Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked RecordGreg, Percy
Science
Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record
Greg, Percy
Science fiction
I need not repeat an answer which, to those familiar with the oldest
language of Terrestrial symbolism, would have occurred as readily as
to myself; and which, if they could understand it, it would not be
well to explain to others. The three principal elements of thought
represented by the doubly-coiled serpent are the same in Mars as on
Earth, confirming in so far the doctrine of the Zinta, that their
symbolic language is not arbitrary, but natural, formed on principles
inherent in the correspondence between things spiritual and physical.
Some similar but trivial query, whose purport I have now forgotten,
was addressed by the junior of the Chiefs to Eveena; and I was struck
by the patient courtesy with which he waited till, after two or three
efforts, she sufficiently recovered her self-possession to understand
and her voice to answer. We then retired, taking our place on seats
remote from the platform, and at some distance from any of our
neighbours.
On a formal invitation, one after another of the brethren rose and
read a brief account of some experiment or discovery in the science of
the Order. The principles taken for granted as fundamental and
notorious truths far transcend the extremest speculations of
Terrestrial mysticism. The powers claimed as of course so infinitely
exceed anything alleged by the most ardent believers in mesmerism,
clairvoyance, or spiritualism, that it would be useless to relate the
few among these experiments which I remember and might be permitted to
repeat. I observed that a phonographic apparatus of a peculiarly
elaborate character wrote down every word of these accounts without
obliging the speakers to approach it; and I was informed that this
automatic reporting is employed in every Martial assembly, scientific,
political, or judicial.
I listened with extreme interest, and was more than satisfied that
Esmo had even underrated the powers claimed by and for the lowest and
least intelligent of his brethren, when he said that these, and these
alone, could give efficient protection or signal vengeance against all
the tremendous physical forces at command of those State authorities,
one of the greatest of whom I had made my personal enemy. One
battalion of Martial guards or police, accompanied by a single battery
of what I may call their artillery, might, even without the aid of a
balloon-squadron, in half-an-hour annihilate or scatter to the winds
the mightiest and bravest army that Europe could send forth. Yet the
Martial State had deliberately, and, I think, with only a due
prudence, shrunk during ages from an open conflict of power with the
few thousand members of this secret but inevitably suspected
organisation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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