The two women sat in silence, watching the line and wrapped up, each in her own thoughts and cares. So they sat for four hours on end. Another four hours were spent in the comfortable chairs of the saloon on the second storey amongst the other passengers until they parted near the coast of Asia Minor. Evda transferred to an electrobus that would take her to the nearest port and Chara continued her way to the East Taurus station, the junction of the First Meridian Branch. Another two hours and Chara found herself on a hot plain, in a haze of hot dry air. Here on the edge of the former Syrian Desert was the airport Deir-es-Sohr, where spiral helicopters, dangerous in inhabited areas, could land and take off.

Chara Nandi would never forget the weary hours she spent at Deir-es-Sohr waiting for the plane to come in. Time and again she thought over her words and her actions, trying to imagine her meeting with Mven Mass; she built up plans for the search for him on the Island of Oblivion, where everything was blurred in the procession of uneventful days.

At last she was on her way: below spread the endless fields of thermo-elements in the Nefud and Rub-el-Hali deserts, huge stations for the conversion of sunshine into electric power. They were arranged in straight rows and had blinds that shielded them at night and from the dust; built on consolidated sand dunes, on plateaux cut away with a slope to the south and over a labyrinth of filled-in wadis, they stood there as a monument to man’s terrific struggle for energy, a struggle that had begun when the ancient coal and oil resources were exhausted, after the first failures with atomic energy, when mankind came to the conclusion that the chief source of energy would have to be that of the sun in two forms — hydroelectric power stations and sun stations. When new forms of energy, P, Q and F energy were discovered, the necessity for severe economy disappeared. A whole forest of windmotors stood motionless along the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, another reserve power capacity for the northern living zone. In an instant the helicopter had crossed the barely noticeable line of the coast and was airborne over the Indian Ocean. Five thousand kilometres was an insignificant distance for the swift aircraft. Very soon Chara Nandi, followed by good wishes and hopes for a speedy return, left the helicopter, stepping wearily on her shaky legs.

The director of the landing field sent his daughter with a tiny flat-bottomed motor-boat to take Chara to the Island of Oblivion. The two girls were frankly delighted with the high speed of the tiny boat as it skimmed the big waves of the open sea. They went straight to a big bay on the east coast of the island where there was a medical station belonging to the Great World.

Coconut palms, their feathered leaves bowed over the wavelets lapping gently against the shore, welcomed Chara to the island. The medical station was deserted, all its workers having gone inland to destroy ticks discovered on certain rodents in the forest.

There was a stable at the station. Horses were still bred for work in places like the Island of Oblivion or at sanatoria where helicopters could not be used on account of the noise or electric cars on account of the absence of roads. Chara slept for a while, changed her clothes and then went to look at the rare and beautiful animals. There she met a woman who was skilfully operating two machines — a feed distributor and a stable-cleaning machine. Chara helped her with her work and the woman answered her questions. Chara asked her the best way to look for somebody on the island. The woman advised her to join one of the destroyer caravans that travelled all over the island and knew the place much better than the local inhabitants. Chara approved of this idea.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE ISLAND OF OBLIVION

The hydroplane was crossing Palk Strait against a strong head wind, leaping over the flat-topped rollers. Two thousand years before there had been a ridge of coral reefs and shallows there known as Adam’s Bridge. Recent geological processes had created a deep gulf in place of the ridge and deep waters now divided the lovers of repose from a mankind that was surging ever forward.

Mven Mass stood against the rail, his feet placed wide apart, peering at the Island of Oblivion as it gradually grew in size on the horizon. This huge island, washed by warm currents, was a natural paradise. In man’s primitive religious conceptions paradise had been a happy refuge after death where there were no cares or labour. The Island of Oblivion was also a happy asylum for those who were not attracted by the feverish activity of the Great World and who did not want to work on the same level as other people.

Here in the lap of mother nature, they lived out their years in the peace and calm known to the ancient cultivator of the soil, fisherman or herdsman.

Although mankind had given their weaker brothers a large area of wonderfully fruitful land, the primitive economy of the island could not fully guarantee the population against famine especially in periods of drought or other calamities that were so common where the productive forces were poorly developed. The Great World, therefore, was constantly allotting part of its reserve supplies to the Island of Oblivion.

Foodstuffs, preserved to last for many years, medicines, means of biological protection and other necessities were shipped to the island through three ports on the north-western, southern and eastern coasts. The three chief local governors also lived in the north, east and south and were known as the Directors of Animal Husbandry, Agriculture and Fisheries respectively. These people, elected by the islanders themselves, were always noted for their strong character. Some of them might have become pitiless tyrants if it had not been for the constant watch kept by the Economic and Health Councils and by the Control of Honour and Justice.

Not only on the island, but also in the Great World it occasionally happened that men of the hated category of “bulls” tried to enter into conspiracies and organize rebellions but the detachments of the Destroyer Battalions were as ruthless in dealing with wilful murderers as they were with sharks, bacteria and poisonous reptiles.

As he gazed at his future asylum Mven Mass began to wonder whether he, too, was a ‘‘bull”, but he put the thought aside in disgust. A “bull” was a strong and energetic man but one completely unaffected by the sufferings of others, a man who thought only of his own, usually unworthy, pleasures. People who, in the past obtained such characters from an unfortunate combination of inherited qualities had to keep themselves in hand and in training throughout their lives in order to be worthy members of the new society. The sufferings, quarrels and misfortunes of mankind in the distant past had always been aggravated by such people who, in various guises, proclaimed themselves the sole holders of the truth, the rulers who claimed the right to suppress all those whose opinions did not agree with theirs, the right to eradicate all other ways of thought or of life. Since then mankind has avoided the slightest sign of the absolute in opinions, desires and tastes and had become more wary of the “bulls” than of anything else. They, the “bulls,” ignoring the inviolable laws of economics, with no thought for the future, lived only for the present. The wars and disorganized economy of the Era of Disunity had led to the plundering of the planet. In those days forests were felled, supplies of coal and oil that had accumulated in the course of millions of years were burned up, the atmosphere was polluted by carbon monoxide and other filth that belched out of improperly constructed factories, beautiful and harmless animals were annihilated, and this went on until the world at last arrived at the communist structure of society, the only system that could ensure man’s continued existence. Great difficulties were left for the descendants. In the Era of Unity the most complicated reorganization of the world had to be undertaken in countries whose trees had degenerated into bushes and their cattle into dwarfs. The earth had been littered with rubbish of all sorts — broken glass, paper, rusty iron — and the rivers and sea-coasts had been polluted by waste oil and chemicals. Only when the water, air and earth had been properly cleansed did man see his planet in its present form where he could go anywhere barefoot without fear of hurting his feet.