But had not he, Mven Mass, who had been less than two years in an important post, destroyed an artificial satellite built by thousands of people employing miracles of the engineer’s art? Four competent scientists, any of whom might have become a Renn Bose, had been killed and Renn Bose himself had been saved with the greatest difficulty. Again the figure of Beth Lohn, hiding somewhere in the mountains and valleys of the Island of Oblivion, arose before his eyes, this time arousing great sympathy in him. Before he had left, Mven Mass had seen photographs of the mathematician, and had remembered his energetic face with its massive jaw and sharp eyes, deep-sunk and close to each other — he remembered his whole athletic frame….
The hydroplane engineer came over to Mven Mass. “There’s heavy surf. We shan’t be able to put in to the coast, the waves are beating over the mole. We’ll have to make for the southern port.”
“There’s no need to. You have life rafts. I can put my clothes on one and swim ashore.”
The engineer and helmsman looked at Mven Mass with respect. Surf-capped white waves piled up on the shallows and poured down in heavy, thundering cascades. Closer to the shore a disorderly swirl of waves whipped the sand and foam together and raced far up the low beach. The warm, fine rain that fell from the low-hanging clouds was swept at a slant by the wind and mixed with the wisps of foam.
Some grey figures were dimly visible on the beach through the veil of haze.
The engineer and the helmsman exchanged glances as Mven Mass stripped and packed up his clothes. Those who went to the Island of Oblivion were no longer under the guardianship of society where everybody protected everybody else and helped him. Mven Mass’ personality aroused the involuntary respect of the helmsman and he decided to warn him of the great danger he was running. The African waved his hand carelessly. The engineer brought him a small hermetically sealed case.
“Here is a month’s supply of concentrated foods, take it with you.”
Mven Mass thought for a second then put the case and his clothes in the waterproof chamber, buckled the flap tightly and with the little raft under his arm put his leg over the rail.
“Swing her round!” he commanded. The hydroplane leaned over in a sharp turn. Mven Mass, thrown far away from the tiny vessel, began his furious fight with the waves. Those on the boat saw him rise on the crest of a wave, disappear into a trough and reappear on another crest.
“With his strength he’ll manage it all right,” said the engineer, with a sigh of relief. “We’re drifting, we must get away from here.”
The screw raced and the little vessel jumped forward and lifted up on a wave that ran counter to it. Mven Mass’ dark figure appeared at full height on the beach and merged with the haze of rain.
Across the sandy beach, beaten hard by the waves, a group of people wearing nothing but loin-cloths came to meet him. They were dragging a huge, madly writhing fish in triumph. When they noticed Mven Mass they stopped and greeted him in friendly manner.
“A new one from that world,” said one of the fishermen with a smile. “He swims well. Come and live with us!”
Mven Mass gave the fishermen a frank, friendly look and shook his head.
“It would be hard for me to live here on the sea-coast and always be looking at the expanse of water and thinking of my beautiful lost world. I’m going into the interior, on to the plateau where the herdsmen live.”
One of the fishermen with a lot of grey in his thick beard that apparently was here considered an adornment to a man, laid his hand on the newcomer’s wet shoulder.
‘‘Could you have been compelled to come here?”
Mven Mass gave a bitter smile and tried to explain what had brought him there.
The fisherman looked at the newcomer sadly and with sympathy.
‘“We do not understand each other. Go your way,” he said, pointing to the south-east, where the blue terraces of distant mountains could be seen through a break in the clouds. “It is a long way and there is no other means of transport here than…” and the islander slapped the powerful muscles of his legs.
Mven Mass was glad to get away as quickly as possible and with long, swinging steps went up the winding path that led to some low hills.
The way to the centre of the island was a little more than two hundred kilometres and Mven Mass was in no hurry. Why should he be? Wearisome days, not filled by any sort of useful labour, dragged on slowly. At first, when he had not fully recovered from the catastrophe, his tired body demanded repose, the tranquillity of nature. If he had not been conscious of the tremendous loss he had suffered he would have enjoyed the silence of the deserted, wind-swept plateaux and the blackness and primordial silence of hot, tropical nights.
But as day followed day, the African, wandering about the island in search of some work to interest him, began to yearn for the Great World. The peaceful valleys with their groves of hand-cultivated fruit-trees no longer gave him pleasure nor was he lulled by the almost hypnotic gurgle of the pure mountain streams on whose banks he could now sit for countless hours in the heat of the afternoon or on a moonlit night.
Countless hours… why should he count that which was of no use to him there, time? He bad as much as he wanted, an ocean of time but he felt that his own, individual time was so insignificant. One brief and soon-forgotten moment! That was what happened to the lives of our stone age ancestors, lives full of courage and real heroism.
Only then did Mven Mass feel how well the island had been named — the Island of Oblivion! The stupid namelessness of the ancient ways of life, the doings and feelings of man! Deeds were forgotten by descendants because they were performed for the satisfaction of individual needs and did not make the life of the community easier and better, did not brighten life with creative art.
Mven was accepted into a company of herdsmen in the centre of the island and for two months pastured herds of buffalo at the foot of a huge mountain bearing the clumsily long name it had been given by the people who inhabited the island in ancient days.
For a long time he boiled his black porridge in a sooty pot and a month before he had had to seek fruits and nuts in the forest in competition with the greedy monkeys who threw their shells and peelings at him. That had happened when he had given the food he brought from the hydroplane to an old couple in a distant valley in accordance with the rule of the Great Circle World and its greatest joy: first give pleasure to others. Then he had discovered what it meant to have to seek food in unpopulated desert places. What a senseless waste of time.
Mven Mass got up from the stone on which he had been sitting and glanced round. The sun was setting behind the edge of the plateau and the wooded, rounded top of a hill rose up before him.
Below in the twilight murmured a swift rivulet flowing between growths of tall, feathered bamboos. Half a day’s journey on foot or on the back of a buffalo at an even slower pace, stood the almost six-thousand-year-old ruins of the ancient capital of the island. Other bigger and better preserved cities had also been abandoned. Mven Mass took no interest in them so far.
The herd lay like black boulders in the dark grass. Night fell quickly. The stars came out in their thousands to twinkle in the black sky. This was the darkness to which the astronomer was accustomed… the well-known outlines of the constellations… the bright lights of the bigger stars. From there he could see the fatal Tucana — but how weak human eyes are! Never again would he see the magnificent spectacle of the Cosmos, the spirals of the gigantic galaxies, the mysterious planets and blue suns. All these were now only points of light immeasurably distant. Did it matter any more whether they were stars or lanterns hanging on a crystal sphere, as the ancients used to think. To the unaided eye it was all the same!