Three Science Fiction Novellas: From Prehistory to the End of Mankind

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  “Are you appeased, O Gods?”

  In the distance, among the silent tree trunks, the Forms continued to move about, making themselves shine, preferring those places where the sunlight flowed in more dense waves.

  “Yes, Yes,” the ecstatic Yushik exclaimed, “they are appeased!” And snatching up the warm heart of the stallion, before the curious High Priest could say a word, Yushik rushed across the clearing.

  Some fanatics, uttering cries, followed after him. Slowly, the Forms were undulating, massing together, keeping close to the ground; then suddenly, as they hurled themselves at the rash intruders, a pitiful massacre horrified the fifty tribes.

  Six or seven fugitives, with great effort, relentlessly pursued, were able to reach the limit. The rest perished and Yushik with them.

  “These Gods know no mercy,” the High Priest said solemnly.

  Then a Council assembled, the venerable council of priests, elders and chiefs.

  They decided to trace, beyond the limit of Safety, a wall of stakes, and to force slaves, in order to determine the boundaries of this wall, to expose themselves to attack by the Forms in successive manner all around its perimeter.11

  And it was done. Under threat of death, slaves entered the perimeter. Few lives were lost there, however, because excellent precautions were taken. The boundary was firmly established, made visible to all by means of its circle of stakes.12

  Thus happily ended the sacred mission, and the Zahelals believed themselves protected from this subtle enemy.

  III. Darkness

  But the preventive system devised by the Council soon proved inadequate. The following spring, the tribes of Hertoth and Nazzum, as they were passing near the boundary of stakes, unsuspecting, in somewhat disorderly manner, were savagely attacked by the Forms and decimated.

  The chiefs who escaped this slaughter told the Grand Council of Zahelals that now there were many more Forms than last autumn. Still, as before, their range of pursuit seemed limited, only the limits had grown larger.

  This news caused consternation among the peoples: there was great mourning and great sacrifices. Then, the Council decided to destroy the forest of Kzour by putting it to the torch.

  Despite all their efforts, they were only able to burn the edge of the forest. Then, the priests, in despair, declared the forest sacred ground, forbade all men to enter it. And several summers passed.

  One October night the sleeping Zulf tribe, camped at a distance of ten bowshots from the fateful forest, was overrun by the Forms. Once again three hundred warriors lost their lives.

  From that day on a sinister tale, corrosive, mysterious, spread from tribe to tribe, whispered from ear to ear, at night, beneath the vast star-filled Mesopotamian sky. Mankind was going to perish! The Other, ever growing larger, in the forest, on the plains, indestructible, day by day would devour the fallen race! And this secret, fearful and black, haunted these poor minds, robbed them all of the will to fight, the brilliant optimism of youthful races. Wandering mankind, dreaming on these things, no longer dared to love its sumptuous native pastures, but searched on high, with its burdened eye, the verdict of the stars. This was the year 1000 for these infant peoples, the bell that tolled the end of the world, or perhaps, the resignation of the red man in the Indian jungle.13

  And, from deep within this anguish, the thinkers among them fashioned a bitter cult, a cult of death preached by pale prophets, a cult of Darkness more powerful than the Stars, Darkness that was to submerge, devour the holy Light, the resplendent fire.

  Everywhere, on the edge of these solitudes, one encountered the shades of fanatics, immobile, emaciated, men of silence, who, from time to time, passing among the tribes, recounted their frightening dreams, of the Twilight before impending Great Night, of the Sun in throes of agony.14

  IV. Bakhoun

  And so, at that time, there lived an extraordinary man named Bakhoun, descended from the tribe of Ptuh, and brother to the first High Priest of the Zahelals. Early in life he abandoned the nomadic way, chose to dwell in pleasant solitude, flanked by four hills, in a narrow and sprightly valley, where sang the flow of a limpid stream. Quarters of great stones made for him a tent that did not move, a cyclopean dwelling.15 Patience, and the help of domesticated cattle or horses, had given him riches, regular crops. His four wives, his thirty children, lived there the life of Eden.

  Bakhoun professed strange ideas, which would have gotten him stoned to death, were it not for the respect the Zahelals had for his elder brother, the Supreme High Priest.

  First, he espoused the idea that sedentary existence was preferable to nomadic life, allowing man to channel vital forces toward the development of the mind.

  Second, he thought that the Sun, the Moon and the Stars were not gods but luminous bodies.

  Third, he taught that man should only believe in things that can be proven by Measurement.16

  The Zahelals attributed magical powers to him, and on occasion the boldest among them risked consulting him. They never regretted having done so. They admitted that he had often helped unfortunate tribes by giving them foodstuffs.

  And thus, during this dark hour, when faced with the sad choice either of leaving their fertile plains or being destroyed by these inexorable divinities, the tribes thought of Bakhoun, and the priests themselves, after struggling with their pride, delegated three of the highest ranking of their order to go to him.

  Bakhoun listened to their tales with the most anxious attentiveness, making them repeat the accounts, asking many and precise questions. He asked for two days to meditate. At the end of that time, he announced simply that he was ready to devote himself to the study of the Forms.

  The tribes were somewhat disappointed, for they had hoped Bakhoun might be able to deliver the land by means of sorcery. Nonetheless the chiefs showed themselves happy with his decision and hoped great things would come of it.

  Thus Bakhoun took up camp at the edge of the forest of Kzour, withdrawing at the hour of rest, and all day long he watched, mounted upon the swiftest Chaldean stallion. Soon, convinced of the superiority of his splendid animal over even the most agile Form, he was able to begin his bold and scrupulous study of the enemies of mankind, the study to which we owe the great, precuneiform book in sixty tablets, the most splendid stone book that the nomadic ages have bequeathed to the modern races.17

  It is in this book, an admirable example of patient observation and austerity, that one finds the description of a life system totally dissimilar to our animal and vegetable kingdoms, a system Bakhoun humbly admits he was able to analyze only in its crudest and most external aspect. It is impossible for Mankind not to shudder in reading this monograph concerning the creatures Bakhoun calls the Xipéhuz, where, set down by the ancient scribe, are objective details, never carried to extremes of the marvelous, that reveal their actions, their means of locomotion, of combat, of procreation, and that demonstrate how close the human race came to the brink of nothingness, how close the Earth came to becoming the patrimony of a Kingdom the very conception of which is lost to us.

  One must read the marvelous translation of Monsieur Dessault, his surprising discoveries in the area of pre-Assyrian linguistics, discoveries sadly more admired abroad—in England and Germany—than in his own land.18 This illustrious scholar has agreed to put at our disposition the most salient passages of this precious work, and these passages, which we offer hereafter to the general public, will perhaps incite the desire to read more widely in the superb translations of the Master.*

  V. Excerpts from the Book of Bakhoun

  The Xipéhuz are obviously Living Creatures. Everything about them shows they possess will, capriciousness, the ability to make associations, that partial capacity for independence of mind that allows us to distinguish animal Beings from plants or inert things.19 Although their manner of locomotion cannot be defined by comparing it to anything we know—they simply slide along the ground—it is easy to see they have full control of their movements. We
see them stop suddenly, turn around, rush in pursuit of each other, move about in twos or threes, show preferences that lead them to leave one companion and go far away to rejoin another. They have no ability whatever to climb trees, but are able to kill birds by attracting them through some unknown means. One often sees them surrounding forest animals, or lying in wait for them behind a bush; they never fail to kill them, and incinerate them afterward. One can state as general rule that they kill all animals indiscriminately, if they can get to them, and do so without apparent motive, for they never eat them, but merely reduce them to ashes.

  Their manner of burning things does not oblige them to build a fire: the incandescent spot situated at their base is sufficient for this operation. Ten or twenty of them gather to form a circle around any large animal they kill, and focus their rays on the carcass. For small animals—birds, for example—the rays from a single Xipéhuz suffice to incinerate one. It is necessary to note that the heat they are able to produce is in no way immediately harmful. On many occasions I have received on my hand the ray of a Xipéhuz, and the skin did not begin to heat up until after a certain amount of time. I do not know whether one should say that the Xipéhuz have different forms, for each one of them has the power to change successively into cones, cylinders, and planes, and all in the same day. Their color varies continually, which I believe I can attribute, in general, to changes in light from morning to evening, and from evening to morning. Nevertheless, some of these variations, in their nuances, appear to be due to the capriciousness of individuals, and especially to their passions, if I can speak thus, and hence constitute veritable expressions of individual features, of which I have been completely powerless, despite arduous study, to delineate even the simplest, except as hypothesis. Thus, I have never been able to distinguish between a nuance that indicates anger and a nuance that expresses gentleness, which would have surely been the first discovery in this area.

  I spoke of their passions. Earlier I already mentioned their preferences, what I will call their friendships. They have their hatreds as well. A certain Xipéhuz will constantly avoid another and vice versa. Their fits of anger appear to be violent. They run into each other with movements identical to those observed when they attack large animals or humans, and it is these same combats that have taught me that they were in no way immortal, as I first felt disposed to believe, for two or three times I have seen Xipéhuz succumb in these combats, that is to say, fall, condense, and become petrified. I have carefully preserved several of these strange cadavers,* and perhaps they will be able to serve later to discover the nature of the Xipéhuz. They are yellowish crystals, irregularly distributed, and streaked with blue lines.20

  From the fact that the Xipéhuz were in no way immortal, I was able to deduce that it would be possible to fight and defeat them, and since then I have begun a series of experiments in combat techniques about which I will say more later.

  Because the Xipéhuz always radiate a quantity of light sufficient to allow them to be seen through bushes and even behind large tree trunks—a strong aureole emanates from them in all directions and warns of their approach—I was able to risk making frequent incursions into the forest, relying on the swiftness of my stallion.

  There, I tried to discover whether or not they build shelters, but must admit that I failed at this research. They move neither stones nor plants, and appear to be strangers to any kind of tangible or visible industry, the only sort of industry visible to a human observer.21 Consequently, they have no weapons of any sort, in the sense we give that word. It is certain that they cannot kill at a distance: any animal that has been able to flee without having direct contact with a Xipéhuz has invariably escaped, and I was many times witness to this fact.

  As the unfortunate Pjehou tribe has already attested, they are unable to cross certain absolute boundaries; their actions are thus limited.22 But these limits have grown ever larger from year to year, from month to month. I was obliged to seek out the cause.

  The cause appears to be nothing more than a phenomenon of collective growth, and like most things about the Xipéhuz, it is incomprehensible to human intelligence. Briefly, here is the law: the limits of Xipéhuzian action expand in direct proportion to the number of individuals present; therefore, as soon as new beings are born, there is proportionate expansion of their boundaries. But where their number remains invariable, each individual being is totally incapable of crossing the boundary of the habitat allocated—by the force of things?—to the entirety of the race. This rule allows us to see a more intimate correlation between the mass and the individual than the similar correlation noticed between men and animals. The obverse of this rule was later witnessed, for once the Xipéhuz began to diminish in number, their boundaries shrank in direct proportion.23

  On the phenomenon of procreation itself, I have little to say; but this little is true in a general sense. First of all, reproduction takes place four times a year, shortly before the equinoxes and the solstices, and only on nights that are extremely clear. The Xipéhuz gather in groups of three, and these groups, little by little, eventually come to form one single group, tightly amalgamated and shaped into a long ellipse. They remain thus through the entire night, and into the morning, until the Sun reaches its zenith. When they separate, one witnesses the rise of forms that are vague, vaporous and huge.

  These forms condense slowly, shrink, transform themselves after ten days into cones of amber hue, still considerably larger than the adult Xipéhuz. Two months and several days are needed for these forms to achieve their maximum development, that is, to reach their maximum shrinkage. After this time, they become like the other beings in their species, with colors and forms that vary according to the hour of the day, the weather, or the whims of the individual.24 A few days after their complete development (or shrinkage), the radius of their actions gets larger. It was of course just before this fearsome moment occurred that I beat the flanks of my noble Kouath, in order to move my camp farther out of reach.

  Whether or not the Xipéhuz possess senses is something that is not possible to affirm. They certainly have apparatuses that serve a like purpose.

  The ease with which they are able to perceive the presence of animals, and especially men, at great distances, tells us that their organs of investigation are at least the equivalent of our eyes. I have never seen them mistake a plant for an animal, even in circumstances where I could have easily made that error, misled by light filtered through branches, the color of the object, its position. The fact that they deploy twenty of their kind in order to consume a large animal, while a single one of them takes on the task of incinerating a bird, demonstrates an exact agreement of proportions, and this agreement seems all the more perfect when one watches them form groups of ten, twelve, fifteen, always in conformity with the relative size of the carcass. An even better argument in favor of either the existence of organs analogous to our sense organs or to our form of intelligence is how they act when they attack our tribes, for they pay little or no attention to the women or children, but pursue the warriors implacably.

  Now—a more important question—do they have a language? To this I can reply without the least hesitation: “Yes, they have a language.” And this language is comprised of signs, of which I was even able to decipher a few.

  Suppose, for example, that a Xipéhuz might wish to speak to another. To do so, it need only direct the rays of its star toward its companion, and this is always instantly perceived. The one thus summoned, if it is walking, stops, waits. The speaker, then, rapidly traces, on the surface itself of its interlocutor—and from whatever side—a series of short luminous characters, by means of a play of beams continuously emanating from its base, and these characters remain for a moment imprinted, then fade away.

  The interlocutor, after a short interval, answers.

  Preceding any action involving combat or an ambush, I have always seen the Xipéhuz use the following signs:25

  Whenever it was question of me—a
nd it was often question of me, as they did all they could to exterminate us, my brave Kouath and me—they always exchanged the following signs:

  —among other signs, as with the word, or sentence

  given above.

  The common sign for a state of alert was

  and this brought the individual running who received it. Whenever the Xipéhuz were called to a general gathering, I never failed to see a sign that had the following form:

  representing the triune nature of these beings.

  The Xipéhuz in fact have more complex signs, which refer not only to actions similar to ours, but to an order of things that is totally extraordinary, and which I have been completely unable to decipher. One cannot have the least doubt about their faculty that allows them to exchange ideas of an abstract nature, ideas most likely similar to those of humans, for they are able to remain immobile for a long time doing nothing but conversing among themselves, which indicates a genuine accumulation of thought.26

  My prolonged sojourn among them led me, despite their metamorphoses (the laws governing which vary for each individual, to a minor degree perhaps, but with characteristics sufficiently different to be noticed by a determined observer), to get to know several Xipéhuz with a certain intimacy, and to reveal to me particularities that indicate differences about their persons . . . or should I say about their “characters”? I knew some who were taciturn, who barely ever traced a sign; there were others who were outgoing, who wrote veritable discourses; there were attentive ones; there were gossips who spoke in groups, where each interrupted the other. There were some who liked to retire, to be solitary; others clearly sought social contacts; there were ferocious ones who endlessly hunted wild beasts, birds; and there were merciful ones who often spared animals, let them live in peace. Does not all this open to the imagination a vast realm of speculation? Does it not bring one to imagine the great diversity of abilities, of intelligences, of forces in the universe that are analogous to those of the human race?27