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

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  The assembly listened impassively. All considerations were in vain: an incommensurable fatality engulfed their souls. And Rem continued:

  “Men and women over forty must die. Except for fifty, the rest must accept euthanasia this very day. As for children, nine families out of ten cannot keep them; the others may keep only one. The choice of adults who take euthanasia is determined in advance: we need only consult the established lists.”

  A faint shock ran through the assembly. Then, heads bowed in an indication of submission, and the crowd outside, who had heard the deliberation over the wave transmitters, fell silent. The youngest seemed barely touched by the slightest cloud of melancholy.

  Targ, however, refused to resign himself to this. He rushed back to his dwelling, where Arva and Érê, trembling, were already waiting for him. They clung tightly to their children; emotion aroused them, youthful and tenacious emotion, the source of ancient life and of vast futures.

  Nearby, Mano was lost in daydreaming. All their agitation had merely surprised him for a moment. Fatalism weighed like a stone on his shoulders.

  At the sight of Targ, Arva exclaimed:

  “I don’t want to! I don’t want to! We will not die like this.”

  “You are right,” Targ responded. “We will brave misfortune.”

  Mano awoke from his torpor and spoke: “But what will you do? Death is nearer today than if we were a hundred years old.”

  “No matter,” said Targ. “We will leave.”

  “The Earth is empty for mankind!” Mano said again. “It will kill you in pain and suffering. Here at least the end will be sweet.”

  Targ was no longer listening to him. The urgent need for action absorbed his attention: it was necessary to flee before midday, the time appointed for the sacrifice.

  After having gone with Arva to look at the gliders and motocruisers, he made his choice. Then he distributed among the machines the water and food supply that he kept in reserve, while Arva stored the necessary energy. Their work was speedy. Before nine o’clock, everything was ready.

  He found Mano still plunged in his torpor, and Érê, who had gathered the clothes they would need.

  “Mano,” he said, placing his hand on his brother-in-law’s shoulder, “we are going to leave. Come.”

  Mano slowly shrugged his shoulders:

  “I don’t want to die in the Desert,” he declared.

  Arva threw herself on him and hugged him with all her tenderness: a flicker of his old love roused the man. But he was immediately reclaimed by the inevitable:

  “I don’t want to,” he said.

  All pleaded with him—for a long time. Targ even attempted to take him by force; Mano resisted with the invincible strength of inertia.

  As the hour was advancing, they emptied the fourth glider of its provisions, and, after making a final prayer, Targ gave the signal to leave. The planes rose into the sunlight, Arva cast a long look backward at the dwelling where her mate awaited euthanasia, then sobbing violently, she soared on the boundless emptiness.

  XII. Toward the Equatorial Oases

  Targ steered toward the equatorial oases: the other oases held only death.

  During his explorations, he had visited Desolation, High Springs, Great Combe, Blue Sands, Clear Oasis, and Sulfur Valley: they had some food, but not a drop of water. Alone, the two Equatorial Oases kept small reserves. The nearest, Dune Equatorial, forty-five hundred kilometers distant, could be reached by morning the next day.

  The voyage was abominable. Arva could think of nothing but Mano’s death. When the sun reached its zenith, she uttered a great funereal cry—it was the hour of euthanasia! Never again would she see the man with whom she had lived the tender adventure!

  The Desert spread before them endlessly. In the eyes of humans, Earth had died a horrible death. And yet another form of life was evolving there, for whom now was the time of genesis. It was seen swarming over plains and hills, formidable and incomprehensible. At times Targ reviled it; at times a fearful sympathy awakened in his soul. Was there not some mysterious analogy, an obscure fraternity even, between those beings and mankind? Certainly, the two kingdoms were closer to each other than either was to the inert mineral world. Who knows whether their forms of consciousness, in time, would not have understood each other!

  Thinking of this, Targ sighed. And the gliders continued to sail through the blue expanse of oxygen, toward an unknown so terrible that just in thinking of it, the travelers felt their flesh go numb to the bone.

  In order to be avoid all surprises, they decided to halt before nightfall. Targ chose a hill dominated by a plateau. Here the ferromagnetics revealed themselves to be rare, and belonging to species that were easy to displace. On the plateau itself stood a rock of green porphyry, which had suitable hollows. The gliders landed; they were attached with the aid of arcum ropes. These vessels, moreover, made of materials selected for their extreme resilience, were more or less invulnerable.

  It happened that the rock and its surroundings were home to a very small number of groups of ferromagnetics of the tiniest size. Within fifteen minutes, these were expelled, and they were able to organize the camp.

  Having eaten a meal of concentrated gluten and essential hydrocarbons, the fugitives awaited the end of the day. How many other creatures, their kindred, had known, throughout the vast ocean of time, a similar distress? When families prowled in solitude with clubs of wood and fragile tools of stone, there were nights when such handfuls of humans, faced with terrifying emptiness, trembled with hunger, cold, fear at the approach of lions or raging waters. Later, victims of shipwrecks cried out on desert islands, or on the rocks of some deadly shore; voyagers were lost in the midst of carnivorous forests, or in swamps. Innumerable had been such dramas of human distress! . . . Even so, all these unfortunates still stood on the threshold of boundless life; Targ and his companions saw only death!

  And yet, the watchman thought as he looked on the children of Érê and of Arva, this fragile group contains all the vital energy needed to rebuild a human race! . . .

  He moaned. The pole stars turned in their narrow path. The ferromagnetics were phosphorizing on the plain; for a long time, Targ and Arva dreamed, miserably, beside their sleeping family.

  The next day, they arrived at Dune Equatorial. It was located in the midst of a desert formed by sand that over millennia had become petrified. Their arrival made their blood run cold: the bodies of those who, the last, had committed euthanasia lay about unburied. As many Equatorials had preferred to die in the open air, one found them among the ruins, immobile in their terrible sleep. The dry air, infinitely pure, had mummified them. They could have remained thus, for time without end, supreme witnesses to the end of humanity.

  But a more menacing sight diverted the fugitives’ sadness: the ferromagnetics were everywhere. On all sides, their violet colonies were seen; many were huge in size.

  “Keep moving,” said Targ, in a lively and worried manner.

  He did not need to insist. Arva and Érê, realizing the danger, herded the children away, while Targ studied the site. The oasis had only undergone slight changes. The hurricanes had knocked down only a few dwellings, overturned some of the planetary reflectors, or some sound wave receivers; most of the machines and energy generators seemed to be intact. But the arcum reservoirs especially preoccupied the watchman. There were two, largely used up, whose location he knew. When they came in sight, he did not dare at first to touch them; his heart was beating with fear. When, finally, he decided to do so:

  “Intact!’ he cried out, with a rush of emotion. “We have water enough for two years. Now we must find shelter.”

  After long exploration, he decided on a small strip of land, near the protective wall to the west. The ferromagnetics were few here: within a few days a protective barrier could be built. There were two houses, waiting to be occupied, spacious, that the storms had spared.

  Targ and Arva took a look through the larger one. The furnish
ings and instruments turned out to be solid, barely covered with a fine dust; everywhere one felt an indescribably subtle presence. On entering one of the bedrooms, a profound sadness gripped the visitors: on the arcum bed, two humans were visible, stretched out side by side. For a long time, Targ and Arva contemplated these peaceful forms, where once life had dwelt, where joy and pain had pulsed.

  Others would have drawn from this a lesson in resignation; but they, full of bitterness and horror, steeled themselves for the struggle.

  They removed the bodies, and having put Érê and the children in a safe place, they rid the area of a few groups of ferromagnetics. Then they took their first meal in this new land.

  “Courage,” said Targ. “There was a moment, back in the night of Eternity, when only one human couple existed; our entire species is evolved from them! We are stronger than this couple. For if it had perished, all humanity would have perished. In our case, several can die, without yet destroying all hope.”

  “Yes,” Érê sighed, “but water covered the Earth!”

  Targ contemplated her with infinite tenderness.

  “Haven’t we already found water once before?” he said in a low voice.

  He remained motionless, his eyes as if blinded by an inner dream. Then, coming to his senses:

  “While you set up the house, I am going to take stock of our resources.”

  He explored every corner of the oasis, and evaluated all the provisions left behind by the Equatorials, made sure all the energy generators, machines, gliders, planetary shells and sound wave receivers were in working order. All the industrial treasure house of the Last Men was present, ready to support all possible renaissances. What is more, Targ had brought with him from the Red-Lands his technical manuals and annals, rich in ideas and memories.31 The presence of the ferromagnetics disturbed him. In certain areas they were found in formidable concentrations: one needed only to pause for a few minutes in order to feel their muffled toilings.

  “If we do have a lineage,” Targ thought to himself, “their struggle will be tremendous.”

  He arrived thus at the southern extremity of the Equatorial Oasis.

  There he halted, as if hypnotized: in a field where once grain had grown, he came across ferromagnetics of the same large size that he had discovered in the wilderness, near High Springs. His chest constricted. A cold shiver passed along the back of his neck.

  XIII. The Resting Place

  The seasons flowed into the gulf of eternity. Targ and his family continued to live. The vast world enveloped them in its menace. Earlier, when they lived in the Red-Lands, they had already suffered the melancholy of those deserts, which were harbingers of the end of Mankind. Yet, still, thousands of their kin had occupied along with them that supreme refuge. Now they saw before them a more complete distress; they represented no more than a miniscule trace of the ancient life. From one pole to the other, on all the plains, over all the mountains, every inch of the planet was now their enemy, except for that other oasis, where euthanasia was now in the process of devouring creatures who, unremittingly, had abandoned all hope.

  They had surrounded the chosen terrain with a protective wall, once again consolidated the reservoirs, gathered and sheltered their provisions, and Targ often went off, with Érê or Arva, to explore the deserted expanses. All the while searching for the water that creates life, he gathered everywhere he went matter containing hydrogen. This was rare; hydrogen, released in immense quantities during the powerful times of human industry, and again when mankind sought to replace water in its natural state with industrially produced water, had all but disappeared. According to the annals, the largest part of the hydrogen had decomposed into protoatoms and dissipated into interplanetary space. The remaining part had been carried off, through badly understood reactions, into inaccessible depths.

  Nonetheless, Targ gathered enough useful substances to augment the supply of water substantially. But this could only be an expedient.

  The ferromagnetics, above all, concerned Targ. They were thriving. This was because, beneath the oasis, at a shallow depth, there was a considerable reserve of human iron. The ground and surrounding plain covered over a dead city. Thus, the ferromagnetics drew forth this subterranean iron from a distance all the greater because they themselves were larger in size. The latecomers, the “Tertiaries” as Targ nicknamed them, provided they spent the time at it, could extract from depths greater than eight meters. Furthermore, these displacements of metal, in the long run, opened breaches in the ground through which the Tertiaries could pass. The other ferromagnetics produced similar effects, but on a much weaker scale. Besides, they never went deeper than two or three meters. In the case of the Tertiaries, Targ soon realized that their ability to penetrate was limitless: they went down as deep as the breaches permitted.

  It was necessary to take special measures to prevent them from undermining the ground on which the two families lived. The machines dug, beneath the protective wall, galleries whose walls were reinforced with arcum, and plated with bismuth. Pillars of cement compounded with granite, set in the rock, assured the solidity of the vaults. This vast labor lasted several months: the powerful energy generators, the agile and clever machines, allowed this work to be done without effort. According to the calculations of Targ and Arva, it should resist for thirty years all the damage caused by the Tertiaries, assuming the hypothesis that their rate of multiplication would be very intense.

  XIV. Euthanasia

  And so, after three years, thanks to the supplement furnished by the hydrogenated matter, their supply of water had barely diminished. Solid foodstuffs remained abundant, and more were to be had in the other oases. But no trace of new springs had been detected, even though Arva and Targ had probed the desert, tirelessly and for great distances.

  The fate of the Red-Lands troubled the hearts of the refugees. Often, one or the other of them would broadcast a message over the Great Planetary; no one had answered. The brother and sister pushed their travels several times as far as the oasis. Because of the implacable law, they did not dare to land, they glided above it. No inhabitant deigned to notice their presence. And they saw that euthanasia was accomplishing its work. Many more beings than the law required had passed away. Toward the thirtieth month, there remained barely twenty inhabitants.

  One fall morning, Arva and Targ left on a trip. They hoped to follow the double road that, since time immemorial, linked Dune Equator to the Red-Lands. En route, Targ was going to turn toward a territory that, on an earlier trip, had caught his attention. Camped on one of the relay stations, Arva would await his return. They could communicate easily, as Targ carried with him a portable sound wave receiver that could transmit and receive a voice over more than a thousand kilometers. As during previous explorations, they would be able to communicate with Érê and the children, because all the oasis planetaries and relay stations had been kept in good condition.

  No danger menaced Érê, except for those dangers that surpass human energy to such a degree that they would not cause her to run more risks than they would Targ and Arva. The children had grown; their wisdom, precocious like that of all Last Men, barely differed from that of the adults. The two oldest ones—Mano’s son and the watchman’s daughter—had a perfect mastery of the power sources and machines. In the struggle against the blind ferromagnetic activity, they were as effective as adults. A reliable atavism guided them. Nevertheless, Targ had spent long hours, the day before leaving, inspecting the family dwelling and its surroundings; everything was normal.

  Before the departure, the two families gathered around the gliders. It was, as with all major departures, an impressive moment. In the horizontal light, this little group comprised all human hope, all the will to live, all the old energy of the seas, the forests, the savannas and cities. Over there, in the Red-Lands, those who were still alive were little more than shades. And Targ embraced his race and the race of Arva in a long, loving look. The radiance of the blond races had passed fro
m Érê to her daughter. The two heads, covered with gold, almost touched each other. What freshness emanated from them! What deep and tender legends!

  The others as well, despite their swarthy faces and eyes of anthracite, possessed an amazing youthfulness—the burning gaze of Targ, or the propensity to happiness of Mano.

  “Ah,” he exclaimed, “how difficult it is to leave you! But the danger would be much greater if we all left together!”

  They all, even the children, knew well that salvation lay beyond, in some mysterious corner of the deserts. They also knew that the oasis, center of their existence, must always be inhabited. Besides, were they not in contact with each other several times a day, through the voice of the planetaries?

  “Let us go,” Targ said at last!

  The subtle rush of energy spread to the wings of the gliders. They rose into the sky; they faded into the morning light of mother-of-pearl and sapphire. Érê watched them disappear on the horizon. She sighed. When Arva and Targ were no longer there, fate weighed heavier on her. The young woman scanned the oasis with fear in her eyes, and each movement of the children awakened her anxiety. It was odd. Her fears conjured up dangers that no longer existed in this world. She feared neither the mineral kingdom nor the ferromagnetics; rather she feared to see strange men suddenly appear, men who would come from the depths of this uninhabitable vastness. And this strange memory of ancient instincts made her smile at times, yet at other times caused her to shiver, especially when night fell in dark waves over Dune Equator.

  Targ and his companion sailed vertiginously on the seas of air. They loved the speed. All these voyages had not been able to dampen the joy of defying space. The dark planet seemed as if vanquished. They watched as its sinister plains, sharp rocks, and mountains appeared to rush forward to annihilate them. But then, with a slight movement, they triumphed over deep chasms and formidable peaks. Terrifying, flexible, harnessed, the energies softly sang their hymn; the mountain was crossed, the light gliders swooped down toward the deserts where, vague, belated, plodding, the ferromagnetics were evolving. How pitiful and pathetic they seemed! But Targ and Arva knew their secret strength. They were the conquerors. Time lay before them, was on their side, the way of things coincided with their obscure will; one day, their descendants would produce admirable thoughts, and wield marvelous sources of energy.