MAN’S WORLD (23)
By:
December 12, 2024
HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize Charlotte Haldane’s 1926 proto-sf novel Man’s World for HILOBROW’s readers. Written by an author married to one of the world’s most prominent eugenics advocates, this ambivalent adventure anticipates both Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale. When a young woman rebels against her conditioning, can she break free? Reissued in 2024 (with a new introduction by Philippa Levine) by the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE series.
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UNREALITY
As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away: so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. JOB VII. 9.
The day after the party in honour of Bruce had taken place, Christopher had abruptly left Nucleus. As soon as he had stepped into Weil’s room and seen them together, he had known that Nicolette had found the instrument to enable her to fulfil her bargain. But he found the emotional strain of the situation unbearable. He would come back, later, when she had told Bruce, when, no doubt, she would call him to her side. Then his moment would come, then the crisis of his engineering would unfold itself. Until then he must avoid Bruce.
At the end of Bruce’s six weeks in Nucleus, Nicolette was quite ready to go away with him. They journeyed for three months to many places by different ways, flying, motoring, and walking. They met men and women of various communities, chiefly members of the Company, with whom Bruce conferred and discussed mutual problems; they enjoyed the generous communal hospitality of their day. Before the end of the journey the expected had happened: Nicolette found that her experiment had been successful, and that she was with child.
The knowledge left her in no doubt that motherhood was after all her vocation. For the joy this knowledge brought her was surprising in its intensity and its vastness. During two days she gave herself over entirely to the purely sensual delight with which it filled her. While Bruce, pursuing his programme, kept appointments and attended conferences, she remained in her room or wandered about in the open, happily dreaming. Already the embryo in her womb was to her Someone, was her son, and the sun that caressed her eyes, the perfumes which delighted her nose, the food she ate, the sleep which refreshed her, were His; passing to Him by the marvellous processes of which she knew a little and of which more could be learnt. Now she recognized thankfully how the training of her girlhood had prepared her adequately for what was to come, had paved the way for the learning of those further lessons for which she was greedy. All the time she was anxious to know in detail about the physiological changes taking place within her, and towards the end of the third month she began to fret to return to Nucleus, in order that she might devote herself entirely to His comfort.
And in the joy of these hours of complete abandonment to the dictates of His needs, Nicolette realized for the first time the genius of those who had perceived the necessity of developing motherhood on vocational lines. Thanks to their foresight she would be able to give him health, strength, and a suitable environment from the beginning.
Bruce postponed his engagements in order that they might talk over thoroughly their future programme. It was a day of springtime, bright and gentle, but sharpened by an invigorating breeze, so they decided to walk.
‘So Sp. 902 seems to have been successfully neutralized,’ said Bruce with a smile. ‘That’s jolly interesting.’
‘What will they say, do you think?’
‘I don’t know definitely. The thing to do will be to get your friend Brian to publish a paper on the subject. I can’t quite foresee what the consequences will be. As soon as we get to Nucleus I’ll see one or two people and put the matter to them. Of course, it is so important that the biological people will want to go into it pretty thoroughly. They will probably want to have the experiment repeated before they pass on the results from the theoretical to the practical side.’ They both laughed.
‘I suppose it will all have to be done very carefully?’
‘Of course. There is no doubt that if I had not taken your funny scheme in hand, it might have led to some complications. I haven’t the least doubt that the Patrol would have done something pretty drastic to all of you. As it is, they need hardly know. But I will admit this to you now: there are always discontented people about. I think, myself, that if that stuff of Monailoff’s had become generally available, there might have been some bother. I shall have to talk to him when I get back.’
‘I shall have to see Morgana and try to explain to her.’
‘No. Morgana must not know for the time being. She’s inclined to be hysterical and unbalanced; and she knows what Brian did. She’s the person who will have to be watched most carefully. I don’t want you to see her at all. You must arrange to stay quite quietly somewhere until you go to your Garden.’
‘But I must tell Christopher everything, Bruce; I insist on that. No one else, not even you, shall break it to him. Between him and me this is a… a tremendously serious matter. I must at least tell him myself. I don’t know a bit what he will do; it will be terrible for him.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He went away without explaining very clearly why, but I think I understood. He went to that hut by the lake where he stays to compose. I expect he is there, now, probably preparing his plans for when we come back. I thought it wisest not to tell him that you would not agree until I knew for certain what would happen.’
‘Why?’ Bruce knew fairly well, of course, but he wanted to hear her explanation.
‘Because I knew from the beginning I would do just as you and not as Christopher suggested.’ Nicolette stopped walking and turned on the path, facing him with confident frankness. ‘It did not take me long to realize, Bruce,’ she said proudly, though her voice dropped a little, ‘that I had been playing a game with myself, and unfortunately with Christopher. Oh, Bruce, if only I had known what I wanted when I came back from Centrosome! Christopher will suffer so hard now, simply because I had no sense. Surely I should have known all the time!’
Bruce drew her to him, and with his arm around her waist they continued to walk on slowly.
‘It was I who should have had more sense, my little love,’ he said. ‘It was I who misled you. You can tell Christopher so’ — Nicolette shook her head — ‘or I will, if you like. As for him, he misled himself, and it does not stop at that, either.’
‘What do you mean?’ Nicolette was unable to follow him.
‘Some day I will tell you exactly, but not now. The point is that Christopher must learn to face matters squarely as you have done. He is growing up, and even he must try to put aside childish things. Otherwise…’ Bruce left the sentence unfinished.
‘Would you like to sit down and rest a little?’ he asked presently, but Nicolette shook her head.
‘Not yet. Oh, Bruce, you will never understand Christopher!’
‘I do not consider him as enigmatic as you, my love. There is not very much the matter with him that cannot be put straight, if he will only give me his confidence.’
‘He won’t,’ answered Nicolette decisively. ‘Not to you nor to any one else.’
Bruce was silent.
‘The trouble I anticipate I can’t quite define. But I know his emotions are very violent. I remember ——’ She hesitated.
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, just something he confessed to me once when we were children. But he does need protecting.’
‘That is what you have always imagined, I know. But you must allow me to disagree with you. Now that you have your job for the future,’ — they looked at one another as only parents of a longed-for child can look — ‘you must give up this maternal craving to encourage Christopher’s babyishness. You have done him no service that way, truly. All you little mother-pots need is babies. A little mothering of the rest of the world before you have them is very nice, for you and every one else. But it must not go too far, as it has done in your case and Christopher’s. And at the present moment, until I can settle you down where you belong, I must be responsible for you, and help you out of the various entanglements I got you into. We will go to see Christopher together on our way to Nucleus.’
‘But I will see him alone first!’ Nicolette insisted on that.
‘I wish Christopher would come back,’ Morgana repeated obstinately.
‘He won’t,’ answered Arcous, ‘so try again. “One wish is as fair as another.”‘
‘Don’t quote things at me,’ she said crossly. Ignoring him, she turned to Brian. ‘What is this all leading up to?’ she demanded. Brian lay on his back inhaling through a glass tube a stimulating gaseous mixture of his own concoction. Without waiting for an unlikely reply, Morgana continued: ‘Christopher goes off into the wilds. Nicolette and her young man depart on a semi-public tour. Neither of you show the slightest attention. What is going to happen?’
‘What always happens when young people grow up,’ Arcous stated tritely. ‘Christopher has found his job and is satisfied; Nicolette has found a lover and is ditto. Bruin and I being sensible, are not surprised; you being perverse, are.’
‘I don’t think Christopher knows,’ said Morgana with heavy emphasis.
‘Knows what?’
‘That Nicolette has failed him, and does not intend to carry out her part of the bargain.’
Arcous raised his fine black eyebrows in that ironic gesture which never failed to annoy her excessively. ‘Don’t pretend,’ she went on with growing indignation, that you don’t know either. Or you,’ she turned angrily to Brian, who seemed to be settling down to pleasant visions.
‘Do you mean — that experiment?’ he murmured lazily, egging her on in the expectation that she would continue her monologue while he meditated in peace.
‘Of course I do. You both know what I mean. I mean the pact we all made and that Nicolette agreed to: that she was to have a child, and so signalize our revolt against these stifling rules.’
‘Perhaps Brian’s dope was no use,’ suggested Arcous mischievously.
‘Well, why does she not tell us? It’s four months since Bruce came over; they have been together almost constantly; the matter ought to be decided by now one way or the other. And why, if she has nothing to hide, does she stay away so consistently?’
‘You forget he is on a special tour; they may be away another two. There’s nothing in that.’
‘Then why doesn’t she call us up or communicate in some way?’
‘Why should she? Her brother probably knows. After all, it’s their affair.’
‘Oh, is that how you look at it? I thought we were all rather keen about it.’
‘My dear, don’t be absurd. You surely never expected any one over twenty to take that intended revolt of yours seriously? There we were, on a hot day, arguing for want of something else to while away a long walk, and now you talk as if anything ever came of heated argument.’
‘Only cold feet, apparently, in your case,’ she retorted rudely. ‘Christopher meant it, and I meant it, and Nicolette meant it — then. And if Bruin didn’t mean it, why did he go all that way for the stuff?’
Bruin was asleep, after having carefully disconnected his glass stem and rubber piping from the complicated parent apparatus, so the conversation continued as a duet.
‘A, because you badgered him into it; B, because the journey was an excuse to get away from your badgering; and C, because there might have been a chance of making some biological wheels go round the other way,’ explained Arcous with deliberate patience.
‘You neither of you care one jot about me or any one else in the world,’ complained Morgana bitterly.
‘Except about our jobs, no,’ he answered brutally. ‘Neither would you, if you were sensible. What has this to do with you, anyway? You refuse to understand that Nicolette is in love with that chap Bruce. In love, my girl. It happened ages ago, when they first met. She didn’t especially mind what she said or did until he came back. She was just waiting, entranced, like a sleeping beauty. She’s woken up now — and voilà!‘
‘Fairy-tales and nonsense,’ she retorted. ‘Love! What is love? A degree of preference between copulating with one person or another.’
‘To you and me and Brian, and people like us — to nearly every one, probably, except parents. In them, it’s the dynamic urge towards completion; a throwing together of complementary personalities for the purpose of third parties. It’s what keeps the race going.’
‘A ridiculous argument! If it were true, we should have monogamy instead of polyandry.’
‘Not a bit of it. The effects of these urges are not necessarily permanent. And in every profession there are degrees of natural talent.’
‘Oh, you Jews…’ She was unable to complete the sentence.
‘Exactly. We know about these matters. We’ve specialized in them for centuries, you see. But they’re rather outside your province.’
‘And yours is utterly narrow and clodbound. There are other forms of love of which you know nothing, which cannot matter to you. Love of freedom, of independence. Your kind may make a race, but mine is what keeps its banner flying. It’s the love worth dying for, though yours may give life — as the beasts do. I tell you, Christopher knows nothing of all this. If what you suggest of Nicolette is true, and it may be, or she would have given a sign by now, then she has betrayed an ideal for an idol. Do you think that if Christopher knew, he would not come back, would not try to recall her to her pledge? What is he going to do if she lets him down?’
‘Live on his emotions, as he has always done, and write some marvellous music, by and by. Why do you think so little has been done to check his wildness? Simply because every one knows that in youth the artist has to be a little mad. Sanity comes with the experience of power, with the command of form, that enables the genius, the true artist, to compose masterpieces in cold blood. He may occasionally resort to a little self stimulation, attain a fine frenzy by getting him self into an emotional state; take drugs or women or religion. If he is not a genius he will often temporarily lose his self-consciousness, but whatever emotions dominate him, he will never express them in any other way than through the only means he really understands. That symphony of Christopher’s was a fine thing. He’s established now and will go on.’
‘That symphony was his religion, I tell you, his declaration of love of God, of liberty and independence. It was simply a prelude to what he means, or meant, to do, with Nicolette’s help. It was defiance of them all. If you think that Christopher and I are like you and Bruin and her and Bruce, you are mistaken. We are survivors from the age of freedom.’ She rose from the floor whereon he sat in Oriental fashion and Brian lay sprawling on his back. She pointed a trembling hand at him. I despise you,’ she said, and her voice rang with passion; ‘I despise you both; all of you. I’ve finished with you. I leave you to your selfishness and your feebleness and your love and your dope. I’m going. I’m going to Christopher!’ And superbly, furiously, she went.
‘E finità la comedia,’ Arcous murmured; smiled all alone, and gave Brian’s limp body a prod with his foot.
‘Our sweetie’s gone away,’ he announced gently; ‘wake up!’
Christopher was not certain when the symphony of the Voices would begin, but he knew it must be quite soon. The receiving set in the hall was all in order. He gave it a last glance, then went out on the wide balcony and lay down in a chair there. It was dark — he had come all this long way on purpose to hear it in the dark. There was garden land below him and there were woods, which trailed across the valley to the rising hills that framed the view. The sky above appeared to him, coming from the lighted room, blue-black and enormous. But there were many stars, and after a time it seemed lighter. Christopher was glad the night was still, and hoped it would remain so. His ears, which had by this time become at tuned to a multitude of faint sounds, noted now one, now another of the ceaseless interweaving of little night rustlings, but he was hardly aware of them, intent as he was on the music he was awaiting.
It too began at first as a whisper of little noises, faint moaning of wind and water, humming of insects, chirping of birds, punctuated from time to time by the conversation of beasts. These things soon made a pattern, blending in the theme of the VOICE. It was a murmurous, gentle, but vigilant song, and from the beginning one understood that all these small sounds were just the instruments created for the conveying of its import. It was both the composer and conductor of the hidden orchestra, was this VOICE.
Now while it spoke, always sustaining that message, the instrumentation varied. Soon the little sounds dwindled away, slowly, one by one; hardly noticeably they vanished as others, louder and more impressive, superseded them. Whereas at first the VOICE had spoken through the simple messengers of the country, it now sang through means devised by men. It was in the whirring of aeroplane engines and the purring of motor cars, in the rhythmic pushing and pulling of machinery. And soon the VOICE, though never for an instant wavering or ceasing, sang so softly, became so much a part of those instruments which interpreted it, that the listener’s attention was lulled by familiarity. There were other voices to listen to now which combined to form a recognizable medley of sound. These were the voices of men, of leaders and led, of children, women, youths, the middle-aged and the old. Occasionally one alone spoke and the rest answered in chorus; sometimes there were several soloists contending against one another, and as they split through and cut, or struggled to drown rival sounds, the responses of the mob also became complex, dividing as if drawn magnetically towards this, that, or the other one of those who led them. There were discords in plenty here, sharp divisions, sudden pregnant silences, but although during these the VOICE still sounded its sweet song, they were never long enough for it to become dominant. There was invariably a crescendo of contentious shouting after these intervals, there was strife, dissension, war; mobilization, engines in motion, contending parties divided clearly into three or four major groups, each of which in turn gave way rhythmically, frenziedly, to its own particular cries. But now another Voice, a solitary Voice, began to be heard. This was clearly one man, and one only, who sang. At first his notes halted often, he would hesitate after a few bars, as if courage failed him to go on. Others would interrupt, and for a little while he seemed to join their chorus; then he would cease abruptly and in a moment or two endeavour to recapture his original theme. As he went on, he appeared to be succeeding. His tones became clearer as the others faded; he was apparently leaving his fellows, leaving the world, for as his power increased the musical background changed also in texture. He had long since left the machines behind: accompanied occasionally by a solitary aeroplane, he continued until that too was silent. For some little time while he rested, apparently, in a garden, for the VOICE was incarnated by the drip, drip of petals, the chirping of a lark, the humming of insects. But he went further, until the great rustling trees of the forest were about him, skirting a waterfall in an upward climb, and always as he walked the sound of the VOICE became clearer and his Voice lost its defiance, its anger, its sorrow, falling finally to a monotonous prayer-like murmur.
It was plain to the listener, contrasting the Voice of the prayer with the VOICE which accompanied and encouraged it, that whereas the first was simple, emanating from a man’s throat alone, the second was composed of many united complexities of sound. Just how many instruments produced it, just how many were human beings and how many manipulated or mechanical contrivances used by them, it was impossible to determine. The blend was too intimate, too subtle, to permit of discrimination by an ear even so well trained as Christopher’s. In any case, the message of the VOICE was now so urgent, so passionately uttered, that the hearer’s attention was completely riveted by it. Gradually it appeared also to have imposed its will on the other singer; slowly, as he had begun to sing, he ended, his tones finally trailing off while those others swelled ever louder and louder….
At last, after he had not been heard for several minutes, he began, haltingly, fearfully he began to endeavour to sing in unison with the VOICE. The effect of his stammering effort was peculiar; one wanted to laugh and to weep simultaneously as this plaintive human bubble of sound attempted the impossible, to express something of those magnificent, mysterious harmonies that played all about it, and yet never, curiously enough, overwhelmed it completely. It was always there, reaching up and out, valiantly aspiring to become enrolled in that marvellous orchestra that yet was One… and after a time, as if in compassion, the VOICE sank, so that the feebler Voice became audible, articulate almost, and having at last found its note affirmed with growing passion.
What followed was apparently a dialogue. The VOICE adapted itself to the dimensions of its interlocutor, while the other with growing confidence took on a new richness of tone. Many times the man faltered, his questions falling often into a mere whisper, trailing away unformulated. Then gaining courage anew, as it seemed, he dared assert, demand, whilst the reply never varied in gentleness and beauty. Once he even shouted, and the crystal clarity of the answer which followed after a second’s pause caused his Voice to shake and tremble, to struggle on through sobs.
Then he did achieve a moment of union with that VOICE, and thereupon, clinging to it as well as he could, he went away and down from the mountain, his footsteps beating gentle time as he marched. The VOICE was with him, always, as he returned the way he had come; it was strong yet caressing, with now male, now female intonations, while his own, indubitably, had gained a new hardihood. So they came back to the world of men.
He went in among the mumbling crowd, and as he proclaimed his message to them the VOICE retreated a little into the background that he might be more audible. They certainly did not appear to hear it, but to him they harkened as, endeavouring to imitate its accents as he had learned to do on that mountain, he proclaimed his discovery and addressed them with exhortation. After a time a few others, chiefly women, joined him, and slowly their numbers grew. And as his partisans increased, there advanced with pomp and circumstance those leaders whose altercations had previously divided the people and egged them on to war. They challenged him and he replied heartily, and then, miraculously, his voice was indeed for a few short moments the VOICE. When it ceased, dying away to its usual murmur, which, apparently, was inaudible to them, they produced voices of their own, whose songs were astonishingly feeble or disgustingly distorted versions of THE SONG. He would have none of them; he defied them to the limit of his power, singing now exultantly with all his strength. Then they appeared to hurl themselves on him with cries of execration, with howls of derision, inciting one another to wilder and wilder excesses. Once, agonizedly, he called on the VOICE, but it, sunken to a mere whispering thread, did not reply. Then he was silenced.
Yet when all the tumult and the beastliness of sound had died away, the VOICE was raised again, and clearly that human Voice was to be recognized as part of it. Something of himself had gone out of it, something of the passion of self-assertiveness that had prevented it from blending previously with the song of infinity. Quite unmistakably it retained its own quality, but this was sublimated, refined, harmonized, so that the one song of the VOICE was also his song. No recognizably earthly nor human sounds were in this melody at first, but after a prelude which gave the impression of having lasted untold ages, the music appeared again to approach the places of men. This time it was not dimmed, nor was there the faintest trace of an antagonistic cacophonous chorus. As he had endeavoured to do so long ago, now other and many individual voices tried to attain the note of the VOICE and join its splendid theme. In due time, though not without trembling nor anguish, they appeared to succeed. Each one of them, without losing its identity, but transformed and purified as that first Voice had been, soared upward until it found and clung to the VOICE of the universe. It was not a crescendo, but an accumulation of music: while in full spate almost unendurably beautiful, in retreat slowly fading into silence, seeming to leave an echo. on the air, so that long after it had ended the listener had no consciousness of his personal identity.
‘For ever and ever, world without end, Amen,’ murmured Christopher.
That was how he heard the first performance of his Symphony of God and Man.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
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