The Great Fog (9 page)

“We had met for our morning session and, as he liked me to begin, I started that day by saying that the place was rather a surprise. I considered that a courteous understatement. His only reply was a question: ‘And ourselves even more so?' By the way, I'd learned by that time how to recognize the way humor could be shown in their otherwise expressionless faces. They would flicker that third eyelid which birds have in the corner of their eyes. This was a kind of solemn wink they gave when they were joking.

“I allowed that, perhaps, I had been a bit surprised by that, too. My surprise, of course, had been acute to the point of alarm; but I believe that that old bird, though he didn't ever frighten me, did surprise me more than anything I'd seen or heard before in that unbelievably odd place. Certainly his next remark gave no quarter to my self assurance. I had told him, as a sort of introduction to some questions on my part, that we humans had had a great imaginative writer who had hated mankind—with good reason—and therefore had written a story about an imaginary place where men were beasts and horses were supermen. My companion asked me a little about horses—what sort of animal they were and what their relationship was with us.

“For a moment he thought over what I had told him and then he remarked, ‘Then they are really of the same stock as yourselves, warm-blooded and mammals, but creatures which have lost their hands?' I was surprised, need I say, that this bird knew about evolution, but simply confirmed his remark by telling him about the descent of the horse from a small five-toed animal. He reflected a moment more and then added, ‘That was a mistake of your storyteller. Of course, it is clear that a horse would have to be, must now be, a stupid animal, even if kind. No, if your imagineer had had real insight he would have chosen, for his example, a bird.' I thought this was pretty vain but, of course, quite natural—every creature thinks it is the highest type. He guessed my thought. ‘I know that sounds to you a typical bird fancy. Being a bird, of course I think we are the form in which Life is best expressed. So perhaps you will excuse me if I make my case an aviary apology!' His third eyelid slid, a gray shadow for a moment, over his bright, steady eye, and then he continued:

“‘After I have told you the story, I believe that you will agree with me that the history of our great order, the order of birds, proves my thesis. You know, I see, the main outline. There are only two great divisions of life, you and ourselves: both came up from the cold-blooded stupidity of the lizards; we are the only two alternative ways of answering Life's question. ‘Would you know more, would you not only live but understand, not only enjoy but also create?' But, if you will forgive me, we are the more vital, the more energetic. We probably started out on the path of continuous consciousness—that continuous consciousness that warm blood compels—long before your first mammal ancestor, the tree shrew, acquired the power. Yet I must confess that, long before you could waste your talent for progress, we wasted ours. You have wanted to be able to move with real freedom, to be able to fly. One of your small mouse cousins—we have a species here—does it not uncreditably—though not very graciously; and some of the squirrel lot can slide a little on the air. But you, the leaders of the mammal line, you can't fly at all. You have danced, and, forgive me if I note, looking at your physique, that such dancing must be very clumsy. Beside the turn of a fish in water—let alone the sweep of a bird on the wing—you are creatures caught in their own egg membrane, if I may so put it, all ligatured and bound. At last, you now fly, in a way, I understand, but more like a flying fox and, alas; not as we did—though we did it in an unwise exultation—for fun.'

“Since he seemed so imperturbable, I thought I would answer then.

“Your frame,” I remarked, “doesn't look even as suitable as ours for dancing or flying.”

“‘That is an essential part of my story,' he replied, going on evenly. ‘As I was saying, millions of years ago nearly all the birds, out of sheer joy of living, leaped into the air. They could no longer wait or endure the plodding ways of life on the earth. They gave up the patient fingering of things in order to swim free in the greater ocean of the sky. They hankered for the lovely lazy freedom of the sea, the perfection of rhythmic movement, and they spent the gift of then new high energy in recapturing that bodily rapture that seemed lost forever when life crawled out onto the muddy, dusty, rough, and heavy land. They treated the land simply as a bridge they could cross, a bridge from which they might spring from a lesser freedom to a greater.

“‘Of course, it was a mistake, an attempt to win a freedom which, at that level, could only be an irresponsibility—a wish to hurry on to new experiences before the earlier, slower, harder ones had been mastered. But not all the birds made this mistake. Not all. We penguins, in particular, abstained from that headlong flight—that escape from close-up understanding. Some birds, as you probably know, first flew and then forgot how to fly. They had sold their hands for wings and then never recovered what they had sold; they made the worst of both worlds—they could neither enjoy nor create. But we, the penguins, never flew. We avoided that oubliette into the void.'

“His third eyelid flickered over his eye. I smiled in reply. I was perched, as usual, in the window ledge, and he was perambulating majestically up and down the floor, quacking this astounding story—this alternative to what we, in our pride, have taken to be the one track of evolution.

“‘Well,” he ruminated, ‘I think I may say the penguins, on the whole, haven't been bad fellows. We were no worse a stock from which to start the final climb to the summit of understanding than the base from which your lot made their sortie—the small apes, and, back of them, the tree shrews. Our lot were kindly, social, fond of fun, and, though yours may have had more native curiosity, perhaps we were more largely endowed with the sympathy which is the understanding of the heart and—' He paused, and I thought that through his bill came a sound resembling a human sigh—‘and which exacts as high a price as does any other form of exploration and daring trust. You know that when the first white men found our poor cousins on the seashore of this continent, our cousins, taking these men to be rather unshapely second cousins—for we have the belief in our bones that friendship is the sense of life—went up to the visitors and, since we build our homes of stones, offered the newcomers a few good pebbles to help them in housebuilding; and we bowed, to indicate that they were welcome and would have our help if they needed it.' He paused, and I thought I saw his bill going a little higher into the air. ‘The men seized our defenseless cousins and threw them—alive—into boiling water in order to wring a little oil from their poor bodies.'

“I confess I was looking at the floor when he finished his sentence. I had heard the story before but, coming from the mouth of an imperial penguin—well, I went more pink with shame for my species than I'd been when I came out of that first bath. Seeing my confusion, he went quickly on. ‘As I've said, the stock was not without promise, for, indeed, these poor people of the coast are somewhat decadent; the stock they and we spring from was brighter than they are now, or have been for long. Anyhow, one day a group of us, under some pressure of events about which I am still uncertain—perhaps the arrival of mammals such as the bear—decided to move; to leave the coast and strike into the unknown. I think it must have been some intrusion that made us move, for we claim—at least our women do—' again his eye flickered, ‘that we, the oldest of the birds, were actually on this continent when, as its flora still shows and its coal measures bear witness, it was part of the primal continent near the equator. The women, then, claim that everyone else is an alien.

“‘The fact is, we did decide to move, to go south. Cold is a great friend. The greatest plenty of life in the sea crowds up near the ice. The greatest animals the world has ever seen, the giant whales, choose to live there, too. Life likes stimulant.'

“I looked out at the warm mugginess and he took in my glance and read it.

“‘When you have gone through the ice, then you may come to open water again; when you have been through the glacial age, then you may rest, for you have won. It was a bold trek, that, to leave the coast and the good fishing and to seek an unpromised land where the land itself seems to be rising until it touches the icy sky, and, where it touches, the volcanoes pour out flame. But it was just that, as you will see, that gave us quite half our natural capital. Well, the waddling ancestors came over the pass across which you have been towed lately, and found their destiny.'

“He bowed. ‘Now you must be tired. Tomorrow I will be able to explain better. As my words are still few and ill-chosen, it will be easier for you to understand what I have yet to tell you if we walk around the place. There you will see actual illustrations of what I would like to describe.'

“I need hardly tell you that I was ready to be taken to the presence as soon as he was prepared for me the following day. As soon as I had joined him, he strode out, I trotting alongside him like a small child beside a very big and bulky nurse. As we went down the little street, the people bowed to him, and he placed his hand on his breast at every salutation.

“‘What you have seen,' he remarked, looking sideways and down at me as we went along, ‘is but a corner of our small but rich heritage.' We had left the village behind and, instead of taking the way toward the bathing canyon, we skirted the precipices concealing it. ‘This,' he began again, ‘is perhaps the best time of year to see the whole place. I should explain to you why.' That queer childish hymn came into my mind, ‘There is no night in Heaven.' I asked, ‘Is it never dark here?'

“‘Hardly ever,' he replied, ‘though the volume of light alters considerably.'

“‘Do you never see the clear sky?'

“‘Very seldom, and then not so clearly as you can on a fine night or day, outside.'

“‘That's rather a disadvantage,' I rejoined unreflectively.

“‘On the contrary,' he took me up. ‘Except for that we should be incapable of living here. But, for a moment, look at the view.'

“He had strolled up to where a long slope now touched the foot of a remarkable precipice. As we turned around, with our backs to it, the view that met us was, I have no doubt, quite the finest I have ever seen, or ever shall see. Nowhere in the rest of the world, I believe, could there be such an arresting landscape. It wasn't large but it was quite large enough. The sky had lifted a bit, and the lighting was more settled, less pulsing, and of a more uniform tone. It was quite clear that one was looking at a huge crater, a crater as big as the one near the great African lakes or the full-sized ones in the moon, a crater in which a county might be sunk quite comfortably. The crater wall ran around in a series of magnificent precipices, mostly cloud-capped. For a tide of white fog kept surging over them and on the lip one saw numerous cataracts, while plumes of white smoke trailed up above the columns of spray. I have never seen what is called inanimate nature so vividly animated.

“‘You see, of course,' said his Highness, ‘that the peculiar effect we have here is due to the coming together of a number of rare factors. This place is still very active volcanically. The ground is warm in many places and, as you felt in the pool in which we thought it might do you good to bathe, many warm mineral springs break out.' We gazed round the huge hollow. It was clear that the well-known richness of volcanic soil was having its effect. Long groves of trees, hung thickly with vines, gave the place an almost tropical look. And as we gazed downward at the heart of these groves, I could see a considerable expanse of water.

“‘That is the central crater lake,' the Penguin remarked to me. ‘All the waters drain into it. We have never sounded it. Where they go to, no one knows.'

“‘Why don't you sound it?' I asked casually.

“‘Because we are interested in other explorations.'

“‘What?' I went on asking, ‘what other explorations?' I had gathered they were uninterested in the rest of the world.

“‘I think that first you should see all there is to see before hearing all we can tell you.' It wasn't a rebuff; it was only a direction.

“‘First I think I ought to tell you,' he continued, ‘a little about our climate. A moment ago I said that this was the best time of year to see the place. You may have discovered for yourself why that is so. The sun has just now left us to the polar night. When the sun's rays are exercised on our atmosphere they clear it. This, of course, is a commonplace of radioactivity. The extraordinary lighting you have noticed is due to the cosmic radiation causing these auroras which are so intense at midwinter that the light then is brighter, though more confused, than when the sun is over the horizon. Just when the sun is arriving and when it is departing or just gone, there is a kind of balance between its light and this electrical illumination and then, as I have said, our visbility is at its best and the beautiful but confusing lighting caused by fluorescence is less. In the polar night we are not in darkness, you see, but, as it were, in a kind of rainbow dreamland of light. This has many consequences which I will go into later. At present I only want to point out how fortunate it is that you are here at this time. It allows you to have a better view of our territory, and there are also other even more important advantages, which you will understand better when I can explain more.'

“We spent that day and the next couple of weeks making expeditions over the whole place. I saw the pass through which I had been brought, and we went down to the shore of the central lake, the very floor of the crater. There the air was distinctly heavier than on the level where the villages lay. For the one in which I stayed, though the place of residence of ‘the government,' was, like a score of others, built on the same contour. Few of these people lived near the lake itself, though the spot was perhaps the most beautiful of all the lovely places in that sunken country. The water was generally of a quality of violet I never remember seeing anywhere else. There must have been some chemicals in solution in it. And, as the variegated sky changed through the hues of the spectrum, the lake glowed like a peacock's neck. A number of small rivers wound their ways quietly through deep meadows and fed this still water.