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

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  They educate their young. How many times have I observed an elder Xipéhuz sitting amidst a large group of young, flashing signs to them, which they repeated back to him in turn, and which he made them do all over again whenever their form seemed imperfect.28

  To me these lessons were marvelous, and of everything the Xipéhuz did, there is nothing that held my attention more, nothing that occupied more my sleepless nights. It seemed to me that it was here, in this dawning of the race, that the veil of mystery might part, here that some simple, primitive idea would perhaps issue forth, would illuminate for me a small corner of this deep dark abyss. No, nothing held me back; for years, I was witness to this education, I hazarded innumerable hypotheses. How many times did I feel myself at that moment on the verge of grasping some fleeting glimpse of the Xipéhuz’s essential nature, an extrasensory glimpse, a pure abstraction, and which, alas, my poor senses buried in flesh were never able to pursue.

  I said previously that I had long believed the Xipéhuz to be immortal.29 This belief having been shattered once I had witnessed the violent deaths that resulted from several encounters between Xipéhuz, I was naturally led to look for their point of vulnerability, seeking each day, from then on, to find ways to destroy them, as the Xipéhuz were growing in number, so much so that after they had overrun the forest of Kzour to the south, north and west, they were beginning to invade the plains to the east. Just a few more birth cycles, and they would have dispossessed mankind of his earthly domain.

  Thus I armed myself with a slingshot, and whenever a Xipéhuz came out of the forest within reach, I aimed and hurled my missile at him. This was to no avail, even though I hit all the individuals I had aimed at on every part of their surface, even on their luminous spot. They seemed perfectly insensitive to my attacks, and none of them ever turned aside to avoid my projectiles. After trying this for a month, I finally had to admit to myself that the slingshot was powerless against them, and I abandoned this weapon.

  I turned to the bow and arrow. I discovered, with the first arrows I fired, that the Xipéhuz were highly fearful of them, for they turned around and moved out of range, avoiding me as much as they could. For a week I sought in vain to hit one of them. The eighth day a party of Xipéhuz, spurred on apparently by the ardor of the hunt, passed close enough to me in pursuit of a beautiful gazelle. I fired several arrows in haste, without any apparent effect on them, and the party fled, with myself in pursuit firing my weapon. As soon as I had spent my last arrow, they all turned around and converged on me from all sides at top speed. I was three-quarters encircled, and had it not been for the prodigious speed of my valiant Kouath, I would have perished.

  This adventure left me full of uncertainties and hopes; I spent the entire week that followed in a state of inertia, lost in a deep and vague meditation, wrestling with a problem that was excessively passionate, subtle, one apt to chase away sleep, and one that filled me, at one and the same time, with suffering and pleasure. Why did the Xipéhuz fear my arrows? Why, on the other hand, given the great number of projectiles I fired that hit members of the hunting party, did none have any effect? What I knew about the intelligence of my enemies did not allow me to posit a terror without precise cause. To the contrary, everything I knew led me to suppose that the arrow, shot in particular circumstances, must be an effective weapon against them. But what were these circumstances? What was the vulnerable spot of the Xipéhuz? Suddenly it struck me that it was the star that one had to hit. In a instant I was certain, a blinding and ecstatic certitude! Then I was struck with doubt.

  With the slingshot, had I not, a number of times, aimed at and hit that spot? Why was the arrow more effective than the stone?

  And then it was night, the incommensurable abyss, its marvelous canopy of lamps spread above the earth. And I, my head buried in my hands, dreamt on, my heart blacker than the night.

  A lion began to roar, jackals passed on the plain, and once again a glimmer of hope lit up my darkness. I had just reasoned that the stone in the sling had been relatively large, and the star of the Xipéhuz so minuscule! Perhaps, to have an effect on it, one had to penetrate deep, pierce it with a sharp point, and thus their terror of the arrow became clear.30

  All the while, Vega turned slowly at the pole, dawn was near, and for several hours fatigue, in my skull, blotted out the world of the mind.

  The days following, armed with my bow, I was in constant pursuit of the Xipéhuz, penetrating as far into their perimeter as wisdom allowed. But they all avoided my attack, keeping distant, beyond the range of my weapon. There was no question of their letting themselves be drawn into an ambush, as their mode of perception allowed them to be aware of my presence even through solid obstacles.

  Toward the end of the fifth day an event occurred that, in itself, proved that the Xipéhuz were beings who, like men, were at one and the same time fallible and perfectible. That day, at dusk, a Xipéhuz deliberately approached me, with that constantly accelerating speed they prefer to use when they attack. Surprised, my heart beating, I flexed my bow. He, ever coming toward me, like a column of turquoise in the early night sky, almost reached me. But as I was about to fire my arrow, I saw him, with stupefaction, turn around and hide his star, as he continued to advance toward me. I barely had time to spur Kouath to a gallop, and put myself out of reach of this formidable adversary.

  Thus, this simple maneuver, which no Xipéhuz had apparently thought to use before, on top of the fact that it revealed once more that the enemy was capable of personal initiative and individual inventiveness, suggested two things: one, that I was fortunate to have reasoned correctly concerning the vulnerability of the Xipéhuz’s star; two, less encouraging, that the same tactic, were it to be adopted by all of them, would make my task extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.

  And yet, having gone through so much to arrive at this truth, I felt my courage grow in the face of the obstacle, and dared to hope that my mind would possess the necessary subtlety to overcome it.*

  VI. Second Period of the Book of Bakhoun

  I returned to my solitude.31 Anakhre, the third son by my wife Tepai, was a skilled maker of arms. I ordered him to make me a bow with an extraordinary reach. He took a branch of the Waham tree, whose wood is hard as iron, and the bow he fashioned from it was four times stronger than the bow of Zankann the priest, the best archer in the thousand tribes. No man living would have been able to draw such a bow. But I had devised a way to do so, and Anakhre having worked under my direction, the result was that the huge bow could be strung and unstrung by a woman.

  Thus, I had always been expert with both spear and bow, and in several days I came to know the weapon made by my son Anakhre so well that I never missed a target, be it small as a fly or swift as a falcon.

  This accomplished, I returned to Kzour, mounted on Kouath of the flaming eyes, and once again I began to prowl around the enemies of mankind.

  To gain their confidence, I fired a large number of arrows from my old bow each time one of their parties came near the boundary, and my arrows fell well short of them. They thus came to know the exact range of the weapon, hence to believe they were absolutely out of danger at such fixed distances. Nevertheless, they remained distrustful, which kept them moving in capricious ways, whenever they were not under cover of the forest, and made them conceal their stars from my sight.

  By being patient, I finally wore down their fears, and on the sixth morning a troop took up positions facing me, beneath a great chestnut tree, at a distance three times the range of my conventional bow.

  At once I fired a volley of useless arrows. Their vigilance relaxed more and more, and their demeanor became as free as it had been during the early times of my presence.32

  This was the crucial moment. My heart was pounding so fast that at first, I felt myself without force. I waited, for the glorious future rested on a single arrow. If the arrow failed to hit its mark, the Xipéhuz would never again let themselves be part of my experiment, and then, how c
ould one know whether or not they were vulnerable to man’s attacks?

  Nonetheless, little by little, my will triumphed, caused my breathing to be calm, made my limbs supple and strong, my eye steady. Slowly then I raised Anakhre’s bow. Over there, far away, a large emerald-colored cone stood still in the shadow of a tree; its brilliant star was turned toward me. The huge bow strained; through the air, whistling, the arrow flew . . . and the Xipéhuz, struck, fell, shrank, became a petrified heap.

  A loud cry of triumph poured forth from my chest. Opening my arms to the heavens, in ecstasy, I thanked the Unique One.

  And so, after all, the dreadful Xipéhuz were vulnerable to man’s weapons! We could hope to destroy them!

  Now, without fear, I roared with all my lungs, I let sound the music of joy, I who had so despaired for the future of my race, I who, beneath the boundless heavens, beneath the deep blue of the abyss, had so often estimated that in two centuries the vast world would have seen its limits collapse in the face of the Xipéhuz invasion.

  And yet, when it did come, beloved Night, pensive Night, a pall also fell over my joy, the sorrowful realization that mankind and Xipéhuz could not coexist, that the total destruction of one must be the terrible condition of life for the other.33

  *The Precursors of Ninevah, by B. Dessault, edition in-octavo, Calmann-Lévy, Paris. In the interest of the reader, I have converted the extract from the Book of Bakhoun that follows into modern scientific language. [Rosny’s note]

  *The Kensington Museum in London, and M. Dessault himself, possess some mineral debris, similar in all respects to those described by Bakhoun, which modern chemical analysis has been unable to break down and combine with other substances, and which, consequently, cannot be subsumed under any nomenclature of known bodies. [Rosny’s note]

  *In the following chapters, where the mode is generally narrative, I condense the literal translation of M. Dessault, without however forcing myself to make the tiresome division by verses, nor to make useless repetitions. [Rosny’s note]

  SECOND BOOK

  VII. Third Period of the Book of Bakhoun

  1

  The priests, elders, and chiefs listened in amazement to my tale. Runners sped off to the most isolated regions to repeat the good news. The Grand Council ordered the warriors to gather on the plain of Mehour-Asar at the sixth moon in the year 22,649, and prophets preached the holy war. More than a hundred thousand Zahelal warriors answered the call; a great number of combatants from foreign races—Dzoums, Sahrs, Khaldes—drawn by the promise of fame, came to offer their services to the great nation.

  Kzour was surrounded by ten rings of archers, but their arrows had failed in the face of the Xipéhuz tactic, and the imprudent warriors perished in great numbers.

  And thus, for several weeks, a great terror reigned among the men.

  The third day of the eighth moon, armed with a sharp-pointed knife, I announced to the multitudes that I was going alone to fight the Xipéhuz in the hope of dispelling the doubts beginning to grow as to the truth of my tale.

  My sons Loum, Demja, and Anakhre violently opposed my project and wanted to take my place. And Loum said: “You cannot go there, for once you were dead, all would believe the Xipéhuz invulnerable, and the human race would perish.”

  Demja, Anakhre, and many other chiefs having said the same thing, I found their arguments to be true, and I withdrew.

  And so Loum, taking up my long bone-handled knife, crossed the deadly boundary, and the Xipéhuz rushed toward him. One of them, more rapid than the others, was almost on him, but Loum, more agile than a leopard, dodged aside, went around the Xipéhuz, then with a giant leap, closed with him, and plunged in the sharp point.

  The people, standing immobile, saw the adversary fall, contract, and turn to stone. A hundred thousand voices rose in the blue morning, and already Loum was returning, crossing the boundary. His glorious name spread among the armies.

  2. The First Battle

  The seventh day of the eighth moon in the year 22,649.34 At dawn the horns sounded; the heavy hammers struck the great bells of brass to announce the great battle. A hundred black buffalo, two hundred stallions were sacrificed by the priests, and my fifty sons and I offered prayers to the Unique One.

  The rising planet of the Sun was engulfed in the red dawn, the chiefs galloped before their armies, the tumult of the attack spread forth with the impetuous surge of a hundred thousand combatants.

  The tribe of Nazzum was the first to engage the enemy, and the combat was tremendous. Helpless at first, struck down by mysterious blows, soon the warriors learned the art of striking the Xipéhuz and destroying them. Then all the nations—Zahelals, Dzoums, Sahrs, Khaldes, Xisoastres and Pjarvanns—roaring like the oceans, swept over the plain and forest, surrounded the silent adversaries on all sides.35

  For a long while the battle was chaos; messengers continuously came to inform the priests that men were dying by the hundreds, but that their deaths were avenged.

  At the ardent hour, my swift-footed son Sourdar, sent by Loum, came to tell me that for every Xipéhuz slain, twelve of our men perished. My soul was filled with blackness, my heart without strength, but my lips murmured: Thy will be done, O Only Father!

  Remembering the slaughter of the warriors, 140,000 of them, and knowing that there were approximately four thousand Xipéhuz, I reasoned that more than a third of the entire army would perish, but that the Earth would remain Man’s. It could have been the case that the army would not have sufficed:

  “It is therefore a victory,” I muttered sadly.

  But as I was pondering these things, suddenly the clamor of battle shook the forest more violently, then, in great waves, the warriors reappeared, and all, with cries of distress, were fleeing toward the boundary of Safety.

  Then I saw the Xipéhuz appear at the edge of the forest, no longer separated one from the other as in the morning, but united in groups of twenty or so, in circular formation, their fires turned inward. In this formation, invulnerable, they advanced on our helpless warriors, and massacred them in a horrible manner.

  It was a debacle.

  The bravest fighters thought only of flight. Nevertheless, despite the mourning that grew in my soul, I remained a patient observer of this fatal turn of events, hoping to find some remedy at the very heart of misfortune, for often poison and antidote exist side by side.

  Destiny rewarded me for my confidence in reason with two discoveries. I noticed, first of all, that in the locations where our tribes were a great many and the Xipéhuz few, the slaughter, at first tremendous, slowed as the enemy’s blows had less and less force, and many of those stricken rose to their feet after a brief moment of confusion. The more robust finally were able to resist the blows completely, continuing to flee despite repeated strikes. With the same thing happening all over the battlefield, I hazarded a conclusion that the Xipéhuz were becoming tired, that their destructive force could not go beyond a certain limit.

  The second insight, which happily complemented the first, was given to me by a group of Khaldes. These poor souls, completely encircled by the enemy, losing confidence in their short knives, tore up bushes and made clubs out of them, with which they attempted to clear a passage. To my great surprise, their attempt succeeded. I saw Xipéhuz, by the dozens, lose their balance under the rain of blows, and about half of the Khaldes were able to escape through the opening thus made, but, oddly enough, those who made use of instruments of bronze instead of bushes (in this case several of the chiefs) were immediately killed as they struck the enemy. It must again be noted that the blows with the clubs did no visible damage to the Xipéhuz, for those who had fallen got up at once and continued their pursuit. I in no way minimize the extreme importance of this double discovery to future battles.

  All the while the debacle continued. The earth resounded with the flight of the defeated; before evening, all that remained within the Xipéhuz’s boundaries were our dead, and several hundred combatants who had climbed
trees. As for the latter, their fate was horrible, for the Xipéhuz burned them alive by converging a thousand beams of fire on the branches that held them. Their terrible cries echoed for hours beneath the vast firmament.

  3. Bakhoun Is Elected

  The next morning the tribes counted the survivors. It happened that the battle had claimed some nine thousand lives; a cautious estimate numbered the Xipéhuz dead at six hundred. The conclusion was that the death of each enemy cost fifteen human lives.

  Despair settled in every heart, many cried out against their chiefs, and spoke of abandoning this dreadful enterprise. Thus, in the midst of these murmurings, I advanced to the center of camp and began openly to reproach the warriors for the weakness of their souls. I asked them whether it was preferable to let all mankind perish or to sacrifice a part of humanity; I demonstrated to them that in ten years the land of the Zahelals would be invaded by the Forms, and in twenty years the country of the Khaldes, the Sahrs, the Pjarvanns and the Xisoastres; then, having thus awakened their conscience, I made them admit that already a sixth of the formidable Xipéhuz territory had been taken back by man, that on three sides the enemy had been pushed back into the forest. Finally, I told them my observations, I made them understand that the Xipéhuz became tired after a while, that wooden clubs could knock them over and force them to expose their vulnerable spot.

  A great silence reigned on the plain, hope was returning to the hearts of the countless warriors who were hearing my words. And to build their confidence, I described a series of wooden devices that I had conceived, suited both for the attack and the defense. Enthusiasm was reborn, the tribes applauded my words, and the chiefs laid their mandate at my feet.