CHAPTER XXAsgard
Immediatelyafter the death of Nordenholt, I took over the control of the Area and instituted the great reorganisation forced upon us by the new conditions. Almost our last reserves of coal were used up in the foundries where we built the new atomic engines; but we succeeded in manufacturing a number of machines sufficient for our purposes; and once these were complete, we had no further need of the old-fashioned fuel. The output of nitrogenous materials sprang up by leaps and bounds; and the danger of starvation was over.
All our miners were sent into the neighbouring areas, where they were put to work in spreading synthetic nitrogenous manure upon the fields, after Hope’s colloids had been ploughed into the soil to retain water in the ground. At last came the harvest, poor in most places, yet sufficient for our needs. The game was won.
It was after this that we began to send aeroplanes over the world in search of any other remnants of the human race which had survived. I was too much occupied with Area affairs to share in these voyages; but the airmen’s reports made clear enough the extent of the catastrophe which had befallen the planet. As I expected, the site of London was covered with a mere heap of charred and shattered ruins cumbering it to an extent that prevented us from even thinking of rebuilding the city in the new age. It was not worth while clearing away the debris, when other sites were opento us for our new centres of population. The same fate had befallen almost all the great cities, not only in Britain but also across the Continent. Above the ruins of Paris, the gaunt fabric of the Eiffel Tower still stood as a witness to men’s achievements in the past; but it was almost alone. Everything capable of destruction by fire had gone down in the frenzy of the last days of the old civilisation.
I have already sketched the effects of the Famine upon the population of the globe. Our explorers found one or two colonies alive in America; and at a slightly later date we got in touch with the Japanese Area. Beyond this, the human race had perished from the face of the earth.
The strangest of all the changes seen by the aerial explorers must have been in Central Africa and the Amazon Valley. There, where vegetable life had seemed undisputed sovereign of vast regions, only a blackened wilderness remained. Fires had raged over great spaces, leaving ashes behind them; but in general there was hardly a trace of the old-time forests and swamps. The Sahara stretched southward to the Equator; and the Kalahari Desert had extended up to the Great Lakes—so quickly had the soil of these regions degenerated into sand. In past ages, man had never tapped these vast store-houses of forest and veldt; and Fate decided that they should go down to destruction still unutilised.
Once the safety-line was passed and we were assured of food sufficient to maintain our people, other troubles faced us; and I am not sure that the next ten years was not really our most dangerous period. Had Nordenholt lived, things would perhaps have been easier for us; but the difficulties besetting us were implicit in the nature of things and I question if he could have exorcised them entirely.
We had, on the one side, a mass of manual labourers whose intelligence unfitted them for anything beyond bodily toil; while on the other hand we had supplies of physicalenergy from the atomic engines which made the employment of human labour supererogatory. Yet to leave the major part of our population entirely idle was to invite disaster. The development of the atomic engine had at one blow thrown out of gear the nicely-adjusted social machinery devised by Nordenholt; and we had to arrange almost instantly vast alterations in our methods of employment.
It was under the pressure of these conditions that we became builders of great cities. Nineveh and Thebes were our first sketches; then came Atlantis, our main power-station which we built on Islay; after that we erected Lyonnesse and Tara, fairer than the others, for we learned as we wrought. Then, as I began to grope toward my masterpiece, I planned Theleme. And, last of all, the spires and towers of Asgard grew into the sky.
Once the cities had been planned, we employed a further contingent of labour in constructing huge roads between them, gigantic arteries which cut across the country like the Roman ways in earlier centuries, arrow-straight, but broader and better engineered than anything before constructed.
Our building materials were new. The introduction of atomic energy gave us electric furnaces on a scale undreamed of before; and we were able to produce a glassy and resistant substance which can be made in any tint. It is of this that Asgard is constructed; and I believe that no weather conditions alone will wear it down.
As I sit here at my desk, I see outstretched before me the panorama of Asgard, the concrete embodiment of our Fata Morgana, so far as that vision could be made real in stone. It is not the City of our dreams, I admit; yet in its beauty there is a touch of wonder and of mystery that makes it kin to that builded phantom of our minds. None of our cities shall ever bear the name of Fata Morgana, which was the mother of them all. There shall be no profanation of thatcastle in the air. Instead we have given to our cities titles which link their material splendours to the more ancient glories of myth and tradition; Asgard and Lyonnesse, Tara and Atlantis, Nineveh, Thebes and Theleme.
Rarely, nowadays, do I feel despondent; but when the fit comes over me, I open the box in which I still keep the papers relating to the time when I was planning my garden cities. I finger my documents and turn over my sketches, ever amazed at the gulf which lies between my hopes of that day and our achievements of the present. Here and there, on the margin of some modest ground-plan, I find scribbled notes of caution to myself not to expect such vast projects to be practicable in the near future. And then, after losing myself in this atmosphere of the past, I go to the great windows and look down upon Asgard. For once, at least, in this world, hope has been far outrun by achievement. Splendours of which I never dreamed have come into being and lie before my eyes as I gaze. With all this confronting me, my despondency slips away and I regain sure confidence in the future.
Cities and gardens have I raised in Dreamland. Other cities and other gardens I have seen spring from the ground of this world in answer to my call. But of all these, Asgard is nearest to my heart; for it is the last which I shall create. Other men will surpass me; new wonderlands will rise in the future: but Asgard is my masterpiece and I shall build no more.
Ten years have gone by since the last stone was laid in my city; yet every morning as I come to my windows, I find in it fresh beauties to delight my eyes. Fronting the sea it stands; and its fore-court is a vast stretch of silver sand between the horns of the bay. Behind it the ground rises to a semicircle of low hills set here and there with groves and fretted with silver waterfalls. Through all the changes of the year these slopes are green; for snow never driftsupon them nor do mists gather to hide them from my view. Only the swift cloud-shadows flitting athwart them bring fresh lights and shades into the picture as they pass.
Nor do I weary of this greenery. Slowly vegetation is creeping back upon the face of the world; but still there are vast deserts where no blade grows: and in my own cities I planned masses of verdure so that they might be like oases among the barren spaces of the earth.
Between the hills and the sea, the city stands—a vast space of woods and fields and gardens from among the greenery of which rise here and there high halls and palaces of rose-tinted stone. Here and there amid the green lie broad lakes to catch the sun; and great tree-shadowed pools, like crystal mirrors, stand rippleless among the groves. And throughout the city there is ever the sound of streams and rivulets falling from the hills and making music for us with their murmurings as they pass.
Scattered about this pleasance are the dwellings of my citizens, built of the rose-coloured stone which breaks the monotony of the verdure; but the houses are sparse, for our population is small. Asgard is only for the few who can enjoy its beauties: the many have other cities more suited to their tastes; and they have no wish to come hither. But those who dwell with us have full time to fall under its spell; for Asgard is a city of leisure, though not an idle one.
When darkness falls on Asgard, great soft beacons shine out upon the hills, throwing a mellow radiance across the valley; and down in the woods and along the broad ways of the city, the silver lamps are lighted, till all Asgard gleams in outline beside the sea. In the expanses of the parks and under the shadow of the woods are sprays of coloured orbs to guide the passer-by; and from hour to hour these change their tint, so that there is no sameness in them.
Often I come to my windows in the night and gaze outupon that far-flung tracery of stars across the valley, rivalling the skies above, as though ten thousand meteors had fallen from the heavens and still blazed where they lay upon the earth. And through my open casement come the faint and perfumed breezes, bringing their subtropical warmth as they blow across the valley; and I hear, faint and afar, the sounds of music mingling with the rustling of the trees.
Others may plan; others may build fairer cities in the sun: but I have given my best; and Asgard almost consoles me for the loss of that Fata Morgana which I shall never see.