Journey to the Isles of Atlantis and Other Fanciful Excursions

by Brian Stableford

  Stupefied as he was, Hyrcanus could not help smiling at that idea.

  “Spy!” he cried. “Traitor! Monster of impudence and curiosity, are you forgetting how you’re made? Go look at yourself in a mirror and see whether a formless block like you would cut a fine figure with wings on his shoulders. The Emperor’s entire court would die laughing.”

  “Don’t laugh!” cried Gnomo, getting to his feet, furiously. “If I’m ugly, I’m also strong, you know that. Swear to me this instant to share everything with me, or I’ll hurl you into the ditch. Look!”

  He seized the frail old man, pushed him toward the gulf and forced him to look down. Then, replacing him on the grass, he said: “Swear! Or it’s done!”

  Trembling, Hyrcanus made all the oaths that Gnomo demanded, but promised himself to break them all as soon as he found a means of having his valet imprisoned. Gnomo, for his part, resolved not to quit him for an instant. Seeing a few strollers approaching, he loaded his master on to his shoulders and carried him to his house, without the terrified Hyrcanus daring to say a word.

  Two days later, in the evening, a frightful storm burst over Franconia. Three bell-towers in Nuremberg were struck by lightning, and the turbulence of an impetuous wind overturned almost all the tents in the camp. The horses fled, frightened; the soldiers ran after them; all the bells in the town were ringing, clamors resounded everywhere and tumult reigned in the camp.

  The leaders tried to reestablish a little order in the panicking multitude. Lorenz, perceiving a group of vivandiers, women and children who had taken refuge under large trees that the tempest was bending like reeds, ran toward them, shouting to them to move away, that they were about to be crushed. Suddenly, a noisy mass passed over his head, crashed into the branches of an oak tree and agitated furiously, crying: “Help! Help!” in a strangled voice.

  Lorenz leapt forward, and recognized Gnomo, clad in the flying apparatus, bloody and bruised. His wings were beating the air, breaking the branches to which he was clinging.

  “Wretch!” he cried. “Press the stop mechanism.”

  “It’s broken!” cried Gnomo. “Detach me! Help! Help!”

  The tempest increased. Lorenz, moved by pity, seized a branch, hoisted himself up to the wretch, and, holding on to the shaking tree with one hand, his face lashed by hail, tried to detach Gnomo’s breastplate. It was impossible. A furious gust of wind broke the top of the oak. He fell, breaking the branches. Gnomo let go, and his wings, agitating with a vertiginous force, carried him away into the air. Cries of despair were heard for a few seconds; then only the thunder resounded, and the opening clouds released the cataracts of the heavens.

  An hour later, a rainbow was shining; the soldiers re-erected their battered tents; everyone was taking stock of the disasters and rejoicing in still being alive when horsemen of the watch, coming from the town arrived in camp and asked whether anyone had seen a winged man flying through the air.

  “Yes, we saw him,” said several vivandiers. “It wasn’t a man, it was the Devil. He broke that oak over there in passing. Look there’s the Ritter von Ittenbach over there; he spoke to him, at the risk of being carried away to Hell.”

  The cavaliers asked Lorenz if that was true.

  “Yes,” he said. “I saw Gnomo, Hyrcanus’s valet. He was wounded, and flying with wings fabricated by his master. He must be dead now, poor fellow.”

  “It’s the justice of God,” said the cavalier, making the sign of the cross. “The wretch had just murdered his master. He counted on escaping before anyone discovered his crime, but, alerted by an old maidservant, we surrounded the house, in which he had barricaded himself. The storm broke. He went up on to the roof and suddenly, we saw him rise up into the air. I fired at him, and he disappeared in the direction of the camp. We broke down Hyrcanus’s door a little while ago and found him with his throat cut. I hope to recover the murderer, dead or alive. His wings will be a good prize.

  “Certainly,” said Lorenz. “Inform me, Captain, as soon as you make that discovery. It’s worth a king’s ransom.”

  The horsemen of the watch searched the entire country in vain. They found no trace of Gnomo, and the war soon gave them many other concerns. For lack of heirs, the clockmaker’s possessions were sold at auction for the benefit of the hospices, and the story of Hyrcanus’s wings passed into the rank of legends.

  Half a century later, Eric a young eagle-hunter found a skeleton girded by a rusty breastplate, of precious workmanship but broken in several places, in a cavern that was reputed to be inaccessible, at the top of an arid mountain. A few large eagle plumes were still attached to the articulated armatures fitted to the shoulders of the breastplate.

  Surprised, the young hunter took possession of the metal debris and, leaving the bones where they lay, bound the iron fragments together with a strap and threw them to the bottom of the rock. Then, descending again with the agility of a squirrel, he picked up his find and took it home.

  “Grandfather,” he said, going into the vaulted hall of the Schloss von Ittelbach and addressing an old man with a long white beard who was sitting by the fireside in a armchair with a sculpted back, “look what I’ve found high up on the Altenberg, in a grotto into which only the eagles can go, according to the shepherds.”

  And he described what he had seen.

  “Uncle Lorenz once told me a story about wings,” said the old Baron, “A story that I’ve almost forgotten. Go fetch him, my little Eric. He’ll be able to tell you who the poor fellow was who died up there. Look, here he comes.”

  Lorenz came in, a falcon on his wrist, still an upright and bold hunter in spite of his seventy years. He listened emotionally to his grand-nephew’s story, and in the evening, after dark, when the whole family was gathered around the old fireplace, he told them the story that you have just read.

  Gaston Derys: The Inventor

  (1902)

  Paul Vaudan was one of the thousand inventors who was seeking the dirigibility of airships, one of the audacious conquistadors of space pursuing the proud dream of freeing humankind from the laws imposed on them by nature, of subjugating to their will the gravity that the worlds obey, enchained in the sublime harmonies of their eternal choirs.

  He professed that the aerostat, by the very fact that it is lighter than air, would always be at the mercy of the winds. What he wanted to establish was an apparatus of aviation imitative of the fight of birds, which, much denser than air, would be able to resist the violence of the wind like the birds themselves.

  He assimilated everything that naturalists have written about aviation. He examined all the projects and scrutinized all the experiments of the men who had glimpsed the possibility of realizing the designs of presumptuous Icarus, from Roger Bacon and Leonardo da Vinci to contemporaries, from the flying dove of Archytas of Tarentum,17 two thousand years old, to the mechanical bird of Gaston Tissandier.18

  After an entire year of dogged meditation, it appeared to him that a result might be attained by determining the kind of balanced equilibrium that reigns in the movements of a bird. It was a matter of combining the rowing action that impels a bird in the atmosphere as oars propel a boat, and the gliding flight that sustains the bird almost without any expenditure of energy.

  He constructed an aviator equipped with large canvas wings extended upon an aluminum armature, and attempted to take off; he was able to glide for five minutes, but, for want of stability, the aviator crashed, and Paul Vaudan nearly broke his bones.

  Without being discouraged, he reconstituted his apparatus, adding a few improvements to it. He maintained himself in the air for longer. The articulations of his machines were possessed of a greater suppleness. But the two elements that he wanted to amalgamate, gliding flight and rowing flight, were not sufficiently fused. He fell heavily on to a roof, and it was a miracle that he did not pay with his life for that second attempt.

  He recommenced ten more times, offering himself to death, which spared him; she is a coquette who l
ikes to spare her gallants. He persisted, superb in his stoical serenity, undefeated by those groping trials, but stimulated and exalted, understanding that he was getting closer and closer to the desired goal by means of patient ameliorations.

  In the meantime, people mocked him and insulted him; but he smiled. All the insults and the disdain did not afflict him. Those people were ignorant; they would change their tone on the day of his triumph…for he nourished the indestructible certainty of emerging victoriously from the struggle that he had undertaken against the elements. The rhythm, the musical sequence of movements that caused the wings of his aviator to quiver with the very life of the wings of birds, science or hazard would be revealed to him, he was sure of it...

  A powerful force shored up his faith in the final success: amour.

  Under the shade of Chevreuse, in the hollow of an idyllic vale, there was a young woman waiting for him, his fiancée. That romance was unknown to the public: Paul had judged it unnecessary to offer his heart to be trampled. Once a week, he suspended his labor and fled to Chevreuse. Oh, how he execrated the slowness of the omnibus train and the rickety patache that carried him toward his friend. To traverse those thirty kilometers it required two mortal hours, during which he cursed the frequency of stations and the indolence of the coachman. When would the time come, then, when he would be in Chevreuse in a matter of minutes, borne by the vertiginous flight of his wings?

  But also, after those two exasperating hours, what intimate and profound transports there were when his fiancée’s small hands refreshed his fiery temples, when the tenderness of a soft voice singing like a spring, which alarmed his eyes shiny with fever and perils braved, poured pure balm into his entire being. What did the sarcasms of men matter, since a woman loved him, whose amour was as infinite as the ether he wished to conquer?

  For her, he would collect the glory of transgressing the mysterious will of nature, and he drew fecund energy from the thought that he would offer her a wedding present more magnificent than those of which the most powerful potentates were able to dispose; for it would not merely be a province, or a state, or a continent, but the empire of Space itself. And he was so convinced of winning that empire that he deferred his marriage until the moment of the definitive victory.

  And he found it!

  The day came when he recreated the flight of birds, when he commanded the aluminum limbs of his machine like his own limbs, when the winged human cleaved through the clouds like lightning, and soared over crowds in the apotheosis of ovations.

  And on that day, he suddenly abandoned the idolatrous clamors that rose toward him like a smoke of incense, and he flew all the way to Chevreuse like an arrow. And he threw himself into his fiancée’s arms, with blissful tears...

  “I knew that you would be victorious,” she said. “I knew that you would fly to me like an archangel.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I am victorious, victorious thanks to you, and for you...”

  And he explained that he had almost perfected his machine. Something trivial was still lacking. The steering mechanism that regulated the flight of the aviator was too complicated. A keyboard with electric buttons would replace that helm...

  And he set out in quest of the ideal perfection.

  A hymn of praise burst forth all over the world. Every day he received letters of congratulation by the basketful. Sovereigns offered him mountains of gold in exchange for his secret. Reporters came into his house through the windows or climbed down the chimney. All the newspapers on the planet commented on his invention: it was distance suppressed; unknown lands and the poles would be explored without difficulty; all strategies would have to be remade, forts protecting frontiers having become ineffective and derisory; railways would be abandoned, as mail coaches had once been; roofs would be transformed into terraces; the pace of existence would be as radically modified as if humans had been suddenly transported to Mars or Neptune...

  Enthusiasm! The limitless fields of the heavens were humans had placed their gods would be traveled in all directions! Would he not be accorded divine honors? Unanimous prayers of thanks would rise up toward him...

  Enthusiasm! He traversed the clouds, he bounded like a meteor from one end of the provinces to the other, he was the master of the air and the master of masters; he mocked frontiers, and entered into the homes of kings as he pleased.

  And three or four times a day he raced to the depths of France in order to go and kiss his fiancée...

  After a week, however, it seemed to him that he no longer experienced, on finding himself in the company of his friend, a happiness as intense and as complete as when he had gone to Chevreuse by train and patache and was subjected to their enervating slowness. He interrogated himself, and had to admit it: previously, he had suffered throughout a week of solitude, and those two hours of delicious torture, which further postponed his rapture, had prepared superhuman delights for him. Now, those fervors had become lukewarm, and he almost regretted the snail-like train and the tortoise-patache. Previously, in the middle of the distant forest, the little fiancée had appeared to him to be akin to a fay of legendary times, haloed by poetry. Now, when he fell upon Chevreuse like a bolide, that poetry had vanished...

  And a dolorous anxiety insinuated itself into him; he was afraid of no longer loving as much, he was afraid of having expelled amour from his heart by stifling desire therein...

  And his pride began to diminish.

  He finished his new machine. It was the marvel of marvels. With the aid of a keyboard, with two fingers, one could steer wherever one wanted, at whatever speed one wanted...

  He received the highest decorations of all the nations of the world, and he said to himself, as he gazed at them:

  I am the most illustrious of the illustrious. I am the equal of Prometheus, the thief of celestial fire. I have conquered the heavens. I can acquire billions. I can toy with men and their laws. I am finally free. However, I’m not happy... Why? When my nights were consecrated to labor, when I exhausted myself in pursuit of my chimera, when I was struggling, I was happier than I am today. In my grim combats with that chimera, I tasted bitter joys. And now that it is tamed, I’m sad…sad and idle, I no longer desire anything. I’m bored. Only one thing could reconcile me with life, and that would be a return to the nature I’ve confronted, a return to the simple pleasures, the love of a woman I would love, a humble life in a remote location, while, little by little, the invisible and magnetic bonds that bind confident couples together enveloped us invincibly...

  But I almost no longer love my fiancée, who curses my wings...

  Feeling melancholy, he climbed into his aviator and soared over Paris.

  Hosannas saluted him.

  Those people who are shouting themselves hoarse, he thought, are mostly artisans and petty employees. They envy my wings! That village where their parents are growing old, those mountains, that sea which they adore and to which they can only go once a year, they would like to be able to revisit every Saturday evening…the insensates! That hope and that desire, which comfort them and make them smile all year long, they want to kill! They want to hate their old parents’ village, hate the sea, and hate the mountains, by virtue of seeing them too frequently. When they have suppressed distance, the earth will appear to them as a narrow prison; they will be everywhere at the same time, and satiety will reign over them, and life will be bleaker and darker and emptier than death...

  And amorous young women blew him kisses.

  Foolish women! he thought. Because of me, amour will desert the earth. Because of me, lovers will be able to see one another at any time, because of me, the cause of the keenest charm of amour, the obstacles and hindrances that irritate desire, will melt away. I’m an executioner, and the most infamous of all, the executioner of amour!

  Then he had a sinister vision: two clouds of fire, two armies of winged men pursuing one another…and soldiers falling in hundreds...

  “Enough! Enough!” howled the frightened invent
or. “Am I going to increase the horrors of war, then?”

  He fled toward open country at random, and was saluted with joyful cries by the merchants of a small town, who had not reflected that the unprecedented facility of communications would bring to their neighborhood inferior products at minimal prices, annihilating their commerce and local industry, and also by peasants who had conserved the costume and traditions of their forefathers, and had not realized that, when aviators multiplied journeys, the old customs, and even races, would be obliterated...

  “I shall, therefore,” he concluded, “spread desolation over the earth. I am not a benefactor, I’m an enemy...”

  He returned home in despair, and in a magnificent fit of sincerity and philanthropy, he smashed his machines...

  Then he thought about his little fiancée, who was still waiting for him in the middle of the forest. Oh, to nestle next to her, to forget himself next to her! He ran to the station and deplored the slowness of the lazy train and the creaking coach. His desire to see his faithful friend grew within him, filling his heart, impetuous and overflowing...

  And he hugged her to his bosom with the same sobbing passion as before, and he took her far away, to a village where people would not be able to find them…the people who would now gladly have lynched him...

  Louis Lemercier de Neuville: King Beta

  (1905)

  I. In which the engineer Vatenlair arrives in a balloon

  in a country that does not exist.

  Do not ask where that country is situated, the degrees of its latitude and its longitude, the road it is necessary to take in order to go there, whether it is an island or a continent, etc., etc. ; we do not know. What we can assure you, however, is that it is not on the Moon.

  Until now, we only have known five parts of the world, which are, as you know, Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Oceania; it appears that another exists, which is called Alphabetia. That name was given to the country in question by its first inhabitants, and this is why.