Chương Chương 24 · The Natural History of the Selenites

. The Natural History of the Selenites

The messages of Cavor from the sixth up to the sixteenth are for the

most part so much broken, and they abound so in repetitions, that they

scarcely form a consecutive narrative. They will be given in full, of

course, in the scientific report, but here it will be far more

convenient to continue simply to abstract and quote as in the former

chapter. We have subjected every word to a keen critical scrutiny, and

my own brief memories and impressions of lunar things have been of

inestimable help in interpreting what would otherwise have been

impenetrably dark. And, naturally, as living beings, our interest

centres far more upon the strange community of lunar insects in which

he was living, it would seem, as an honoured guest than upon the mere

physical condition of their world.

I have already made it clear, I think, that the Selenites I saw

resembled man in maintaining the erect attitude, and in having four

limbs, and I have compared the general appearance of their heads and

the jointing of their limbs to that of insects. I have mentioned, too,

the peculiar consequence of the smaller gravitation of the moon on

their fragile slightness. Cavor confirms me upon all these points. He

calls them “animals,” though of course they fall under no division of

the classification of earthly creatures, and he points out “the insect

type of anatomy had, fortunately for men, never exceeded a relatively

very small size on earth.” The largest terrestrial insects, living or

extinct, do not, as a matter of fact, measure six inches in length;

“but here, against the lesser gravitation of the moon, a creature

certainly as much an insect as vertebrate seems to have been able to

attain to human and ultra-human dimensions.”

He does not mention the ant, but throughout his allusions the ant is

continually being brought before my mind, in its sleepless activity, in

its intelligence and social organisation, in its structure, and more

particularly in the fact that it displays, in addition to the two

forms, the male and the female form, that almost all other animals

possess, a number of other sexless creatures, workers, soldiers, and

the like, differing from one another in structure, character, power,

and use, and yet all members of the same species. For these Selenites,

also, have a great variety of forms. Of course, they are not only

colossally greater in size than ants, but also, in Cavor’s opinion at

least, in intelligence, morality, and social wisdom are they colossally

greater than men. And instead of the four or five different forms of

ant that are found, there are almost innumerably different forms of

Selenite. I had endeavoured to indicate the very considerable

difference observable in such Selenites of the outer crust as I

happened to encounter; the differences in size and proportions were

certainly as wide as the differences between the most widely separated

races of men. But such differences as I saw fade absolutely to nothing

in comparison with the huge distinctions of which Cavor tells. It would

seem the exterior Selenites I saw were, indeed, mostly engaged in

kindred occupations—mooncalf herds, butchers, fleshers, and the like.

But within the moon, practically unsuspected by me, there are, it

seems, a number of other sorts of Selenite, differing in size,

differing in the relative size of part to part, differing in power and

appearance, and yet not different species of creatures, but only

different forms of one species, and retaining through all their

variations a certain common likeness that marks their specific unity.

The moon is, indeed, a sort of vast ant-hill, only, instead of there

being only four or five sorts of ant, there are many hundred different

sorts of Selenite, and almost every gradation between one sort and

another.

It would seem the discovery came upon Cavor very speedily. I infer

rather than learn from his narrative that he was captured by the

mooncalf herds under the direction of these other Selenites who “have

larger brain cases (heads?) and very much shorter legs.” Finding he

would not walk even under the goad, they carried him into darkness,

crossed a narrow, plank-like bridge that may have been the identical

bridge I had refused, and put him down in something that must have

seemed at first to be some sort of lift. This was the balloon—it had

certainly been absolutely invisible to us in the darkness—and what had

seemed to me a mere plank-walking into the void was really, no doubt,

the passage of the gangway. In this he descended towards constantly

more luminous caverns of the moon. At first they descended in

silence—save for the twitterings of the Selenites—and then into a stir

of windy movement. In a little while the profound blackness had made

his eyes so sensitive that he began to see more and more of the things

about him, and at last the vague took shape.

“Conceive an enormous cylindrical space,” says Cavor, in his seventh

message, “a quarter of a mile across, perhaps; very dimly lit at first

and then brighter, with big platforms twisting down its sides in a

spiral that vanishes at last below in a blue profundity; and lit even

more brightly—one could not tell how or why. Think of the well of the

very largest spiral staircase or lift-shaft that you have ever looked

down, and magnify that by a hundred. Imagine it at twilight seen

through blue glass. Imagine yourself looking down that; only imagine

also that you feel extraordinarily light, and have got rid of any giddy

feeling you might have on earth, and you will have the first conditions

of my impression. Round this enormous shaft imagine a broad gallery

running in a much steeper spiral than would be credible on earth, and

forming a steep road protected from the gulf only by a little parapet

that vanishes at last in perspective a couple of miles below.

“Looking up, I saw the very fellow of the downward vision; it had, of

course, the effect of looking into a very steep cone. A wind was

blowing down the shaft, and far above I fancy I heard, growing fainter

and fainter, the bellowing of the mooncalves that were being driven

down again from their evening pasturage on the exterior. And up and

down the spiral galleries were scattered numerous moon people, pallid,

faintly luminous beings, regarding our appearance or busied on unknown

errands.

“Either I fancied it or a flake of snow came drifting down on the icy

breeze. And then, falling like a snowflake, a little figure, a little

man-insect, clinging to a parachute, drove down very swiftly towards

the central places of the moon.

“The big-headed Selenite sitting beside me, seeing me move my head with

the gesture of one who saw, pointed with his trunk-like ‘hand’ and

indicated a sort of jetty coming into sight very far below: a little

landing-stage, as it were, hanging into the void. As it swept up

towards us our pace diminished very rapidly, and in a few moments, as

it seemed, we were abreast of it, and at rest. A mooring-rope was flung

and grasped, and I found myself pulled down to a level with a great

crowd of Selenites, who jostled to see me.

“It was an incredible crowd. Suddenly and violently there was forced

upon my attention the vast amount of difference there is amongst these

beings of the moon.

“Indeed, there seemed not two alike in all that jostling multitude.

They differed in shape, they differed in size, they rang all the

horrible changes on the theme of Selenite form! Some bulged and

overhung, some ran about among the feet of their fellows. All of them

had a grotesque and disquieting suggestion of an insect that has

somehow contrived to mock humanity; but all seemed to present an

incredible exaggeration of some particular feature: one had a vast

right fore-limb, an enormous antennal arm, as it were; one seemed all

leg, poised, as it were, on stilts; another protruded the edge of his

face mask into a nose-like organ that made him startlingly human until

one saw his expressionless gaping mouth. The strange and (except for

the want of mandibles and palps) most insect-like head of the

mooncalf-minders underwent, indeed, the most incredible

transformations: here it was broad and low, here high and narrow; here

its leathery brow was drawn out into horns and strange features; here

it was whiskered and divided, and there with a grotesquely human

profile. One distortion was particularly conspicuous. There were

several brain cases distended like bladders to a huge size, with the

face mask reduced to quite small proportions. There were several

amazing forms, with heads reduced to microscopic proportions and blobby

bodies; and fantastic, flimsy things that existed, it would seem, only

as a basis for vast, trumpet-like protrusions of the lower part of the

mask. And oddest of all, as it seemed to me for the moment, two or

three of these weird inhabitants of a subterranean world, a world

sheltered by innumerable miles of rock from sun or rain, _carried

umbrellas_ in their tentaculate hands—real terrestrial looking

umbrellas! And then I thought of the parachutist I had watched descend.

“These moon people behaved exactly as a human crowd might have done in

similar circumstances: they jostled and thrust one another, they shoved

one another aside, they even clambered upon one another to get a

glimpse of me. Every moment they increased in numbers, and pressed more

urgently upon the discs of my ushers”—Cavor does not explain what he

means by this—“every moment fresh shapes emerged from the shadows and

forced themselves upon my astounded attention. And presently I was

signed and helped into a sort of litter, and lifted up on the shoulders

of strong-armed bearers, and so borne through the twilight over this

seething multitude towards the apartments that were provided for me in

the moon. All about me were eyes, faces, masks, a leathery noise like

the rustling of beetle wings, and a great bleating and cricket-like

twittering of Selenite voices.”

We gather he was taken to a “hexagonal apartment,” and there for a

space he was confined. Afterwards he was given a much more considerable

liberty; indeed, almost as much freedom as one has in a civilised town

on earth. And it would appear that the mysterious being who is the

ruler and master of the moon appointed two Selenites “with large heads”

to guard and study him, and to establish whatever mental communications

were possible with him. And, amazing and incredible as it may seem,

these two creatures, these fantastic men insects, these beings of other

world, were presently communicating with Cavor by means of terrestrial

speech.

Cavor speaks of them as Phi-oo and Tsi-puff. Phi-oo, he says, was about

5 feet high; he had small slender legs about 18 inches long, and slight

feet of the common lunar pattern. On these balanced a little body,

throbbing with the pulsations of his heart. He had long, soft,

many-jointed arms ending in a tentacled grip, and his neck was

many-jointed in the usual way, but exceptionally short and thick. His

head, says Cavor—apparently alluding to some previous description that

has gone astray in space—“is of the common lunar type, but strangely

modified. The mouth has the usual expressionless gape, but it is

unusually small and pointing downward, and the mask is reduced to the

size of a large flat nose-flap. On either side are the little eyes.

“The rest of the head is distended into a huge globe and the chitinous

leathery cuticle of the mooncalf herds thins out to a mere membrane,

through which the pulsating brain movements are distinctly visible. He

is a creature, indeed, with a tremendously hypertrophied brain, and

with the rest of his organism both relatively and absolutely dwarfed.”

In another passage Cavor compares the back view of him to Atlas

supporting the world. Tsi-puff it seems was a very similar insect, but

his “face” was drawn out to a considerable length, and the brain

hypertrophy being in different regions, his head was not round but

pear-shaped, with the stalk downward. There were also litter-carriers,

lopsided beings, with enormous shoulders, very spidery ushers, and a

squat foot attendant in Cavor’s retinue.

The manner in which Phi-oo and Tsi-puff attacked the problem of speech

was fairly obvious. They came into this “hexagonal cell” in which Cavor

was confined, and began imitating every sound he made, beginning with a

cough. He seems to have grasped their intention with great quickness,

and to have begun repeating words to them and pointing to indicate the

application. The procedure was probably always the same. Phi-oo would

attend to Cavor for a space, then point also and say the word he had

heard.

The first word he mastered was “man,” and the second “Mooney”—which

Cavor on the spur of the moment seems to have used instead of

“Selenite” for the moon race. As soon as Phi-oo was assured of the

meaning of a word he repeated it to Tsi-puff, who remembered it

infallibly. They mastered over one hundred English nouns at their first

session.

Subsequently it seems they brought an artist with them to assist the

work of explanation with sketches and diagrams—Cavor’s drawings being

rather crude. “He was,” says Cavor, “a being with an active arm and an

arresting eye,” and he seemed to draw with incredible swiftness.

The eleventh message is undoubtedly only a fragment of a longer

communication. After some broken sentences, the record of which is

unintelligible, it goes on:—

“But it will interest only linguists, and delay me too long, to give

the details of the series of intent parleys of which these were the

beginning, and, indeed, I very much doubt if I could give in anything

like the proper order all the twistings and turnings that we made in

our pursuit of mutual comprehension. Verbs were soon plain sailing—at

least, such active verbs as I could express by drawings; some

adjectives were easy, but when it came to abstract nouns, to

prepositions, and the sort of hackneyed figures of speech, by means of

which so much is expressed on earth, it was like diving in

cork-jackets. Indeed, these difficulties were insurmountable until to

the sixth lesson came a fourth assistant, a being with a huge

football-shaped head, whose _forte_ was clearly the pursuit of

intricate analogy. He entered in a preoccupied manner, stumbling

against a stool, and the difficulties that arose had to be presented to

him with a certain amount of clamour and hitting and pricking before

they reached his apprehension. But once he was involved his penetration

was amazing. Whenever there came a need of thinking beyond Phi-oo’s by

no means limited scope, this prolate-headed person was in request, but

he invariably told the conclusion to Tsi-puff, in order that it might

be remembered; Tsi-puff was ever the arsenal for facts. And so we

advanced again.

“It seemed long and yet brief—a matter of days—before I was positively

talking with these insects of the moon. Of course, at first it was an

intercourse infinitely tedious and exasperating, but imperceptibly it

has grown to comprehension. And my patience has grown to meet its

limitations, Phi-oo it is who does all the talking. He does it with a

vast amount of meditative provisional ‘M’m—M’m’ and has caught up one

or two phrases, If I may say,’ ‘If you understand,’ and beads all his

speech with them.

“Thus he would discourse. Imagine him explaining his artist.

“‘M’m—M’m—he—if I may say—draw. Eat little—drink little—draw. Love

draw. No other thing. Hate all who not draw like him. Angry. Hate all

who draw like him better. Hate most people. Hate all who not think all

world for to draw. Angry. M’m. All things mean nothing to him—only

draw. He like you ... if you understand.... New thing to draw.

Ugly—striking. Eh?

“‘He’—turning to Tsi-puff—‘love remember words. Remember wonderful more

than any. Think no, draw no—remember. Say’—here he referred to his

gifted assistant for a word—‘histories—all things. He hear once—say

ever.’

“It is more wonderful to me than I dreamt that anything ever could be

again, to hear, in this perpetual obscurity, these extraordinary

creatures—for even familiarity fails to weaken the inhuman effect of

their appearance—continually piping a nearer approach to coherent

earthly speech—asking questions, giving answers. I feel that I am

casting back to the fable-hearing period of childhood again, when the

ant and the grasshopper talked together and the bee judged between

them...”

And while these linguistic exercises were going on Cavor seems to have

experienced a considerable relaxation of his confinement. “The first

dread and distrust our unfortunate conflict aroused is being,” he said,

“continually effaced by the deliberate rationality of all I do.... I am

now able to come and go as I please, or I am restricted only for my own

good. So it is I have been able to get at this apparatus, and, assisted

by a happy find among the material that is littered in this enormous

store-cave, I have contrived to despatch these messages. So far not the

slightest attempt has been made to interfere with me in this, though I

have made it quite clear to Phi-oo that I am signalling to the earth.

“‘You talk to other?’ he asked, watching me.

“‘Others,’ said I.

“‘Others,’ he said. ‘Oh yes, Men?’

“And I went on transmitting.”

Cavor was continually making corrections in his previous accounts of

the Selenites as fresh facts flowed upon him to modify his conclusions,

and accordingly one gives the quotations that follow with a certain

amount of reservation. They are quoted from the ninth, thirteenth, and

sixteenth messages, and, altogether vague and fragmentary as they are,

they probably give as complete a picture of the social life of this

strange community as mankind can now hope to have for many generations.

“In the moon,” says Cavor, “every citizen knows his place. He is born

to that place, and the elaborate discipline of training and education

and surgery he undergoes fits him at last so completely to it that he

has neither ideas nor organs for any purpose beyond it. ‘Why should

he?’ Phi-oo would ask. If, for example, a Selenite is destined to be a

mathematician, his teachers and trainers set out at once to that end.

They check any incipient disposition to other pursuits, they encourage

his mathematical bias with a perfect psychological skill. His brain

grows, or at least the mathematical faculties of his brain grow, and

the rest of him only so much as is necessary to sustain this essential

part of him. At last, save for rest and food, his one delight lies in

the exercise and display of his faculty, his one interest in its

application, his sole society with other specialists in his own line.

His brain grows continually larger, at least so far as the portions

engaging in mathematics are concerned; they bulge ever larger and seem

to suck all life and vigour from the rest of his frame. His limbs

shrivel, his heart and digestive organs diminish, his insect face is

hidden under its bulging contours. His voice becomes a mere

stridulation for the stating of formulæ; he seems deaf to all but

properly enunciated problems. The faculty of laughter, save for the

sudden discovery of some paradox, is lost to him; his deepest emotion

is the evolution of a novel computation. And so he attains his end.

“Or, again, a Selenite appointed to be a minder of mooncalves is from

his earliest years induced to think and live mooncalf, to find his

pleasure in mooncalf lore, his exercise in their tending and pursuit.

He is trained to become wiry and active, his eye is indurated to the

tight wrappings, the angular contours that constitute a ‘smart

mooncalfishness.’ He takes at last no interest in the deeper part of

the moon; he regards all Selenites not equally versed in mooncalves

with indifference, derision, or hostility. His thoughts are of mooncalf

pastures, and his dialect an accomplished mooncalf technique. So also

he loves his work, and discharges in perfect happiness the duty that

justifies his being. And so it is with all sorts and conditions of

Selenites—each is a perfect unit in a world machine....

“These beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall,

form a sort of aristocracy in this strange society, and at the head of

them, quintessential of the moon, is that marvellous gigantic ganglion