Perelandra

‘But, look here, Ransom – I mean …’ my voice trailed away.

‘I know!’ said he with one of his singularly disarming smiles. ‘You are feeling the absurdity of it. Dr Elwin Ransom setting out single-handed to combat powers and principalities. You may even be wondering if I’ve got megalomania.’

‘I didn’t mean that quite,’ said I.

‘Oh, but I think you did. At any rate that is what I have been feeling myself ever since the thing was sprung on me. But when you come to think of it, is it odder than what all of us have to do every day? When the Bible used that very expression about fighting with principalities and powers and depraved hypersomatic beings at great heights (our translation is very misleading at that point, by the way) it meant that quite ordinary people were to do the fighting.’

‘Oh, I dare say,’ said I. ‘But that’s rather different. That refers to a moral conflict.’

Ransom threw back his head and laughed. ‘Oh, Lewis, Lewis,’ he said, ‘you are inimitable, simply inimitable!’

‘Say what you like, Ransom, there is a difference.’

‘Yes. There is. But not a difference that makes it megalomania to think that any of us might have to fight either way. I’ll tell you how I look at it. Haven’t you noticed how in our own little war here on earth, there are different phases, and while any one phase is going on people get into the habit of thinking and behaving as if it was going to be permanent? But really the thing is changing under your hands all the time, and neither your assets nor your dangers this year are the same as the year before. Now your idea that ordinary people will never have to meet the Dark Eldila in any form except a psychological or moral form – as temptations or the like – is simply an idea that held good for a certain phase of the cosmic war: the phase of the great siege, the phase which gave to our planet its name of Thulcandra, the silent planet. But supposing that phase is passing? In the next phase it may be anyone’s job to meet them … well, in some quite different mode.’

‘I see.’

‘Don’t imagine I’ve been selected to go to Perelandra because I’m anyone in particular. One never can see, or not till long afterwards, why any one was selected for any job. And when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly, it is never for what the man himself would have regarded as his chief qualifications. I rather fancy I am being sent because those two blackguards who kidnapped me and took me to Malacandra, did something which they never intended: namely, gave a human being a chance to learn that language.’

‘What language do you mean?’

‘Hressa-Hlab, of course. The language I learned in Malacandra.’

‘But surely you don’t imagine they will speak the same language on Venus?’

‘Didn’t I tell you about that?’ said Ransom, leaning forward. We were now at table and had nearly finished our cold meat and beer and tea. ‘I’m surprised I didn’t, for I found out two or three months ago, and scientifically it is one of the most interesting things about the whole affair. It appears we were quite mistaken in thinking Hressa-Hlab the peculiar speech of Mars. It is really what may be called Old Solar, Hlab-Eribol-ef-Cordi.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘I mean that there was originally a common speech for all rational creatures inhabiting the planets of our system: those that were ever inhabited, I mean – what the eldila call the Low Worlds. Most of them, of course, have never been inhabited and never will be. At least not what we’d call inhabited. That original speech was lost on Thulcandra, our own world, when our whole tragedy took place. No human language now known in the world is descended from it.’

‘But what about the other two languages on Mars?’

‘I admit I don’t understand about them. One thing I do know, and I believe I could prove it on purely philological grounds. They are incomparably less ancient than Hressa-Hlab, specially Surnibur, the speech of the sorns. I believe it could be shown that Surnibur is, by Malacandrian standards, quite a modern development. I doubt if its birth can be put farther back than a date which would fall within our Cambrian Period.’

‘And you think you will find Hressa-Hlab, or Old Solar, spoken on Venus?’

‘Yes. I shall arrive knowing the language. It saves a lot of trouble – though, as a philologist, I find it rather disappointing.’

‘But you’ve no idea what you are to do, or what conditions you will find?’

‘No idea at all what I’m to do. There are jobs, you know where it is essential that one should not know too much beforehand … things one might have to say which one couldn’t say effectively if one had prepared them. As to conditions, well, I don’t know much. It will be warm: I’m to go naked. Our astronomers don’t know anything about the surface of Perelandra at all. The outer layer of her atmosphere is too thick. The main problem, apparently, is whether she revolves on her own axis or not, and at what speed. There are two schools of thought. There’s a man called Schiaparelli who thinks she revolves once on herself in the same time it takes her to go once round Arbol – I mean, the Sun. The other people think she revolves on her own axis once in every twenty-three hours. That’s one of the things I shall find out.’

‘If Schiaparelli is right there’d be perpetual day on one side of her and perpetual night on the other?’

He nodded, musing. ‘It’d be a funny frontier,’ he said presently. ‘Just think of it. You’d come to a country of eternal twilight, getting colder and darker every mile you went. And then presently you wouldn’t be able to go farther because there’d be no more air. I wonder can you stand in the day, just on the right side of the frontier, and look into the night which you can never reach? And perhaps see a star or two – the only place you could see them, for of course in the Day-Lands they would never be visible … Of course if they have a scientific civilisation they may have diving-suits or things like submarines on wheels for going into the Night.’

His eyes sparkled, and even I, who had been mainly thinking of how I should miss him and wondering what chances there were of my ever seeing him again, felt a vicarious thrill of wonder and of longing to know. Presently he spoke again.

‘You haven’t yet asked me where you come in,’ he said.

‘Do you mean I’m to go too?’ said I, with a thrill of exactly the opposite kind.

‘Not at all. I mean you are to pack me up, and to stand by to unpack me when I return – if all goes well.’

‘Pack you? Oh, I’d forgotten about that coffin affair. Ransom, how on earth are you going to travel in that thing? What’s the motive power? What about air – and food – and water? There’s only just room for you to lie in it.’

‘The Oyarsa of Malacandra himself will be the motive power. He will simply move it to Venus. Don’t ask me how. I have no idea what organs or instruments they use. But a creature who has kept a planet in its orbit for several billions of years will be able to manage a packing-case!’

‘But what will you eat? How will you breathe?’

‘He tells me I shall need to do neither. I shall be in some state of suspended animation, as far as I can make out. I can’t understand him when he tries to describe it. But that’s his affair.’

‘Do you feel quite happy about it?’ said I, for a sort of horror was beginning once more to creep over me.

‘If you mean, Does my reason accept the view that he will (accidents apart) deliver me safe on the surface of Perelandra? – the answer is Yes,’ said Ransom. ‘If you mean, Do my nerves and my imagination respond to this view? – I’m afraid the answer is No. One can believe in anaesthetics and yet feel in a panic when they actually put the mask over your face. I think I feel as a man who believes in the future life feels when he is taken out to face a firing party. Perhaps it’s good practice.’

‘And I’m to pack you into that accursed thing?’ said I.

‘Yes,’ said Ransom. ‘That’s the first step. We must get out into the garden as soon as the sun is up and point it so that there are no trees or buildings in the way. Across the cabbage bed will do. Then I get in – with a bandage across my eyes, for those walls won’t keep out all the sunlight once I’m beyond the air – and you screw me down. After that, I think you’ll just see it glide off.’

‘And then?’

‘Well, then comes the difficult part. You must hold yourself in readiness to come down here again the moment you are summoned, to take off the lid and let me out when I return.’

‘When do you expect to return?’

‘Nobody can say. Six months – a year – twenty years. That’s the trouble. I’m afraid I’m laying a pretty heavy burden on you.’

‘I might be dead.’

‘I know. I’m afraid part of your burden is to select a successor: at once, too. There are four or five people whom we can trust.’

‘What will the summons be?’

‘Oyarsa will give it. It won’t be mistakable for anything else. You needn’t bother about that side of it. One other point. I’ve no particular reason to suppose I shall come back wounded. But just in case – if you can find a doctor whom we can let into the secret, it might be just as well to bring him with you when you come down to let me out.’

‘Would Humphrey do?’

‘The very man. And now for some more personal matters. I’ve had to leave you out of my will, and I’d like you to know why.’

‘My dear chap, I never thought about your will till this moment.’

‘Of course not. But I’d like to have left you something. The reason I haven’t, is this. I’m going to disappear. It is possible I may not come back. It’s just conceivable there might be a murder trial, and if so one can’t be too careful. I mean, for your sake. And now for one or two other private arrangements.’

We laid our heads together and for a long time we talked about those matters which one usually discusses with relatives and not with friends. I got to know a lot more about Ransom than I had known before, and from the number of odd people whom he recommended to my care, ‘If ever I happened to be able to do anything’, I came to realise the extent and intimacy of his charities. With every sentence the shadow of approaching separation and a kind of graveyard gloom began to settle more emphatically upon us. I found myself noticing and loving all sorts of little mannerisms and expressions in him such as we notice always in a woman we love, but notice in a man only as the last hours of his leave run out or the date of the probably fatal operation draws near. I felt our nature’s incurable incredulity; and could hardly believe that what was now so close, so tangible and (in a sense) so much at my command, would in a few hours be wholly inaccessible, an image – soon, even an elusive image – in my memory. And finally a sort of shyness fell between us because each knew what the other was feeling. It had got very cold.

‘We must be going soon,’ said Ransom.