AALILA (3)
By:
May 3, 2025
Christopher Blayre’s “Aalila” (1921), which may remind readers of a later work of sf horror, William Sloane’s To Walk the Night, first appeared in Blayre’s University of Cosmopoli collection The Purple Sapphire. HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize the story for HILOBROW’s readers.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5.
“I was observing Venus — conscientiously from full-Venus to no-Venus — last year. You will find all the notes in the Observatory Record; all that matter to the star-gazers. I shall communicate them very shortly. The rest is in that writing case. You know the one I mean.
“One night, at about half-Venus, I was lying in the chair, watching and making notes, when on the dark part, near the outer edge, I saw a bright spot. I couldn’t make out what it was of course, but as I watched, it flickered, went out. And look here, don’t laugh or say a word or I shall dry up. It flashed S.O.S: … — — — … Morse, you know. I assumed that I was dreaming, or that my eyes were tired or playing me a trick. It went out, and then it came again. Then it made a lot of letters, all higgledy-piggledy, but I swear to you that every group was a perfect letter. It went on for over an hour, and as each letter was made I wrote it down. You know I was a signaller in the regiment during the war? Then it stopped dead. I tried to make sense of the jumble of letters; of course there was nothing in it, but the last two letters were Vick E: … — . The Signaller — don’t laugh, I warn you — knew how to end a message anyhow.
“The next night, the same performance over again. I had read a lot of what I regard as tosh about “signalling from Mars”; it’s a hardy perennial, but I was as certain as I am that you are sitting there, that Venus was signalling to Earth and signalling in mad hysterical Morse at that. I found that night, and verified by references to the transcript of the night before, that before every pause in the flashes came the regulation full stop Ack-Ack-Ack . — . — . — Lord, man! can you imagine what I felt! I’ll tell you what I did. I trained the mirror of my arc-light on to the spot as near as I could make it out, aiming by the telescope, and next night the moment it began — as usual, with S.O.S. — I flashed it back, cutting the ray with a sheet of tin plate. Venus ‘went out’ for a minute, and then repeated S.O.S. Same reply from me. Then came other letters, in no kind of sequence, but I repeated each one religiously. When this had gone on for an hour, I took the initiative in a pause and flashed ‘Vick E.’ Venus understood; she flashed it back, and then Ack- Ack-Ack. That was all that night.
“I won’t weary you with what followed during months, whenever Venus was observable, but you’ll find it all there. I took the initiative again, and flashed the whole alphabet from A to Z, and got every letter back; and at last the whole alphabet came back to me in its proper order. Venus was profiting by its lessons. And then came the climax. I can’t think why it had not occurred to me before. I switched in the Selenium cells and put on the receiver. Instantly I heard a noise, sounds, linguals and labials. ‘Mu, ma, mu, la, lo, la’ and vowel sounds. It was, at least, clear that Venus had a photo-telephone in circuit, ready for me in case we had got so far as that on Earth. After listening for a minute or so I flashed ‘Ack-Ack-Ack.’ Venus knew that that was a stop, but not the ‘very end’ — Vick E. I connected the transmitter. I flashed Ack, and said the letter A. It came back — both flash and sound! So on through the alphabet.
“After this I began teaching Venus to spell — like a child with a spelling-book — AB—ab, BO— bo, and so on, and after a time — you understand I am condensing weeks into words — the ‘conversation,’ if you can call it one, always began ‘Aa-li-la’ and after ‘Vick E.’ again, always ‘Aa-li-la.’ Man! I realized that this was the name of the Thing that was signalling. I tell you one thing and that is that Venus, the Thing, was much cleverer than I; it tried to make me understand sounds, but I couldn’t make head or tail of one, and meanwhile It was beginning to say English words. And what is more it had an apparatus which repeated perfectly, and improved upon, everything that mine did.
“For nights I tried to get an impression upon a photo-transmission plate, but for at least a week there was no result whatever. Then one night I said ‘Aalila ‘ and tried to transmit the letters, in Morse of course, but in dots and dashes on the plate. I only found out later what happened up there — I say ‘up’ for the sake of definition — but my plate went mad and got covered with scratches in all directions. Aalila had caught on to the idea, and was doing her — I was certain somehow it was ‘her’ — best, and at last one night after weeks of patient scratching I got Aalila’s face. Lord, man! it was lovely. Just imagine to yourself a — but what’s the good? She was — she is —indescribable!”
Markwand paused and looked away with that strange exalted air that had puzzled me so often. “Is?” I queried softly. I was afraid of, as he said, drying him up.
“Yes, is.”
“You see her picture then?”
“I see her.”
To say that I was flabbergasted is to use a miserably inadequate expression. What was all this about? Was I talking to a madman? But if it was a delusion, as of course it must be, it was the sanest and most deliberately nurtured delusion that ever a man originated.
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.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.