Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [65]
To Zorlin, of course, I told the whole story; and when we reached Graemantle’s house, near Ithaca, now one of the suburbs of New York, that wise man was taken into confidence. The result was a reconsideration on his part as to the propriety of letting Hammerfleet marry Electra. They were both “Children of the State,” as all persons of unusual physical and mental endowments were permitted to become at the age of forty, after passing through examinations and inspection, and having their internal condition carefully ascertained by X-rays. They were then suitably mated in marriage to someone of equal standard, with a view to perpetuating and increasing the best elements of the race.
All degenerates were kept in asylums, called museums, where they were permitted to have their own literature, music, and amusements under State supervision, with an attempt at gradual reformation; and were not permitted to marry. So, too, criminals were segregated in special districts — the men and the women apart — and were not allowed to marry; in short, were eliminated from the human family and prevented from menacing posterity, all without cruelty or capital punishment.
Now, Hammerfleet had clearly been guilty of an intended crime. He was therefore dismissed from the company of Children of the State, but not yet condemned to imprisonment.
On the other hand, though, I did not come up to the required standard. Besides. I had been only twenty-eight when I was vivificated, and was considered altogether too young to marry Electra, who was forty-five and in the first bloom of womanhood. This made the situation very puzzling. Zorlin, however, recommended that I should not think of marrying anyone.
“In Kuro,” he said one day at breakfast, “we do not marry.”
“Ah! Then Mars must be something like Heaven,” I commented, turning to Eva, who blushed, but did not look unkindly at me. “Suppose we go there,” I added.
“Will you?” She said, with an eager readiness that quite touched me. “Oh, I should so like to go — with you!”
“But how do you keep Kuro populated?” I asked Zorlin.
“We are created, in a manner, spontaneously,” he replied, “by the exertion of will and unselfish desire, and the fulfillment of many conditions of life and character that you Earth people do not understand. I am sorry to say, too, that you never can, owing to your condition, quite understand or fulfill them. You must live in your way, and can live rightly, but not on so high a plane as ours.”
I noticed that he said, “We are created,” not “We create ourselves.” This led to some talk on religion, and he told us a good deal about his home planet. The religion of Kuro is much like Christianity; in fact, it is a clearer, more luminous perception of Christianity than most of us have. God is, for them, the creator; and their belief in the Redemption is the same as ours, except that they take a cosmic view of it in relation to all the inhabitants of all worlds. It is, in their minds, the key of the universe, the solution of the whole problem of life. I shall not go into the matter in this brief memorandum; for, while Zorlin showed that they recognized the sacred history enacted upon Earth as affecting other spheres, he explained that they look upon it as a manifestation of the great central verity which they can also perceive in other manifestations. That which we perceive is perfectly and eternally true; but they think they can see more of this eternal truth, or deeper into it, than we.
I hesitate to dwell on this subject, because — as usual in theological matters his utterances caused much trouble and uproar a little later. That was what he had in mind when he foreboded that his corning would cause disturbance.
It was not long before I learned that there had been a reunion of all Christians on a great and solid basis of harmony; and the advantages of this to the whole earth were very apparent. When I looked back to my old period