The World Set Free

Section 1

The second operation upon Marcus Karenin was performed at the new station for surgical work at Paran, high in the Himalayas above the Sutlej Gorge, where it comes down out of Thibet.

It is a place of such wildness and beauty as no other scenery in the world affords.  The granite terrace which runs round the four sides of the low block of laboratories looks out in every direction upon mountains.  Far below in the hidden depths of a shadowy blue cleft, the river pours down in its tumultuous passage to the swarming plains of India.  No sound of its roaring haste comes up to those serenities.  Beyond that blue gulf, in which whole forests of giant deodars seem no more than small patches of moss, rise vast precipices of many-coloured rock, fretted above, lined by snowfalls, and jagged into pinnacles.  These are the northward wall of a towering wilderness of ice and snow which clambers southward higher and wilder and vaster to the culminating summits of our globe, to Dhaulagiri and Everest.  Here are cliffs of which no other land can show the like, and deep chasms in which Mt.  Blanc might be plunged and hidden.  Here are icefields as big as inland seas on which the tumbled boulders lie so thickly that strange little flowers can bloom among them under the untempered sunshine.  To the northward, and blocking out any vision of the uplands of Thibet, rises that citadel of porcelain, that gothic pile, the Lio Porgyul, walls, towers, and peaks, a clear twelve thousand feet of veined and splintered rock above the river.  And beyond it and eastward and westward rise peaks behind peaks, against the dark blue Himalayan sky.  Far away below to the south the clouds of the Indian rains pile up abruptly and are stayed by an invisible hand.

Hither it was that with a dreamlike swiftness Karenin flew high over the irrigations of Rajputana and the towers and cupolas of the ultimate Delhi; and the little group of buildings, albeit the southward wall dropped nearly five hundred feet, seemed to him as he soared down to it like a toy lost among these mountain wildernesses.  No road came up to this place; it was reached only by flight.

His pilot descended to the great courtyard, and Karenin assisted by his secretary clambered down through the wing fabric and made his way to the officials who came out to receive him.

In this place, beyond infections and noise and any distractions, surgery had made for itself a house of research and a healing fastness.  The building itself would have seemed very wonderful to eyes accustomed to the flimsy architecture of an age when power was precious.  It was made of granite, already a little roughened on the outside by frost, but polished within and of a tremendous solidity.  And in a honeycomb of subtly lit apartments, were the spotless research benches, the operating tables, the instruments of brass, and fine glass and platinum and gold.  Men and women came from all parts of the world for study or experimental research.  They wore a common uniform of white and ate at long tables together, but the patients lived in an upper part of the buildings, and were cared for by nurses and skilled attendants….

The first man to greet Karenin was Ciana, the scientific director of the institution.  Beside him was Rachel Borken, the chief organiser.  ’You are tired?’ she asked, and old Karenin shook his head.

‘Cramped,’ he said.  ‘I have wanted to visit such a place as this.’

He spoke as if he had no other business with them.

There was a little pause.

‘How many scientific people have you got here now?’ he asked.

‘Just three hundred and ninety-two,’ said Rachel Borken.

‘And the patients and attendants and so on?’

‘Two thousand and thirty.’

‘I shall be a patient,’ said Karenin.  ’I shall have to be a patient.  But I should like to see things first.  Presently I will be a patient.’

‘You will come to my rooms?’ suggested Ciana.

‘And then I must talk to this doctor of yours,’ said Karenin.  ’But I would like to see a bit of this place and talk to some of your people before it comes to that.’

He winced and moved forward.

‘I have left most of my work in order,’ he said.

‘You have been working hard up to now?’ asked Rachel Borken.

’Yes.  And now I have nothing more to do—­and it seems strange….  And it’s a bother, this illness and having to come down to oneself.  This doorway and the row of windows is well done; the gray granite and just the line of gold, and then those mountains beyond through that arch.  It’s very well done….’