THE twenty-second of June, of the year 2001, was Miriam Mayne’s birthday—her twenty-first. She and her father, Terence Mayne, the billionaire contractor, had arranged to meet at the Long Island house for dinner. After an early breakfast, she kissed him good-by; he went down-town to business, and she to her room, to put on her traveling dress.
A glorious day it was! When the tall girl stepped from the window of her room on to the balcony, the sun embraced her graceful figure as if it loved her; the perfume of flowers rose up like incense; two humming-birds, busy with the morning-glories, buzzed a welcome; the air was warm but exhilarating. She mounted to the wide parapet of the balcony and stood poised for a moment before starting on her journey.
She was clad in a dove-colored suit of a tunic and trousers to the knee, fitting snugly, but allowing freedom of movement. On her feet she wore a pair of sandals, with appendages on the heel resembling the talaria of Greek myth, ascribed to Iris and Mercury; but for the wings were substituted triangular projections of a pliable metal with a silvery sheen. Over her head was drawn a close-fitting cap, fastened securely under the chin, and bearing wing-like excrescences similar to the foot-gear. A wide belt or girdle encircled her waist; it was formed of narrow vertical pieces connected together, and four buttons or small knobs appeared on the front of it, where they could be readily reached by either hand. In her right hand she carried a light staff.
The art of personal flight was still a novelty at this period, though the principle of it had been known for several years. Only persons of sound physical and mental coordinations were apt to attempt it. Miriam had not only passed the government tests, but was considered an expert.
With an upward swing of the arms, she leaped into the air; the drop to the pavement of the court below was some fifty feet; but she rose upward as if she had no weight, and continued her ascent until she hovered at a height of a couple of thousand feet above the far-extending city of New York. There she paused, gazing hither and thither at the magnificent prospect.
From the Battery to Harlem, the surface of Manhattan Island was covered with handsome villas and mansions, of white or tinted marble, standing each in an ample enclosure of green turf studded with trees and flower-beds. Several miles to the south rose the superb turreted pile of the new Madison Square Garden, like a fairy palace, of white marble set off with pinnacles and trimmings of gold. It was Terence Mayne’s crowning achievement, and was still unfinished. The East and North Rivers were spanned by between three and four hundred bridges, lofty and wide, made of a metallic substance that glittered and shone in the sun. The beds of the rivers themselves were laid with white concrete, over which the water flowed blue and transparent. Northward, beyond the island, the city proper stretched for forty miles, following the course of the Hudson, but extending westward over a breadth of five miles into New Jersey; the home of nearly fifteen millions of people. From side to side, and from end to end, no smoke fouled the clear air, and no sign of factories or of business traffic was visible. But the entire area had been excavated to a depth of a thousand feet, and here, layer beneath layer, were housed the business activities of the metropolis.
Miriam was not unfamiliar with these subterranean regions. Illuminated by the electron light, and ventilated by the carbon process, and kept at an even temperature of seventy degrees Fahrenheit, they were wholesome and pleasant, and many thousands of the inhabitants never troubled themselves to appear above-ground from year’s end to year’s end. Except for the absence of sun, moon and stars, life in this artificial world was as agreeable and convenient as on the surface. But sun, moon and stars, and the fathomless depths of space, were indispensable to Miriam’s happiness.
She now pointed her staff eastward, and began to move gently in that direction. She was using the ten-mile-an-hour stop in her belt; she had no present need for haste. She flew, leaning forward on the air, at an inclination of about twenty degrees from the vertical, without movement of her limbs. Few individual fliers were abroad, and they passed at a distance. But three of the great Atlantic liners were setting their course east and southeast; and high overhead, flocks of buses carrying business men were sliding swiftly toward the lower part of the city. In spite of its external transformation, New York, in some human respects, had not changed much in the last hundred years.
In crossing the Sound, a sea-gull flew past Miriam, and she, by a sudden turn, swept so close by it that she was almost able to touch its wing. It dodged and dived with a scream. Smiling to herself, she gave a supple impulse to her body, which caused her to slant slightly downward across the Sound toward the Long Island shore. Five hundred feet above the ground she resumed a horizontal course, moving slowly across the green lawns and parklike enclosures that surrounded the sumptuous county-seats of this district. It was a fair sight; but the sun, now forty-five degrees above the sea-line, dazzled her eyes; she turned her body with a leisurely and luxurious motion until she lay with her face toward the western sky, where a snowy flock of gossamer fine-weather clouds was strung across the blue. She was now carried along as if reclining on a couch, and did not change her posture until she heard the rhythm of the surf on the great eastern beaches. Fetching herself upright again, she touched the gravitation-control in her belt, and sank slowly, guiding herself with her staff toward the left. In a few minutes she alighted buoyantly on the soft turf of the great Mayne estate.
Fifty yards before her rose a grassy mound, with a sort of summer-house on its summit; the place was protected by a grove of tall pines, disposed in a wide semicircle between the dwelling-house and the ocean. Entering the pavilion, she quickly threw off her flying-suit, and running down the steps to the beach, she plunged into the surf. So was Artemis, in the seclusion of her temple precincts, wont to bathe on the Lydian shore of the Ægean. Heading out beyond the breakers, Miriam swam and dived and splashed up diamond spray in the thrilling coolness. At length she came ashore, borne on the crest of a white-maned steed of the sea, and ran back, a virgin shaft of glistening whiteness, to the pavilion. Thence, after an interval, she reissued, robed in a flowing gown of purple wool, lined with orange silk. She seated herself on a curved bench of marble that stood on the seaward crest of the knoll, and spread out her black hair, thick and long, to dry in the sun. Seated thus at ease, and secure from all disturbance, Miriam fell into a reverie, which gradually became profound. The intense but restricted sphere of personal consciousness closed itself in the broad, steady luminousness of perception which comprises and permeates the individual as does the ocean its waves. The beautiful capacities of nature became transparent.
A voice of agreeable quality was speaking to her “Miriam!” The call had been repeated several times before she recognized her own name. No one was within sight or hearing. She knew the methods by which, in late times, science had overcome space for both ear and eye; but this voice was using a method unknown to her.
“Hold yourself still,” it now said, “and you will see me.”
She imposed quiescence upon mind and body. A shadow flickered for a moment before her, and vanished. It came again, less vague. Upon the empty air between herself and the sea it gradually defined itself. A tall, grave figure in a dark robe with a black silk cap on its head. The face was pale, with large, black eyes under level brows, it expressed tranquility and power. As she gazed, a blue star surrounded by a ring glimmered forth over the figure’s left breast. The lips moved, and the quiet voice spoke again.
“I have observed you for a year. We are companions of the star. We can help each other. Will you meet me?”
“What star?” asked Miriam, though she did not speak aloud.
“Saturn! The desire of your heart may be accomplished. I have found the way, but can go no further without you. Will you meet me?”
The eyes of the apparition, meeting hers gravely and almost sternly, communicated confidence. The speaker was a woman.
“I am willing!” said Miriam after a long look.
The expression of the face softened.
“You will receive a letter to-morrow. I have taken this method that you might act freely. Without sympathy there could be no—” The voice died away; the figure dimmed and a quivering passed through the air-drawn scene. The next moment, nothing was visible but the sun-steeped sea and shore.
Miriam stayed where she was for a long time. The influence had not been hypnotic, but had conveyed a strong sense of spiritual harmony and of enlightenment. She recognized the value of spontaneity. Knowledge was not acquisition, but revelation. Her visitor had understood her need.
Miriam was a woman of her time. After acquiring political equality with man, the other sex had soon turned from political activities to science. Her more finely organized and fresher brain and her spiritual intuition opened to her realms of conquest over nature and methods of achieving it hitherto unimagined. The revolutionary investigations and discoveries of later years had been woman’s work. Etheric heat, planetary motive-power, electron light were gifts from woman’s hand. She had divined the parallelism between material fact and spiritual truth. A lever so powerful began to make the rock of human ignorance stir in its bed. The birthday of the universal man seemed near.
To Miriam, keeping abreast of progress, had come some time since the dream of actual interplanetary communication, not by interchange of signals merely, but by bodily transference from the earth to other worlds of our system. She had never confided this ambition to any person, and her fantom visitor had been the first to divine it—for such had seemed to be her intimation. Her father, a man of a past age, never suspected it. All the girl’s studies had had this ambition for their end, but hitherto her progress had seemed small. But to-day for the first time she could feel, with a tremulous joy, that her labor and self-discipline had fitted her for what was to come. A powerful hand had grasped hers and a profound and fearless intelligence would direct her course. It was an added joy to know that her cooperation was needed even for her guide’s masterful intelligence.
The personal equation had begun to be recognized as the most important agency of man’s rule over nature. It found its analogy in the inter-atomic force. By solving the true nature of the isolation which the personal equation implies, the way to its mastery was found to lie in the compensating attraction of innate sympathies. Proper use of this vital truth could result in achievements otherwise unattainable and seemingly miraculous.
Miriam’s mother, a lovely and intelligent woman, had died when the girl was fifteen; her father, though a man of the old fashion, was in his way a genius, of immense energy and ability; and the whole tide of his ardent Celtic nature flowed into love for his daughter. He had the insight to perceive that she must allowed great freedom of choice and action in order to secure her best development; he let her make her own rules of conduct and education, and merely supplied whatever means and facilities she required; there was complete mutual love and confidence between them. She came and went, studied and played, as she pleased, without supervision or question; and as she grew up the visible results were fully satisfactory. Her bodily strength and symmetry were united with supple grace; she was trained in the great gymnasiums which the influence of the king had made fashionable; she was expert in fencing, swimming, running and wrestling; and, besides her aptness in flying, was a consummate horsewoman. Terence Mayne never learned personal flight, and hardly liked to have his girl “mix herself up with a lot of ducks and geese,” as he put it; but he was always eager and proud to act as her cavalier on a ride, and they were often seen cantering down the Long Drive side by side, he with his bushy gray hair uncovered to the breeze, thumping up and down on his big hunter; she undulating easily beside him on her fine-limbed Arab. The vision of her beauty haunted the dreams of many an impassioned youth. But Miriam, though always kind and frank, drew back from male intimacies. She was wedded to science and desired no human husband. Her father forbore to urge her.
“A pretty gal is a good thing; let ’em stay so long as they will. The woman in ’em will have her say in the long run; don’t let us be meddling!” This was his rejoinder to the suggestions of sympathetic friends.
On her side, she recognized his cordial and sociable temperament, and never refused her cooperation in his great dinners and receptions—a queenlike presence, with her black hair and sea-gray eyes, moving through the glowing vistas of the great rooms. Side by side with her intellectual proclivities, there was in her a deep emotional quality, which found expression in forms of art, and which she used to give distinction to the plans and details of her father’s social enterprises.
But the greater part of her time was devoted to thoughts and effort far removed from such matters; these had for her a sort of sanctity, due to their exalted character. Science, in that age, had a spiritual soul which lifted it toward the religious level. The solution of her problems was connected with the future of mankind; it required courage to face even the prevision of them. Transcendent moments visited her, mingled with a sentiment of profound personal humility. She was conscious at times of an appalling loneliness, chilling her to the finger-tips with delicious terrors. But anon the warm blood flowed back to her heart, and she would rise and pace her chamber, crowned with the hope of being forever known and blessed as the giver to her race of unimagined benefits.
Her spectral interview on the Long Island estate brought a new influence to her. The next morning at breakfast she found the most commonplace-looking letter imaginable beside her plate. The contents were as follows:
DEAR MIRIAM:
My laboratory is at Seven Hundred and Ninety-Sixth Street, near the river. Come at three o’clock any day. Pardon the abrupt way I presented myself yesterday. It was made possible by our saturnian affiliations. I am still a little awkward about it—the interruption was caused by an accident to the coordination. I hope to fulfil your expectations. I am myself more than ever convinced that we shall achieve together something that will modify the course of human history.
Sincerely yours, MARY FAUST.
Miriam looked across at her father, who was immersed in his business mail. How near and dear to her he was, and yet how far removed! Distance is but the relation of one mind to another; we may be closer to the Pleiades than to the companion whose arm is linked in our own. But diameters of sidereal systems cannot sever us from those we love.
She said nothing to her father; but that afternoon she privately visited Mme. Faust’s laboratory; and thus began a secret connection destined to have important issues.