‘you're right. You see, ill health hardly becomes a problem for us until a certain age. If anyone feels or shows impairment of vitality we soon can diagnose it. Just step across here, and I'll explain that.'

“His lieutenant, who seemed to follow his thought exactly, had already opened a small door inside the wall of the ward. It led to a room rather smaller than the operating theater.

“‘Would you mind,' my guide said, ‘standing on that small square there?'

“I found that I was facing a panel in the wall that looked like black glass. He shut the door, and we were in total darkness. Then I heard a switch snap. The panel I was facing began to glow. It increased in brilliancy, and very rapidly I saw outlined on it a shadowy iridescent figure that seemed composed of layers of varicolored light. I heard my guide's voice at my shoulder.