Ave Mar first met Kutsi Merc, his secretary, half a cycle before the encounter with Mada on the Great Shore.
Ave Mar's steamcar stopped that day in a mountain pass on the continent of the Culturals of Danjab.
The view took Ave's breath away. The ocean, revealed from high up, seemed to ascend to the very heavens. The misty band of the horizon looked like a ridge of lofty clouds.
Below lay Business City. The skyscrapers stood in concentric circles. They were linked by ring and radial streets and avenues, on both sides of which lay green parks and glittering lakes. In the city center towered a skyscraper resembling the conical axis of the monstrous Wheel of Business Life.
Ave put his foot down on the pedal to open the high-pressure boiler valve. The steam drive slowly moved the car from its place, accelerating it to the required speed.
Steamcars had appeared very recently, but had quickly replaced the obsolete vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. In their time, these machines had poisoned the air of the cities with their exhaust gases. The fuel they consumed could have served as chemical raw material for clothing and other goods in daily use.
As he drove at top speed along the magnificent road, Ave Mar crossed the outer circle avenue on which stood the tower blocks of Business City.
From a distance, they seemed conical. In fact, they were stepped. They were girt by a spiral steamcar road which gave access to each storey in succession and to the garage entrances outside every flat.
The conical towers housed shops with corridors leading to exits onto the spiral road, restaurants, cafes, and also theatres and concert or viewing halls. There were production workshops and business offices in the center of the multistorey building.Moving staircases led to the garages under the living quarters.
The ordinary Faetians, toiling in the workshops, had no cars and hardly ever left their cramped little rooms, unaware of any world other than that shut in by the skyscraper's spiral roadway.
Ave stopped his steamcar. The garage doors opened automatically and closed behind him when he had driven in.
The car needed no maintenance, being permanently ready for use with the necessary steam pressure in its boiler. The heating device of disintegration matter was, so to speak, part of the machine and wore out with it.
Ave Mar was in a dejected mood. He dropped in on one of his friends; but the friend had summoned a secret meeting and had not invited Ave. Ave understood what it was all about and drove off immediately.
On the way back he saw the pathetic hovels of the Faetians who worked in the fields. He felt ashamed of himself for having, over his garage, several living rooms in which no one lived, in fact, except for himself.
He had never known lack of room, but he had known loneliness and could only call up his mother over the screen. Oh, Mother, Mother! Even at that enormous distance, she unerringly guessed what was in her son's heart and was always the first to appear on the screen.
Ave glumly stepped onto the upward moving staircase.
What was the meaning of life, if all that lay ahead was a blind alley from which the Faetians could not escape? It was madness to seek deliverance in wars of annihilation. Many Faetians understood as much...
But why did his friends not trust him? He needn't keep quiet with them. Did he not also subscribe to the Doctrine of Justice? But they didn't need him... No one needed him...
Ave went into the first of his round rooms and stopped dead in amazement. A broad-shouldered, burly hunchback came up to meet him with a guarded smile on his hard face.
"Ease and happiness!" said the stranger. "I am Kutsi Merc! The Ruler Dobr Mar gave me the key of this flat as his son's secretary."
Ave smiled bitterly.
"Is my father worried that his son is gnawed by misery?"
"Your father was thinking of something more important."
"Will it deliver me from bitterness?"
"Would it be a bad thing to visit the ancient continent of Powermania? High technology in the hands of barbarians who call themselves Superiors?"
"What's the sense of such dreams? I worked with Um Sat. I specialize in the disintegration of matter, so I am not allowed to travel overseas. We live in times of emptiness, disillusion, tension..."
"As your secretary, I shall help you in everything, even in a trip to the continent of the barbarians."
So saying, the hunchback went into the other room. He soon returned carrying vessels with beverages and two cylinders of compressed narcotic smoke which the Culturals loved to inhale when relaxing. Kutsi Merc's clothes were stretched tight over his hump, as if tailored for someone else.
Ave was amazed at the speed with which his new acquaintance made himself at home. The neglected flat was transformed. Mechanisms, switched on before the occupant's arrival, had cleaned the place up.
As he inhaled the smoke, the young Faetian studied Kutsi Merc.
"If only we journey to Powermania," he said reflectively, "before misery kills desire..."
"Desires must be fulfilled. Otherwise it is not worth desiring. The Faetesses over the ocean are very beautiful."
"How can that be of any importance? Even knowledge is powerless to lead the Faetians out of their blind alley. Soulless power politics, blind subordination to dogma! The blockheads refuse to listen to anything that is unfamiliar to them!.." Ave was suffering from rejection of his ideas and was airing his sense of injury.
"The great law of inertia! Inertia can be overcome by the application of energy. The law must be interpreted more broadly."
"Kutsi Merc is undoubtedly more than adequately equipped for the obligations of secretary."
"One must also overcome the inertia in oneself." Kutsi Merc blew out an intricate pattern of smoke.
The hunchback was certainly astonishing Ave Mar; but there were still more surprises to come.
Kutsi now came to see Ave Mar every day and tirelessly told stories about the legendary continent of a very ancient civilization. It turned out that he knew Power-mania extremely well, was familiar with its history, art, and architecture, had evidently been there a number of times, and was fluent in the language of the barbarians, as he called the inhabitants of Powermania.
"Look and marvel. The depths of ignorance and the heights of knowledge, an alien technology and the wild theories of the Superiors, the slums of the roundheaded monsters and the legendary beauty, Mada Jupi."
"The Dictator's daughter?" asked Ave, interested in spite of himself.
"Brought up by a most cultured nurse of roundhead stock. Became a Sister of Health, looks after children in spite of her father's Doctrine of Hatred. He loves her so much that he will tolerate any of her whims."
"What does she look like?" asked Ave vaguely.
Kutsi brightened up.
"The long legs of the runner, but feminine. The lines of her body would make a classical sculpture. A soft heart and the hauteur of pride. It's hard to win her indulgence."
"It looks as though Kutsi Merc has been having a try."
With a bitter smile, the hunchback pointed to his hump.
"Kutsi Merc bears too heavy a burden in life."
He had now completely relieved Ave Mar of his daily household chores. He went on talking about Powermania, but didn't mention Mada again.
It was Ave Mar who raised the subject of a possible journey over the sea.
Kutsi Merc had apparently been waiting for this.
"The berths on the ship have been booked."
Ave Mar stood on the deck of the ocean-going ship and looked into the distance. This time, the ocean wasn't rising to heaven, as in the view from the mountain pass, but it was as boundless and no less striking to the imagination.
Um Sat had confided a terrible secret to his pupil about this ocean. Every secret is a burden, and this one, concerning the destiny of all Faetians, was a particularly heavy weight on Ave's mind.
Kutsi warily tried to found out the cause of Ave's bad mood, but Ave avoided the subject by holding forth against scientists who would not accept his ideas about the possibility of life on other planets.
Kutsi grinned craftily and poked fun at the young Faetian, maintaining that the real reason was that he hadn't yet fallen in love.
The barbarians' continent appeared on the horizon. Sharp arrows seemed to be sticking up out of the water. Over the sea rose the weird buildings of the ancient continent, on which the houses were not round, but rectangular (how absurd!}. Incredibly crowded, they reached for the sky and gradually merged into a pile of irregular acute-angled pillars that suggested a cluster of crystals.
Almost leaping out of the water, a security launch raced towards the ship.
They were faced with the control procedure. Kutsi Merc sought out his master so as to be at his side.
Longfaced men with hooked noses were climbing aboard. They were all in identical angular clothes with collars upraised at the back and short dark hooded capes that became rectangular bands on the chest.
"Hey you, hunchbacked offspring of carrion-eaters! Make way before the Blood Guard!" snarled the first of the longfaces as he drew level with Kutsi Merc. "You'll have to get out of here and go back to your stinking island."
Ave Mar, who had specially learned the language of Powermania, flushed with rage but, on catching Kutsi's sidelong glance of warning, he kept quiet.
But Kutsi Merc arched his hump as he bowed, meekly lowering his head and using a manner of speech not his own, but typical of the local dialect.
"Perhaps the officer of the Blood Guard will be interested to know that the insignificant roundhead whom he sees before him is only secretary to this distinguished traveller, the clear-thinking Ave Mar, son of the Ruler of Danjab."
The longface, who was wearing a beard in imitation of Dictator Yar Jupi, glanced contemptuously at Kutsi.
Ave Mar offered him his tokens.
"The athletic son of Ruler Dobr Mar is recognizable even without his tokens," said the officer, showing off his familiarity with the old manner of speech. "As for this contemptible roundheaded cripple, he should be attached as if by a chain to his master while serving him, as is preordained by nature." And the officer made for the other passengers.
Kutsi Merc ran after him, humbly begging the return of the tokens. The officer threw them down; they landed on the deck with a jingle and nearly rolled overboard. Kutsi Merc bent over to snatch them up and even went down on his knees.
The officer laughed coarsely.
"That's how to welcome the land of Superiors - in the posture of the lizard from which you are not so distantly descended."
"May happy days last for a long time here," replied Kutsi Merc humbly.
The ocean-going ship sailed into a harbour which was surrounded on all sides by enormous, weirdly rectangular buildings. Among them, Ave Mar immediately recognized several famous temples which had been built in ancient times and had towered high over all the other buildings of that period. The city had risen since then and had blotted them from view.
So this was what it was like. Pleasure City!
Some of the gigantic blocks were linked by fantastical multi-tiered street-bridges crossing at various levels.
Ave thought that he was looking at a forest mound, which in his homeland was built by little insects with many feet.
This impression of the maritime city of the Superiors was strengthened even further when he and Kutsi Merc were on dry land. They were pushed and jostled by crowds of hurrying Faetians. In addition to the steam-cars, there were vehicles powered by obsolete internal combustion engines. Making an appalling din and poisoning the air, this medley of heterogeneous vehicles surged past the half-asphyxiated Ave or thundered overhead on the crazy bridges between the massive artificial canyons of the buildings.
Squeezed into a corner of the tiny lift-cage by other Faetians, Ave and Kutsi were taken up to the tiny room set aside for them in the expensive Palace of Visitors.
While Kutsi Merc unpacked, Ave stood at the lancet window and looked out on an alien world. He could not see any of the old-time romance for which he had yearned since childhood. Everything here was an eyesore, beginning with the uniform of the coarse Blood Guards and ending with the awkward angles of the cramped little room.
"Don't torture your eyes with barbarian buildings," said Kutsi Merc. "We'll be on the Great Shore tomorrow."
A roundhead servant of low stature appeared and asked whether the new arrivals would prefer vegetable or animal food with blood for dinner, and whether they wanted, like all travellers, to look round the densely populated quarters of the city, and whether they had any other orders for him.
Kutsi Merc considered it necessary to display the traditional curiosity, so he and Ave did not allow themselves time for a rest, but trailed off into the famous roundhead quarters.
Although he knew the slums of his native continent, Ave had never imagined that Faetians could live in such filthy and overcrowded conditions. It was only possible to breathe on a street when it became a suspension bridge. But where the street was hemmed in by buildings and ran between them like a tunnel, it became, as it were, part of the living quarters. Not shy of passers-by, the Faetians kept their doors open, got on with their household chores, sat at the table with children born before the roundheads were banned from having children, ate their simple but acrid-smelling food and went to bed. The Faetesses poked their heads out of the open doors and, shouting loudly, conversed with the inhabitants on the second or third stories up. Here and there, only just above the heads of the passers-by, the inmates' washing had been hung out to dry; most of them did not know whether they would have to sweat at work on the next day as well.
Ave very much wanted to hold his nose when, accompanied by Kutsi, he fled from those evil-smelling quarters, famed for their openly exhibited poverty. The Power of Justice had only existed for a hundred and three days and it had not been able to help the residents...
"So what's the answer to this?" wondered Ave. "Is it really in the monstrous law of a Dictator who has forbidden these families to have children?"
Was it really to see all this that he had dreamed of coming here from across the ocean ever since childhood?
But next day he saw the Great Shore and Mada.