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

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  Gold, platinum, mercury are black and opaque, ice appears blackish. Air and water vapor are transparent, and yet tinted, as well as certain samples of steel, certain very pure clays. Clouds do not prevent me from seeing the sun and the stars. In addition, I clearly distinguish the same clouds hovering in the atmosphere.

  The difference between my sight and that of other men was, as I have mentioned, rarely noticed by those close to me; they simply thought that I perceived colors only with difficulty; this is too common an infirmity to attract attention. It had no importance for the everyday activities of my life, as I could see the forms of objects in the same way as—and perhaps more subtly than—the majority of men. The designation of an object by its color, when color was needed to distinguish it from another object of the same shape, did not bother me unless the objects were new to me. If somebody called the color of a vest “blue” and the color of another “red,” it made little difference to me what the real colors were in which these vests appeared to me: blue and red became terms of a purely mnemonic nature.

  From all of this, you might believe that there was some kind of agreement between my colors and those of others, and that therefore it was the same as if I had seen their colors. But, as I have already written, red, green, yellow, blue, and so on, when they are pure, like the colors of the prism—I see them all as a more or less blackish gray; they are not colors for me. In nature, where no color is pure, it is not the same: such and such a substance called green, for example, is made up for me of a certain compound color;* but another substance called green, and which for you is identical in shade to the first one, is not at all the same color for me.7 Thus you can see that my spectrum of colors does not correspond to yours: when I accept calling both brass and gold yellow, it is somewhat as if you accepted calling both a cornflower and a poppy “red.”

  II.

  If the difference between my way of seeing and that of general humanity had stopped there, it would have indeed seemed extraordinary enough. It is only a small part, however, in comparison with the remainder of what I have to tell you. This differently colored world, differently transparent and opaque—the faculty that enables to see through clouds, to perceive stars on the most cloudy nights, to discern through a wooden wall what is taking place in the neighboring room, or outside a house—what is all of that in comparison with the perception of a living world, a world of Beings that are alive, moving next to and all around man, without man being aware of it, without him being alerted to it by any kind of direct contact? What is all of that, next to the realization that a fauna other than ours exists on Earth, a fauna without the least resemblance to our own, neither in form, nor in organization, nor in habits, nor in patterns of growth, of birth and of death? A fauna that lives next to, and through, our own fauna, influences the elements that surround us, and is influenced, strengthened by those elements, without our having the least suspicion of its presence. A fauna that—as I have demonstrated—ignores us just as we ignore it; and as we evolve without it knowing about us, it evolves without our knowing about it. A living world, as varied as ours, as powerful as ours—and perhaps more so—in its effects on the surface of the planet!8 A kingdom of beings, finally, moving about upon the waters, in the atmosphere, on the ground, transforming these waters, this atmosphere, this ground, in completely different ways than we do, but with a certainly formidable energy, by means of which it acts indirectly upon us and our destiny, just as we act indirectly on it and its destiny! . . . This is, however, what I saw, what I see now, alone among men and beasts alike, here is what I have been passionately studying for five years, after having spent childhood and adolescence simply noticing its presence.

  III.

  Noticing it! As far back as I can remember, I have by instinct succumbed to the seduction of this creation alien to our own. At first, I confused it with other living things. Noticing that no one else was bothered by its presence, that everyone else, on the contrary, seemed to ignore it, I hardly felt the need to point out its singularities. At the age of six, I knew perfectly how it differed from the plants in the fields, from animals of the farmyard and the stable, but I confused it somewhat with inert phenomena like the glow of light, the drift of waters and clouds. This was because these beings were intangible: whenever they came to me, I never felt any effect from their contact. Their form, quite varied in fact, had nevertheless the particularity of being so thin, in one of their three dimensions, that one could compare them to drawn figures, to flat surfaces, to geometric lines that would be moving about.9 They passed through all organic bodies; on the other hand, they appeared to be stopped sometimes, to get tangled up in invisible obstacles . . . But I will describe them later. For the time being, I only wish to indicate their presence, to affirm the variety of their contours and lines, their near absence of thickness, their impalpability, all combined with the autonomy of their movements.

  * * *

  As I approached my eighth year, I realized perfectly well that they were just as distinct from atmospheric phenomena as animals are from our kingdom. In the rapture this discovery brought me, I attempted to express it. I was never able to do so. Beside the fact that my speech was almost entirely incomprehensible, as I have said, the extraordinary nature of my vision made it suspicious. No one attempted to disentangle my gestures and sentences, any more than they were ready to admit that I might be able to see through wooden panels, even though I had given proof of this many times. There was, between me and the others, an almost insurmountable barrier.

  I sank into a state of discouragement and reverie; I became a sort of little solitary being; I provoked uneasiness, and felt the same in return, in the company of children of my age. I was not exactly a victim, because my speed of movement kept me out of reach of childish mischief, and gave me the means of avenging myself with ease. At the least sign of menace, I was already at a safe distance, I mocked my pursuers. However great their number might be, no boys were ever able to surround me, let alone constrain me. It was also futile to attempt to take me by ruse. However weak I might have been in shouldering burdens, my forward momentum was unstoppable, immediately extricated me. I could come back by surprise, subdue the adversary, indeed adversaries, with swift and sure blows. Therefore they left me alone. They considered me at one and the same time naive and a bit of a sorcerer, but one whose sorcery was little feared, but despised instead. Little by little I created a life outside society, wild, contemplative, not entirely devoid of gentleness. My mother’s tenderness alone rendered me human, even though, too occupied during the day, she rarely found time for caresses.

  IV.

  I now will attempt to describe, in summary fashion, a few scenes from my tenth year, in order to give concrete form to the preceding explanations.

  It is in the morning. A strong glow lights up the kitchen, a glow that is pale yellow to my parents and to the servants, but for me a very diverse light. Breakfast is being served, bread with tea. But I don’t drink tea. They have given me a glass of Schiedam with a raw egg. My mother cares for me tenderly; my father asks me questions. I try to answer him, I slow down my speech; he only understands a syllable here and there, he shrugs his shoulders.

  “He will never speak.”

  My mother looks at me compassionately, persuaded that I am a bit simple-minded. The servants and maids are no longer even curious about the little violet monster; the Friesland girl has gone back to her region long ago. As for my sister—she is two years old—she plays next to me, and I have a deep tenderness for her.

  Once breakfast is over, my father goes out into the fields with the servants, my mother begins to go about the daily chores. I follow her into the courtyard. The animals come toward her. I look at them with interest, I love them. But all around them, the other Kingdom is moving and captivates my interest to a greater degree: this is the mysterious domain that I am alone in knowing.10

  Against the dark soil, there are a few forms spread out; they move about, they stop, they pulsate at th
e level of the ground. They belong to several species, differentiated by their contours, by their movements, and especially by the arrangement, the design, and the nuances of the lines that traverse them. These lines in fact constitute the essence of their being, and, as a young child, I perceived this very clearly. While the mass of their form is dull, grayish, the lines are almost always sparkling. They constitute very complicated networks, they emanate from centers, they radiate out from these, until they become lost, imprecise.11 Their nuances are countless, their curves infinite. These nuances vary within a single line, as the form also varies within that line, if to a lesser degree.

  In general, this being is shaped by rather irregular, but very distinct, contours, by centers that irradiate outward, by multicolored lines that crisscross each other abundantly. When it moves, the lines vibrate, oscillate, the centers contract and dilate, while the outer shape varies little.

  All of that, ever since that time, I see very clearly, although I am incapable of defining its nature: a delightful charm invades me when I contemplate the Moedigen.* One of them, a colossus ten meters long and almost as wide, passes slowly across the courtyard, and disappears. This one, with several bands as large as cables, with centers as large as the wings of eagles, is of extreme interest to me, and almost frightens me. I hesitate a moment to follow it, but others attract my attention. They are of all sizes: some are no longer than our tiniest insects, while I have seen others reach a length of more than thirty meters. They move along the ground itself, as if attached to solid surfaces. Whenever a material obstacle—a wall or a house—presents itself, they breach it by molding themselves to its surface, always without making any important modifications to their shapes. But wherever the obstacle is composed of matter that is either alive or has lived, they pass directly through it: it is thus that I have seen them a thousand times emerge from a tree or from under the foot of an animal or a man. They also pass through water, but prefer to remain on the surface.

  These terrestrial Moedigen are not the only intangible beings. There is an aerial population, of marvelous splendor, incomparable in subtlety, variety, and brightness, next to which the most beautiful of birds are dull, slow and ponderous. Here again, there is a contour and some lines. But the background is no longer grayish; it is strangely luminous; it sparkles like the sun, and the lines stand out against it like vibrating veins, its centers vibrate violently. The Vuren, as I thus call them, have a more irregular shape than the terrestrial Moedigen, and generally, they navigate by means of rhythmical arrangements, of crisscrossings and uncrossings that, in my ignorance, I cannot grasp, and that confound my imagination.

  Then, I strike out across a field recently mowed: the fight between one Moedig and another attracts my attention. Such combats are frequent; I have a violent passion for them. Sometimes, it is a fight between equals; more often, it is the attack of a strong one on a weak one (the weak one is not necessarily the smaller). This time, the weak one, after a brief defense, starts to flee, closely pursued by its attacker. Despite the speed of their chase, I follow them, I succeed in keeping them in sight, until the moment when the fight begins anew. They rush toward each other, in a hard, even rigid manner, as each one is solid to the other. With each shock, their lines become phosphorescent, converge toward the point of contact, their centers pale and shrink. First, the struggle remains more or less equal, the weak one deploys the most intense energy, and succeeds even in gaining a respite from its attacker. It takes advantage of this to flee again, but it is soon caught up with, attacked with force, and finally captured, that is, held in an opening in the contour of the other. This is exactly what the weak one had tried to avoid, by responding to the shocks from the strong one with less energetic, but more rapid, shocks. Now, I see all its lines vibrate, its centers struggle desperately; and as this continues the lines become paler, thinner, the centers lose their precise form. After a few minutes, it is given back its freedom; it moves away slowly, dull, debilitated. The antagonist, to the contrary, sparkles more, its lines take on more color, its centers become sharper and pulsate more rapidly.

  This struggle moved me deeply; I dream of it, I compare it to fights I see sometimes between our animals and our small creatures; I understand dimly that the Moedigen in fact do not kill each other, or rarely, that the victor contents itself with drawing energy at the expense of the vanquished.12

  The morning advances, it is close to eight o’clock; the school in Zwartendam is about to open: I make a leap up to the farm, I take my books, and here I am among my peers, where no one guesses the deep mysteries that palpitate around me, where no one has even the most confused idea of living beings through which all humanity passes, and which pass through humanity, without any indication of this mutual inter-penetration.

  I am a very poor student. My handwriting is no more than a hasty scrawl, formless, unreadable; my speech remains incomprehensible; it is obvious I am distracted. The teacher continuously exclaims:

  “Karel Ondereet, when are you going to stop looking at flies in flight!”

  Alas! my dear teacher, it is true that I am watching the flies flying around, but how much more does my soul soar along with those mysterious Vuren that are moving about the room! And what strange feelings obsess my childlike soul, when I realize the blindness of all around me, and above all, your own, O solemn shepherd of minds.

  V.

  The most difficult period of my life was that from twelve to eighteen years.

  First of all, my parents tried to send me to high school; there I knew only misery and failures. As a result of exhausting efforts, I succeeded in expressing the most common things in an almost comprehensible manner: making a great effort to slow down my syllables, I blurted them out awkwardly, and with the stresses of a deaf person. But as soon as it was a matter of expressing something complex, my speech regained its fatal rapidity: no one was able to follow me.13 Thus, I was not able to make people aware of my progress orally. And my handwriting was atrocious, my letters overlapped each other, and in my impatience, I forgot syllables, words: it was monstrous gibberish. Besides, writing for me was a torture perhaps even more intolerable than speaking—it was so ponderous, so stiflingly slow!—If, sometimes, after great effort and the sweat of my brow, I managed to begin my homework, soon I was exhausted and out of patience, I felt myself fainting. I preferred therefore the reprimands of the teacher, my father’s bouts of fury, punishments, privations, scorn, to this horrible labor.

  Thus, I was almost totally deprived of means of expressing myself: already an object of ridicule because of my thinness and my odd complexion, because of my strange eyes, even more I was seen as being some sort of idiot. It was necessary to take me out of school, to accept the fact that I must become a peasant. The day my father decided to give up all hope, he said to me with an unaccustomed gentleness:

  “My poor lad, you see, I have done my duty . . . my entire duty! Never reproach me your fate!”

  I was violently moved, I cried all the tears of my heart: never before had I felt with so much bitterness how isolated I was in the midst of mankind. I dared to kiss my father tenderly; I murmured:

  “Yet it is not true that I am an imbecile!”

  And in fact I felt superior to those who had been my peers. For some time now, my intelligence had been undergoing a remarkable development. I read, I understood, I intuited things, and I had, more than other men have, immense possibilities for meditation, within this universe that was visible to me alone.

  My father was unable to untangle my words, but he was moved by my affection.

  “Poor lad!” he said.

  I looked at him; I felt a terrible despair, knowing all the more that the void that separated us would never be filled. My mother, through her loving intuition, realized at that moment that I was not inferior to other boys of my age: she stared at me tenderly, she spoke sweet words to me that came from the utmost depths of her being. Despite all that, I was condemned to cease my studies.

  Beca
use of my weak muscular strength, I was relegated to tending the flocks and livestock. I did the job marvelously well; I needed no dog to tend the herds, for no colt, no stallion had greater agility than I did. Thus I lived, from fourteen to seventeen, the solitary life of a shepherd. It suited me more than any other. Given over to observation and contemplation, and also to some readings, my mind did not stop developing. Endlessly, I made comparisons between the dual creation I had before my eyes. From this I deduced ideas about the nature of the universe, I formulated vague hypotheses and systems. If it is true that my thoughts at that time did not perfectly correlate, did not achieve a clear synthesis—for they were the thoughts of an adolescent, uncoordinated, hasty, enthusiastic—they were nevertheless original and fertile. I will not deny that their value was especially dependent on my unique constitution. But they did not derive their full power from this alone. Without the least vanity, I believe I can assert that they far outstripped, in subtlety as in logic, those of ordinary young men.

  They alone brought consolation to my sad life as a semipariah, without companions, without any real communication with those surrounding me, not even with my adorable mother.

  * * *

  At seventeen, life became undeniably intolerable for me. I was tired of dreaming, tired of vegetating in a wasteland of thought. I languished with boredom. I remained motionless for long hours, disinterested in the entire world, paying no attention to what took place in my family. Of what avail to me was it to know things more marvelous than other men, insofar as this knowledge was destined to perish with me? Of what avail to me this mystery of other living beings, and even the dual nature of two living systems passing though each other without knowing each other? These things could have turned my head, could have filled me with enthusiasm and ardor, if only I could, in some way or other, have taught them or shared them with others. But to what avail! Vain and sterile, absurd and wretched, they contributed instead to my perpetual psychic quarantine.