CHAPTER III

The home of Acquilla was on a monumental scale designed in the form of a Greek cross with wings two stories high, capped with a long slanting roof, the façade brilliantly colored in rich purple tints, relieved by black and white marble pilasters. The doors opened at a wave of her hand and we entered a corridor fully thirty feet in height. A brilliantly colored machinot, shaped like a beetle rose from its seat, received our coats and disappeared. We went about forty feet forward and found ourselves in a great colonnaded circular room, rising some ninety feet to a tinted glass roof. An elevator concealed in the wall took us lightly to the next floor which was given over to the sleeping apartments. My own room was on the scale of an Italian palace of the middle ages, with transparent walls of glass bricks, so that in the daytime the effect was similar to living in the open sunlight. Outside the arrival of the rain had obscured the sky and brought on a sudden darkness, but as we arrived, the whole house, by some invisible process was gradually flooded with artificial daylight. Acquilla, noticing my curiosity, said:

“The lights are regulated automatically by a simple contrivance that keeps a fixed glow. The principle of the ancient thermostat.”

“But there are no lamps. And though, of course, the principle of indirect lighting,” I continued, glancing up at the cornices, “was used in my day, it was, of course, simply the reflection from bulbs concealed behind the walls.”

The word bulbs puzzled her. I explained at length our system of wiring which excited her curiosity and astonishment.

“How strangely archaic, but then of course you ignored the true relation of electricity, gravity, and heat. Though later, Zugg and Plumpf must have suspected the truth. Of course today there are not many secrets in the physical world. Light is generated like heat and radiated through the house. The floors and walls are porous, that is the whole secret. But there is too much to tell you to begin tonight. A half an hour’s bath before dinner is what you need to relax and stimulate you.”

We descended and traversing the theatre which was the main axis of the house, entered a further wing, after passing through a series of doors which opened at a peculiar wave of her hand and closed behind us automatically. I stopped with an exclamation of delight. We were in a thermal bath such as Rome in all its days of aesthetic splendor had never produced. Instead of marble the walls, the floors, the pool were made of the same brilliant glass colored in opalescent tones. The water itself was amethyst shot through with quivering rays of red and violet streamers. The air was delicately perfumed with a scent resembling heliotrope, while the sides of the pool were carpeted with thick rugs of a yielding softness.

A female attendant, who for a moment I took for an automaton, rose and bowed at our entrance. Acquilla slipped from the Grecian robe which was her only garment and advanced to the edge of the pool. I hesitated a moment with that sense of modesty which is inherent in the male, but perceiving the complete naturalness of her gesture, I realized quickly that a false show of prudery would render me ridiculous. I gave my toga to Mag, who smiled at me entranced, and followed Acquilla.

I now noticed with interest certain physical changes that the scientific evolution had made in the female figure. From the flat waist upward it was the torso of a man, powerfully muscled, broad over the shoulders and flat breasted, due to the fact, as I learned later, that for over two centuries no woman had nursed her own child. For the rest, though she overtopped me by a clear foot, it was the graceful, lithe figure of the young Mercury one sees in medieval art. But my feeling of aesthetic admiration was rudely dispelled. Turning to Mag, who was staring at me with fascinated eyes, Acquilla lifted the lovely golden curls from her head and stood before me absolutely bald. I could not repress an exclamation of dismay.

“That is the price women have to pay for the supremacy of their intelligence,” said Acquilla.

“What! Science that has worked such miracles has not been able to prevent baldness?”

“Those of the Histrionic caste keep theirs much longer,” Acquilla replied, “but we of the Philosophers and Scientists lose ours at fifty.”

“For heaven’s sake, how old are you?” I exclaimed bewildered.

“Oh, not so old,” Acquilla replied with a touch of asperity. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Really, if it weren’t for your teeth and hair I should have said a hundred.”

I glanced at the perfect lustre of her teeth and shuddered. Was that possible too? But I mastered my fears and replied according to etiquette:

“And you look twenty-four.”

“I am hardly seventy-six at that.” She extended her hand, took mine and led me into the perfumed pool.

Before I could digest the import of her last remark, the colored water closed over us and I immediately rose to the surface with the resiliency of a rubber ball. Indeed I presently found, such was the density of the water, that I remained floating on the surface without the slightest effort. At the same time, due no doubt to the electric charges, I was conscious of a feeling of extraordinary physical stimulation, like the caresses of a myriad of miniscule fingertips running over my body.

“Relax and don’t talk, dear man,” said Acquilla, “and you will see how refreshed your mind will be.”

At the same moment, above us, a panorama of shifting hues passed as the clouds pass on a clear autumn day, while the air was filled with the slumberous, subdued notes of a great orchestra; strains that vaguely pleasantly reminded me of the “Après-midi d’un Faun.”

“The color organ was known in my day,” I said drowsily.

“This is an entirely different principle,” said Acquilla. “Each chord has a color value so that as you listen to music, your eye at the same time receives an identical impression. It is an aesthetic emotion extremely restful and stimulating for the brain. But don’t talk. Relax completely for ten minutes.”

I obeyed and experienced a sensation of being transported into a fairy world of morphine enchantment. I seemed to be drowsily gazing up at the rich deep green of velvety woodland recesses, which gradually became alive with the golden hues of autumn leaves. This dissolved into the deep crystalline blue of the open sky with lazy white clouds piling up in harmonious languor. All the shock and strain of the day on my perplexed brain passed away. I felt calm and unvexed. Then with the changing rhythms, the fleecy skies took on the brilliant red and purples of such a sunset as one remembers over the tourmaline waters of the Bay of Naples. The effect on me was one of a complete mental invigoration and a new eagerness to explore my incredible adventure. The voice of Acquilla recalled me.

“Enough for the first time, Bogardus.”

She rose from the pool, the water falling from her lovely glistening sides, like the petals of drifting cherry blossoms. We passed into a warmer room where my body dried immediately under the contact of pleasant vapors. Then resuming our robes we passed into another wing.

“How do you feel?”

“As though I had found the fountain of youth.”

“That astonished you,” said Acquilla putting on a wig of silvery blue which became her immensely. “But of course in your time you bathed in porcelain boxes! And yet two thousand years before you the Romans had opened the way to the aesthetic life. Are you hungry?”

“After two hundred and fifty years?” I exclaimed laughing, “ravenous!”

“Yes, that is a long while,” replied Acquilla without a trace of a smile. As a matter of fact my laugh seemed to excite her curiosity, for she gave me a quick look in which I detected a touch of anxiety.

The dining room which was of the proportions of a banquet hall, was in a luminous emerald green with black marble columns and ivory trims. I was not surprised to find a low table scarcely two feet in height surrounded by couches resembling Recamier sofas.

“So we have returned to the classics?”

“You should never have departed from them.” Acquilla waved me to a couch and disposed herself on one opposite. “It is quite a masculine repast I have ordered tonight, in consideration of your long fasting. I myself eat sparingly.”

A curious thing happened. The two dogs immediately came and crouched adoringly at my feet.

“How odd,” said Acquilla. “I’ve never seen them pay the slightest attention to any male before.”

I confess this allusion to her past struck me disagreeably, for already romance was stirring in my imagination.

She touched a signal and the centre of the table sunk on some mechanism under the floor.

“And now, Bogardus, while we are waiting, you can imagine how curious I am to hear your first question.”

“You will never guess what it will be,” I said smiling. “It is in fact very mundane, but in a sense it was the great question of my time.”

“Political?”

“No, social.”

“Marriage?”

“More important than that.”

“The competitive system?”

“I’ll tell you. How have you solved the servant problem?”

“Oh.” Acquilla regarded me with a look of disappointment. “But that is no problem at all. I run this place on a dozen machinots, a gardener and Mag, my housekeeper.”

“But even if you have one servant, my dear Acquilla, you have the servant problem, haven’t you?”

“Problem? There is no problem,” she replied, thinking over what I had said.

“Then you have discovered how to produce perfect servants.”

“Certainly, we have absolute control over our servants.”

“How so?”

“Why, very simple. We put them under hypnotic control, of course.”

My face expressed such blank amazement that she continued immediately:

“But how else can you handle servants? I simply hypnotize them and suggest to them each morning what they shall do during the day. That eliminates all possibility of error or misunderstanding.”

“Wonderful! And to think no one ever thought of it in my day. Perfect, and so simple!” The idea appealed to my sense of humor. I flung myself back among the cushions and laughed until I cried. All at once I felt Acquilla’s hand on my shoulder and saw her bending anxiously over me.

“Bogardus, dear, you are in pain!”

I sat up wiping my eyes.

“Pain?! Don’t you see I am laughing?”

“Laughing? What is that?”

My jaw dropped.

“What, you have never heard of laughter?” A sudden revelation came to me at her blank seriousness. “Good heavens, women have abolished laughter!”

“Laughter--laughter? I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about.”

I remembered swiftly that I had never seen Acquilla laugh. It was true. Acquilla had never laughed. No one laughed now in this era of pure reason! I shrank back staring at her and a sudden suspicion came to me. Acquilla was not human, Acquilla too was an automaton.

“Why do you stare so, Bogardus?”

“Give me your hand,” I blurted out, shuddering.

I felt the warm flesh under mine. I examined the clear texture minutely. The veins were there, red and finely blue. Acquilla _was_ human. Then softly I passed my fingers caressingly over the molded forearm.

“That is strangely pleasant, Bogardus,” she said at once. “But now your face is contorted again. Is that laughter?”

“I was afraid you were an automaton.”

She shook her head gravely.

“What a strange idea! But here is dinner.”

She resumed her seat. The centre of the table rose, charged with curious silver and ivory dishes, which to my whetted appetite appeared alarmingly inadequate. But the presence of certain promising flagons reassured me. I sat up hungrily for my first meal after two hundred and fifty years with this amazing young Amazon of seventy-six, who was bald as Socrates, strong as Achilles and totally devoid of a sense of humor.

“My dear Acquilla,” I said beaming. “You will teach me many things but I shall teach you how to laugh.”