The Coming Race - Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (free ereaders txt) 📗

power and sustains
the civilisation of our race. But after the uses of vril
became familiar to us, all creatures inimical to us were soon
annihilated. Still, once a-year or so, one of these enormous
creatures wanders from the unreclaimed and savage districts
beyond, and within my memory one has seized upon a young Gy who
was bathing in this very lake. Had she been on land and armed
with her staff, it would not have dared even to show itself;
for, like all savage creatures, the reptile has a marvellous
instinct, which warns it against the bearer of the vril wand.
How they teach their young to avoid him, though seen for the
first time, is one of those mysteries which you may ask Zee to
explain, for I cannot.*

* The reptile in this instinct does but resemble our wild birds
and animals, which will not come in reach of a man armed with
a gun. When the electric wires were first put up, partridges
struck against them in their flight, and fell down wounded. No
younger generations of partridges meet with a similar accident.

98So long as I stand here, the monster will not stir from its
lurking-place; but we must now decoy it forth."

"Will that not be difficult?"

"Not at all. Seat yourself yonder on that crag (about one
hundred yards from the bank), while I retire to a distance. In
a short time the reptile will catch sight or scent of you, and
perceiving that you are no vril-bearer, will come forth to
devour you. As soon as it is fairly out of the water, it
becomes my prey."

"Do you mean to tell me that I am to be the decoy to that
horrible monster which could engulf me within its jaws in a
second! I beg to decline."

The child laughed. "Fear nothing," said he; "only sit still."

Instead of obeying the command, I made a bound, and was about
to take fairly to my heels, when Taee touched me slightly on
the shoulder, and, fixing his eyes steadily on mine, I was
rooted to the spot. All power of volition left me. Submissive
to the infant's gesture, I followed him to the crag he had
indicated, and seated myself there in silence. Most readers
have seen something of the effects of electro-biology, whether
genuine or spurious. No professor of that doubtful craft had
ever been able to influence a thought or a movement of mine, but
I was a mere machine at the will of this terrible child.
Meanwhile he expanded his wings, soared aloft, and alighted
amidst a copse at the brow of a hill at some distance.

I was alone; and turning my eyes with an indescribable
sensation of horror towards the lake, I kept them fixed on its
water, spell-bound. It might be ten or fifteen minutes, to me
it seemed ages, before the still surface, gleaming under the
lamplight, began to be agitated towards the centre. At the
same time the shoals of fish near the margin evinced their
sense of the enemy's approach by splash and leap and bubbling
circle. I could detect their hurried flight hither and
thither, some even casting themselves ashore. A long, dark,
99undulous furrow came moving along the waters, nearer and
nearer, till the vast head of the reptile emerged- its jaws
bristling with fangs, and its dull eyes fixing themselves
hungrily on the spot where I sat motionless. And now its fore
feet were on the strand- now its enormous breast, scaled on
either side as in armour, in the centre showing its corrugated
skin of a dull venomous yellow; and now its whole length was on
the land, a hundred feet or more from the jaw to the tail.
Another stride of those ghastly feet would have brought it to
the spot where I sat. There was but a moment between me and
this grim form of death, when what seemed a flash of lightning
shot through the air, smote, and, for a space of time briefer
than that in which a man can draw his breath, enveloped the
monster; and then, as the flash vanished, there lay before me a
blackened, charred, smouldering mass, a something gigantic, but
of which even the outlines of form were burned away, and
rapidly crumbling into dust and ashes. I remained still
seated, still speechless, ice-cold with a new sensation of
dread; what had been horror was now awe.

I felt the child's hand on my head- fear left me- the spell was
broken- I rose up. "You see with what ease the Vril-ya destroy
their enemies," said Taee; and then, moving towards the bank,
he contemplated the smouldering relics of the monster, and said
quietly, "I have destroyed larger creatures, but none with so
much pleasure. Yes, it IS a Krek; what suffering it must have
inflicted while it lived!" Then he took up the poor fishes that
had flung themselves ashore, and restored them mercifully to
their native element.


Chapter XIX.


As we walked back to the town, Taee took a new and circuitous
way, in order to show me what, to use a familiar term, I will
100call the 'Station,' from which emigrants or travellers to other
communities commence their journeys. I had, on a former
occasion, expressed a wish to see their vehicles. These I
found to be of two kinds, one for land journeys, one for aerial
voyages: the former were of all sizes and forms, some not
larger than an ordinary carriage, some movable houses of one
story and containing several rooms, furnished according to the
ideas of comfort or luxury which are entertained by the
Vril-ya. The aerial vehicles were of light substances, not the
least resembling our balloons, but rather our boats and
pleasure-vessels, with helm and rudder, with large wings or
paddles, and a central machine worked by vril. All the
vehicles both for land or air were indeed worked by that potent
and mysterious agency.

I saw a convoy set out on its journey, but it had few
passengers, containing chiefly articles of merchandise, and was
bound to a neighbouring community; for among all the tribes of
the Vril-ya there is considerable commercial interchange. I
may here observe, that their money currency does not consist of
the precious metals, which are too common among them for that
purpose. The smaller coins in ordinary use are manufactured
from a peculiar fossil shell, the comparatively scarce remnant
of some very early deluge, or other convulsion of nature, by
which a species has become extinct. It is minute, and flat as
an oyster, and takes a jewel-like polish. This coinage
circulates among all the tribes of the Vril-ya. Their larger
transactions are carried on much like ours, by bills of
exchange, and thin metallic plates which answer the purpose of
our bank-notes.

Let me take this occasion of adding that the taxation among the
tribe I became acquainted with was very considerable, compared
with the amount of population. But I never heard that any one
grumbled at it, for it was devoted to purposes of universal
utility, and indeed necessary to the civilisation of the tribe.
The cost of lighting so large a range of country, of providing
101for emigration, of maintaining the public buildings at which
the various operations of national intellect were carried on,
from the first education of an infant to the departments in
which the College of Sages were perpetually trying new
experiments in mechanical science; all these involved the
necessity for considerable state funds. To these I must add an
item that struck me as very singular. I have said that all the
human labour required by the state is carried on by children up
to the marriageable age. For this labour the state pays, and
at a rate immeasurably higher than our own remuneration to
labour even in the United States. According to their theory,
every child, male or female, on attaining the marriageable age,
and there terminating the period of labour, should have
acquired enough for an independent competence during life. As,
no matter what the disparity of fortune in the parents, all the
children must equally serve, so all are equally paid according
to their several ages or the nature of their work. Where the
parents or friends choose to retain a child in their own
service, they must pay into the public fund in the same ratio
as the state pays to the children it employs; and this sum is
handed over to the child when the period of service expires.
This practice serves, no doubt, to render the notion of social
equality familiar and agreeable; and if it may be said that all
the children form a democracy, no less truly it may be said
that all the adults form an aristocracy. The exquisite
politeness and refinement of manners among the Vril-ya, the
generosity of their sentiments, the absolute leisure they enjoy
for following out their own private pursuits, the amenities of
their domestic intercourse, in which they seem as members of
one noble order that can have no distrust of each other's word
or deed, all combine to make the Vril-ya the most perfect
nobility which a political disciple of Plato or Sidney could
conceive for the ideal of an aristocratic republic.
102

Chapter XX.


>From the date of the expedition with Taee which I have just
narrated, the child paid me frequent visits. He had taken a
liking to me, which I cordially returned. Indeed, as he was
not yet twelve years old, and had not commenced the course of
scientific studies with which childhood closes in that country,
my intellect was less inferior to his than to that of the elder
members of his race, especially of the Gy-ei, and most
especially of the accomplished Zee. The children of the
Vril-ya, having upon their minds the weight of so many active
duties and grave responsibilities, are not generally mirthful;
but Taee, with all his wisdom, had much of the playful
good-humour one often finds the characteristic of elderly men
of genius. He felt that sort of pleasure in my society which a
boy of a similar age in the upper world has in the company of a
pet dog or monkey. It amused him to try and teach me the ways
of his people, as it amuses a nephew of mine to make his poodle
walk on his hind legs or jump through a hoop. I willingly lent
myself to such experiments, but I never achieved the success of
the poodle. I was very much interested at first in the attempt
to ply the wings which the youngest of the Vril-ya use as
nimbly and easily as ours do their legs and arms; but my
efforts were attended with contusions serious enough to make me
abandon them in despair.

These wings, as I before said, are very large, reaching to the
knee, and in repose thrown back so as to form a very graceful
mantle. They are composed from the feathers of a gigantic bird
that abounds in the rocky heights of the country- the colour
mostly white, but sometimes with reddish streaks. They are
fastened round the shoulders with light but strong springs of
steel; and, when expanded, the arms slide through loops for
that purpose, forming, as it were, a stout central membrane.
As the arms are raised, a tubular lining beneath the vest or
103tunic becomes, by mechanical contrivance inflated with air,
increased or diminished at will by the movement of the arms,
and serving to buoy the whole form as on bladders. The wings
and the balloon-like apparatus are highly charged with vril;
and when the body is thus wafted upward, it seems to become
singularly lightened of its weight. I found it easy enough to
soar from the