Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale)

CHAPTER NINE A THIRD CYCLE SCHOOL

Third Cycle School No. 410 was situated in Southern Ireland. Broad fields, vineyards and oak groves ran down the slopes of the green hills to the very sea. Veda Kong and Evda Nahl arrived when the children were still in class; they walked along a corridor running round class- rooms on the perimeter of a circular building. The day was dull with a drizzle of rain so that all classes were being held indoors instead of out in the open as was more usual.

Veda Kong felt like a schoolgirl again as she crept up to listen at the entrances to the classrooms which, as in the majority of schools, were without doors and shut off by overlapping projecting walls. Evda Nahl joined in the game and the two women peeped into class after class in an attempt to find Evda’s daughter and remain unnoticed themselves.

In the first classroom they saw a drawing in blue chalk covering the whole length of one wall: it showed a vector that was encircled by a spiral unfolding along it. Two sections of the spiral were encircled by transverse ellipses in which a system of rectangular coordinates was inscribed.

“Bipolar mathematics[21]!” exclaimed Veda in mock horror.

“This is something more than that! Wait a minute!” said Evda.

“Now that we know something about the shadow functions of the cochlear[22], or spiral progressive movement, that occurs along the vector,” — the elderly teacher with deep-set, blazing eyes, thickened one of the lines with his chalk — ’’we are close to understanding the repagular calculus. The name of the calculus comes from the ancient Latin word ‘repagulum,’ a barrier or obstacle, and it is the transition from one quality to another, seen in a two-sided aspect.” The teacher pointed to an extensive ellipse across the spiral. “In other words, it is the mathematical analysis of mutually transitional phenomena….”

Veda Kong disappeared behind the outjutting wall, pulling her companion after her.

“That’s something new! It’s from that branch of mathematics Renn Bose was talking to us about down on the seashore.”

“The school always gives its pupils the newest of everything and discards whatever is outworn. If new generations repeat old conceptions how can we expect to ensure rapid progress? As it is, a terrible amount of time elapses before a child takes its place in the relay race of knowledge. It takes dozens of years for a child to become fully educated and ready to undertake gigantic tasks. This pulsation of the generations, where you take one step forward and nine-tenths backward — backward while the next shift in the relay is learning — is that most difficult of all biological laws for man, the law of death and renascence. Much of what we learned in mathematics, physics and biology is already out of date. Your history is different, it grows old more slowly because it is very old itself.”

They glanced into another room. The schoolmistress, standing with her back to them, and the interested children, did not notice them. The attentive faces of the pupils — they were young men and women seventeen years of age, in the higher classes of the Third Cycle School — and their burning cheeks told how thrilled they were with the lesson.

“We, the human race, have passed through many trials,” the voice of the teacher resounded with her excitement, “and the most important thing in your school history is the study of the historic mistakes made by man and their consequences. We have passed through the stage of the unbearable complication of life and things used by man and have arrived at extreme simplicity. The complication of life led dialectically to the simplification of spiritual culture. There must not be any unnecessary thing to tie man up, his experiences and perceptions are finer when he leads a simple life. Everything relating to everyday life is studied by the best brains as befits important scientific problems. We have followed the general line of development of the animal kingdom which was directed towards the liberation of attention by making movements automatic and developing reflexes in the work of the nervous system. The automation of the productive forces of society created an analogous reflex system of control in production economy and released many people for what is now man’s chief occupation — scientific research. Nature has provided us with a big brain capable of scientific inquiry although at first it was only used to search for food and investigate its edibility.”

“Very good!” whispered Evda Nahl and at that moment noticed her daughter. The girl did not suspect anything and sat staring in contemplation at the corrugated glass that prevented the pupils from seeing what was going on outside the classroom.

Veda Kong was curious to compare her with her mother. They had the same long straight hair, the daughter’s plaited with a blue thread and tied up in two big loops. Both had the same oval face, narrow at the chin and somewhat babyish from the too high forehead and the high cheekbones protruding below the temples. A snow-white sweater of artificial wool stressed the dark paleness of the girl’s skin and the acute blackness of her eyes, eyebrows and eyelashes. A necklace of red coral harmonized with the girl’s unquestionably original appearance.

Evda’s daughter, like all other pupils, wore wide shorts, hers differing only in a red fringe that was stitched into the seams.

“An American Indian ornament,” whispered Evda Nahl in answer to her friend’s inquiring glance.

Evda and Veda just had time to step back into the corridor when the teacher left the room followed by several pupils, Evda’s daughter amongst them. The girl stopped suddenly in her tracks as she noticed her mother, her pride and an example to be followed. Although Evda did not know it, there was a circle of her admirers in the school, youngsters who had decided to take the same road in life as she had taken.

“Mother!” whispered the girl, casting a shy glance at her mother’s companion and clinging to Evda.

The teacher stopped and then came over to them, giving them a nod of greeting.

“I must inform the school council,” she said, disregarding Evda’s gesture of protest, “we must gain something from your visit.”

“Better take advantage of her visit,” said Evda as she introduced Veda Kong.

The history teacher blushed deeply and looked like a young girl.

“That’s fine!” she said, trying to keep her tone businesslike. “The school is about to graduate the senior groups and a word from Evda Nahl to send them on their way coupled with a review of the ancient cultures and races from Veda Kong will be something for our youth to remember! Won’t it, Rhea?”

Evda’s daughter clapped her hands. The teacher ran with the light gait of a gymnast to the subsidiary premises, contained in a long straight building.

“Rhea, can you cut out the polytechnics lesson today and come for a walk?” Evda suggested to her daughter. “I shan’t be able to see you again before you have to choose your matriculation tasks. Last time we didn’t come to a decision.”

Rhea did not answer but took her mother’s hand. In each of the school cycles the lessons were interspersed with polytechnics. At the moment they were to have one of Rhea’s favourite occupations, the grinding of optical lenses, but what could be more interesting or more important than her mother’s arrival?

Veda went away to a little observatory that she could see in the distance, leaving mother and daughter alone. Rhea, clasping her mother’s strong arm like a child, walked beside her wrapped in thought.

“Where’s your little Kay?” asked Evda and the girl grew noticeably sad. Kay had been a ward of hers — the older school-children paid regular visits to first- and second cycle schools in their vicinity to help with the teaching and upbringing of wards they had selected. Integrated help for the teachers was absolutely essential to ensure thoroughness of education.

“Kay was promoted to the second cycle and has gone far away from here. It’s such a pity… why do they move us from place to place every four years, when we are promoted to the next cycle?”

‘“The psyche is wearied and becomes sluggish where there is a uniformity of impressions and perception becomes duller. The efficiency of teaching and upbringing grows less year by year. That is why the twelve years of schooling are divided into three four-year cycles and you move to another school after every cycle, each time to a different part of the planet. It is only the babies in the zero cycle, from one to four years, that do not need any change of place and conditions of upbringing.”

“And why does each cycle have separate schools and separate living quarters?”

"As you little people grow up and are trained you become qualitatively different beings. If different age groups live together it makes their training more difficult and is annoying to the youngsters themselves. We have reduced the differences to a minimum by dividing the children into three age groups, but this is still not a perfect system.

The first cycle, for example, obviously needs splitting into two groups, and that will soon be done. But let us talk first about your affairs and your dreams for the future. I shall have to deliver a lecture to all of you and may be able to answer your questions.”

Rhea began to confide her innermost thoughts to her mother with the frankness of a child of the Great Circle Era who had never experienced hurtful ridicule or misunderstanding. The girl was the incarnation of youth that as yet knew nothing of life but was full of contemplative anticipation. At the age of seventeen the girl was finishing school and starting her three-year period of matriculation tasks, working amongst adults. After the tasks her interests and abilities would be clearly defined. A two-year higher education would follow that would give her the right to independent work in the chosen field. In the course of a long life a man or woman had time to take higher educational courses in five or six different fields, changing work from time to time, but a great deal depended on the choice of the first difficult tasks — the Labours of Hercules, or matriculation tasks. They were chosen after long contemplation and always following the advice of older people.

“Have you passed the graduation psychological tests yet?” asked Evda.

“Yes. I got 20 and 24 in the first eight groups, 18 and 19 in the tenth and thirteenth and even 17 in the seventeenth!” exclaimed Rhea proudly.

“That’s wonderful!” said Evda in pleased tones. “Everything is open to you. Have you stuck to the choice you made for the first task?”

“Yes, I’m going to be a nurse on the Island of Oblivion, and then all our circle are going to work at the Jutland Psychological Hospital.”

Rhea told her mother about the circle of her “followers.” Evda had plenty of good-natured jokes to make about these zealous psychologists but nevertheless Rhea persuaded her mother to be mentor for the members of the group who were also at the time selecting their tasks.

“I shall have to live here until the end of my holiday,” laughed Evda, “and what will Veda Kong do?”

The girl suddenly remembered her mother’s companion.

“She’s very nice,” said Rhea, seriously, “and almost as beautiful as you are!”

“She’s much more beautiful!”

“No, I know… and it’s not because you’re my mother,” said the girl, bashfully. “Perhaps she’s better at first glance but you have a spiritual tabernacle within you that Veda Kong hasn’t yet got. I don’t say she won’t have, it’s just that she hasn’t built it yet… but she’ll build it and then….”

“Then she’ll outshine your mother like a moon outshines the stars.”

Rhea shook her head.

“And are you going to stand still? You’ll go farther than she!”

Evda passed her hand over the girl’s smooth hair and looked down into her upturned face.

“Isn’t that enough eulogy, daughter? We’re wasting time!”

Veda Kong walked slowly down an avenue that led her deeper into a grove of broad-leaved maples, whose heavy moist foliage rustled dully. The first wraiths of the evening mist were making an effort to rise from a nearby meadow but they were instantly dispersed by the wind. Veda Kong was pondering over the mobile tranquillity of nature and thinking that the sites for the schools were always so well chosen. The development of a keen perception of nature and a sensitive communion with nature were an important part of the child’s training. Dulled interest in nature is, in actual fact, an impediment to man’s development, for one who has forgotten how to observe will soon lose the ability to generalize. Veda thought about the ability to teach, the most important of all competencies in the age when they had at last learned that upbringing was more important than education and was the only way to prepare the child for the difficult job of being a real man. The basis, of course, is provided by inherent abilities but they might easily be left undeveloped, without that chiselling of the human spirit that is done by the pedagogue.

Veda’s mind turned back to those distant days when she had been a third cycle schoolgirl, a mass of contradictions, burning with the desire to sacrifice herself and at the same time judging the world by herself alone, with all the egocentrism of healthy youth. How much the teachers did for her in those days — in truth there is no loftier profession in this world of ours than that of teacher!

The future of mankind is in the hands of the teacher for it is only by his efforts that man rises ever higher and becomes more and more powerful, coping with the most arduous of all tasks, that of overcoming himself, his greedy self-love and his unbridled desires.

Veda Kong turned towards a small bay surrounded by pines where she could hear the sounds of youthful voices; soon she came upon a dozen boys in plastic aprons busily trimming an oak beam with axes, instruments that had been invented as far back as the stone age. The young builders greeted the historian respectfully and explained to her that they wanted to build a vessel without the aid of automatic saws and other machinery, in the same way as the heroes of ancient days had done. The ship, when built, was to take them to the ruins of Carthage, a trip they wanted to make during their vacation, accompanied by the teachers of geography, history and polytechnics.

Veda wished them success and intended to continue on her way. A tall, thin lad with absolutely yellow hair stepped forward.

“You came here with Evda Nahl, didn’t you? Then may I ask you a couple of questions?”

Veda laughingly consented.

“Evda Nahl works at the Academy of Sorrow and Joy. We have studied the social organization of our planet and of several other worlds, but we have not been told the significance of that Academy.”

Veda told them of the great census conducted by the Academy to compute sorrow and happiness in the lives of individuals and investigate sorrow by age groups. It was followed by an analysis of sorrow and joy for all the stages of the historical development of mankind. No matter what qualitative differences there may have been in emotions, the sum totals, investigated by big number stochastic[23] methods, showed some important regularities. The Councils that directed the further development of society did their utmost to correct any worsening and ensure improvement. Only when joy predominated, or at least counterbalanced sorrow, was it considered that society was developing successfully.

“And so the Academy of Sorrow and Joy is the most important?” asked another boy, one with bold eyes. The others smiled and the boy who had first spoken to Veda Kong explained what they were laughing at.

“Oil is always looking for what is most important. He dreams about the great leaders of the past….”

“That’s a dangerous thing to do,” smiled Veda. “As an historian I can tell you that the great leaders were people who were themselves tied hand and foot and very dependent.”

“Tied up by the conventionalism of their actions?” asked the yellow-haired boy.

“Exactly. But you must remember that that was in the unevenly and spontaneously developing ancient societies of the Era of Disunity or even earlier. Today, leadership invested in each of the Councils and is expressed by the fact that the action of all the others is impossible without it.”

“What about the Economic Council? Without that Council nobody can undertake anything big,” Oil objected cautiously, somewhat abashed but still not confused.

“That’s true because economics are the only real basis of our existence. But it seems to me that you don’t have quite the right idea of what constitutes leadership. Have you studied the cytoarchitectonics[24] of the human brain?”

The boys said that they had.

Veda took a stick from one of them and in the sand drew circles to represent the administrative bodies.

“Here in the centre is the Economic Council. We will draw direct links from it to the consultative bodies: the ASJ, the Academy of Sorrow and Joy, the APF, the Academy of Productive Forces, the ASP the Academy of Stochastics and Prognostication, the APL, the Academy of the Psychophysiology of Labour. There is lateral connection with the Astronautical Council, a body that functions independently. From the latter there is direct communication with the ADR, the Academy of Directed Radiation, and the Outer Stations of the Great Circle. Further….”

Veda drew an intricate diagram in the sand and continued.

“Isn’t that just like the human brain? The research and registration centres are the sensory nerve centres. The Councils are the associative centres. You know that all life consists of the dialectics of attraction and repulsion, the rhythm of dispersal and accumulation, excitation and inhibition. The chief inhibition centre is the Economic Council that translates everything into the actual possibilities of the social organism and its objective laws. Our brain and our society, both of which are persistently advancing, have this dialectic interplay of opposing forces brought into harmonic action. There was a time, long ago, when this was incorrectly termed cybernetics, or the science of control, in an attempt to reduce the most intricate interplay of inhibitions to the relatively simple functioning of a machine. That attempt, however, was due to ignorance; the greater the knowledge we acquired the more complicated we found the phenomena and laws of thermodynamics, biology, and economics, and simplified conceptions of nature or the processes of social development disappeared for ever.”

The boys listened to Veda spellbound.

“What is the chief thing in such a social structure?” she asked the lover of “chiefs” and “leaders.” He was so put out that he could not think of an answer and the first boy came to his rescue.

“Its forward movement!” he answered, boldly.

“A prize for such an excellent answer!” exclaimed Veda admiringly; she looked at herself and then took an enamel brooch, depicting an albatross over the blue sea, from her left shoulder. She offered it to the lad on the palm of her hand. He was shyly hesitant.

“As a reminder of today’s talk and… of forward movement!” Veda insisted and the lad took the albatross.

Holding up the blouse that was slipping from her shoulder Veda made her way back through the park. The brooch had been a present from Erg Noor and her sudden urge to give it away meant a lot — amongst other things it meant a strange desire to get rid of the past as quickly as possible, to get rid of what had been or was being left behind….

The entire population of the school-town gathered in the round hall in the centre of the school building. Evda Nahl, in a black dress, stood on the central dais, illuminated from above, calmly studying the rows of people in the audience. The people maintained perfect silence, listening to her clear but not loud voice. Screaming loudspeakers were used only for safety precautions and large halls had ceased to be necessary since the stereoscopic televisophone (TVP) had come into general use.

“Seventeen is the turning point in life. Soon you will pronounce the traditional words at a meeting of the Irish Educational Division:

“You, my elders, who have called me to a life of endeavour, accept my ability and my desire, accept my labour and teach me by day and by night. Hold out to me the hand of help, for the road is a hard one, and I will follow you.’

“A very great deal is understood between the lines of this ancient formula and that is what I am going to talk about today.

“From childhood you have been taught the philosophy of dialectics that long ago, in the secret books of the ancients, was called the Secret of Duality. It was believed that its power could only be achieved by the initiated — mentally and morally lofty and strong individuals. From childhood you have looked upon the world through the laws of dialectics and its mighty strength is now at everybody’s service. You have been born into a well-ordered society created by countless generations of unknown toilers and those who struggled for a better life in the dark ages of cruelty and tyranny. Five hundred generations have passed since the formation of the first society with a division of labour. In the course of that time the various races and nations of the globe have mingled. Every one of us has drops of blood, or, as we should say today, the mechanics of heredity, in him from each of those peoples. A tremendous amount of work has been done to purge heredity of the consequences of the incautious handling of radioactive materials and from the diseases that were formerly widespread and interfered with it.

“The upbringing of the new man is an elaborate task involving personal analysis and a very cautious approach to each individual. The time has gone beyond recall when society could be satisfied with people who had been brought up casually, whose insufficiencies were excused by heredity or by man’s inherent nature. Every badly brought up person is today a reproach to the whole community, a grave mistake made by a large number of people.

“You, who have not yet freed yourselves of the egocentrism of youth or of an overestimation of your own ego must get a clear understanding of how much depends on your own selves, to how great an extent you are the creators of your own freedom and of an interest in life. Many roads are open to each of you and this freedom of choice carries with it full responsibility for that choice.

Gone for all time are the back-to-nature dreams of the uncultured, dreams of the freedom of primitive society and primitive relations. Humanity, a union of gigantic masses of people, was faced with the final choice — either submit to social discipline, lengthy teaching and training, or perish; there was no other way to live on our planet, generous as her nature is. The puny philosophers who dreamed of nature did not understand her or love her as she should be loved — if they had they would have known her merciless cruelty.

“The man of the new society was inevitably faced with the necessity of disciplining his desires, will and thoughts. The struggle against the personal, against the ‘I’ that is man’s most dangerous enemy, is essential for the good of society and for the maximum expansion of his own intellect. This method of training mind and will is today obligatory for every one of us as is the training of the body. The study of the laws of nature and of society with its economics has replaced desire by definite knowledge. When we say ‘I want to’ we mean ‘I know that it can be done.’

“There is one other enemy amongst you, an enemy against whom we fight from the time the child makes its first steps on earth; that is, a crudeness of perception that sometimes seems to be primitive naturalness. Crudeness means that the key to measure and understanding has been lost and, consequently the key to love, since a measure of understanding is a degree of love. Thousands of years ago the Hellenes said, metron ariston, the mean is the most lofty. Today we still say that the basis of culture is an understanding of moderation in all things.

“As the cultural level improved the striving for the crude pleasures of property grew weaker and there was less craving for a quantitative increase in the amount of property owned, which once acquired, soon began to pall and leave the owner still unsatisfied.

“We have taught you the greater pleasure of austerity, the pleasure of helping one another, the genuine joy of work that sets the heart on fire. We have helped you liberate yourselves from the power of petty strivings and petty things and carry your joys and disappointments to a higher sphere, the sphere of creative activity.

“Good physical training, the clean, regular lives of dozens of generations have rid you of the third enemy of the human psyche, indifference, the empty and indolent spirit that arises out of a morbid insufficiency of energy in the body. You are going out in the world to work charged with the necessary energy, with a balanced, healthy psyche which, by virtue of the natural ratio of emotions, possesses more good than evil. The better you are, the better and more elevated society will be — the two conceptions are interrelated. You will create a high spiritual milieu as an integral part of society and society will elevate you. The social milieu is the most important factor in the training and teaching of the individual. Man today is training and learning his whole life long, so that society is constantly progressing.”

Evda Nahl stopped and smoothed her hair with her hand, using exactly the same gesture as Rhea who sat there in front, never once taking her eyes off her mother.

“At one time people called their urge to comprehend reality a mere dream,” she continued. “You will dream in that way all your lives and will know joy in knowledge, in movement, in struggle and in labour. Never pay any attention to the falls that follow flights of the spirit because they are the regular turns of the spiral of motion that we find in all matter. The reality of liberty is stern but you have been prepared for it by the discipline of your schooling and upbringing; you, therefore, are permitted all the changes of activity that constitute happiness because you are conscious of your responsibility. The dream of tranquil inactivity has not been justified by history because it is against the nature of man the fighter. There always have been and still are specific difficulties in every epoch, but a regular and rapid ascent to the heights of knowledge and emotion, science and art has become the good fortune of all mankind!”

Evda Nahl finished her lecture and went down to the front row of seats where Veda Kong greeted her as they had done Chara at the fete. All those present stood up and repeated the gesture, in this way expressing their admiration for an incomparable art.