“You’re interesting me keenly,” Marcel exclaimed, very amused.
“To complete the disaster,” Blas continued, without departing from a humorous gravity, “those poor rejects from the university couldn’t be utilized anywhere. Except for a few carefully preserved specimens that still figure in our galleries, they were all sold for scrap. The birds, informed by their instinct, learned in a matter of days how to distinguish the metal automata from veritable gardeners of flesh and bone. They perched on their shoulders in dozens. A few songbirds even had the impudence to nest inside their ears or mouth.”
“And what was done after the failure of the automatic pawns?”
“There was a temporary return to old methods, but study masters soon became unnecessary. Pupils now take too much pleasure in studying, and are too well aware that it is in their interest to develop their intellectual faculties for them to need surveillance. You have only to look around you...”
Marcel could, in fact, see that all his knew schoolfellows were observing the most profound meditation. Only a few pupils were conversing quietly about their studies, taking a thousand precautions to avoid disturbing their neighbors.
In a matter of two hours Marcel Vernoy had seen and heard so many extraordinary things that his ideas were seething. He felt an intolerable headache. Blas perceived that, and led his friend to one of the exterior bays, from which a vast horizon was visible.
“You can’t begin to study today,” he said. “Content yourself with observing at leisure this landscape unfamiliar to you, and I’ll try to answer the questions suggested to you by the spectacle.”
Marcel leaned his elbows on a stout bar of burnished gold that served as the window sill, and gazed.
Azure-colored domes, elegant edifices with silver facades and gigantic columns, equipped at their summit with balconies and balustrades, sprang forth in the solar light with the most sparkling colors. Gigantic trees, their foliage dotted with green and blue flowers, loomed up, surging from the ground in all their vigor and splendor.
For some time, Marcel remained plunged in the contemplation of the landscape, from which perfumes emanated as powerful as they were subtle. His headache disappeared as if by magic under the influence of a fresh light breeze. He inhaled life and health by the lungful, so to speak.
Then his attention was directed toward the architectures whose brightest colors tinted the green and bronze background of the landscape. The tall towers equipped with balconies at their summits, reminiscent of great golden lilies, intrigued him especially.
“What use are those high columns,” he asked, “which remind me of the factory chimneys of the past, albeit with less ugliness.”
“Those monuments aren’t there solely for decorative purposes. They’re veritably useful to us. It’s thanks to them that we can regulate the temperature, avoiding exaggerations of heat and cold, so harmful to hygiene.”
“I’d like you to give me a summary idea of their function.”
“Those high columns, which you can see, are very numerous, and whose summits almost reach the clouds, are aspirators of electricity. Thanks to them, we capture the stormy fluid and utilize it as a motive force. It no longer rains nowadays unless our meteorologists determine it. In certain cases, in the presence of a tornado, a cyclone or a typhoon, the powerful artillery pieces that you can see at the summits of the towers avert the cataclysm, pulverize it, and reduce its disastrous effects to negligibility. Now you ought to understand why the people of the thirtieth century enjoy a climate that is always even. Hundreds of years have passed since white frosts have been observed, or any cases of sunstroke have been produced.”
Marcel noticed that the perspective he was contemplating was entirely composed of curved lines, oval or serpentine. The irritating straight line and brutal angles had disappeared from the world forever.
Blas had respected his friend’s reverie religiously. He waited complaisantly for the latter to break the silence.
“This landscape is marvelously beautiful in its simplicity and elegance,” Marcel said, finally, “but doubtless our view, here, is overlooking some exceptional park. The cities must be very different...”
“You’re error is great! Cities, as you understood them a thousand years ago, no longer exist. The barbarically superimposed stories, the cloacas of stone devoid of verdure and air, were assassinated a long time ago. A city is no more now than a forest of rare trees in which edifices rose up here and there. Before anything else, humans need oxygen and space.”
At that point, the conversation of Marcel and Blas was interrupted by the sound of muffled footsteps on the sandstone pavement of the study hall. They turned round and found themselves facing Mastif, still wearing his insulating gutta-percha diving suit. He was equipped with a glass balloon filed with a green-tinted gas and a large metal key. Without appearing to notice anyone, he stopped at the end of the hall in front of an apparatus whose organs he set about examining.
“That’s really Mastif, isn’t it?” asked Marcel “The man we glimpsed a little while ago?”
“Yes,” Blas replied. “What we call an outcast.”
“An outcast?”
“Don’t interpret the term in its old sense. Here, we call an outcast someone who, although naturally well endowed, refuses to exercise his brain, out of ill will or idleness. Mastif, who you see there, has remained rebellious to science, letters and philosophy. His peers aren’t very numerous; one can barely count two million of them in the whole world. All of them, like him, are occupied in the surveillance and maintenance of apparatus. That penalty, if it is one, in very minimal. Outcasts have the same nourishment as other people. Their labor isn’t fatiguing, and they have leisure. In any case, they can be rehabilitated simply by completing their studies.”
“I was already feeling sorry for the poor fellow!”
“He has nothing of which to complain. In truth, idle as he is, he’s chosen the least difficult and least burdensome task. The scientists who are responsible for the production of nourishment and its distribution, for the esthetics and hygiene of habitations and the mental progress of humankind, truly have far more worries than Mastif, who is perhaps, after all, merely impotent or ill. In our worldwide society, the more merit and intelligence one has, the harder one works, and the more pleasure and honor one has in exercising one’s faculties for the general wellbeing.”
“But what about placements, pensions and sinecures?”
“There are none any more. Commerce and administration have been subjected to a logical organization with which no one seeks to compete, and in which all necessary objects are distributed in accordance with need.”
Marcel was very surprised. “What, then,” he asked, “is the recompense for the ambitious, for successful people in the society of the year 3000?”
“Ambition no longer exists. It has given way to the competition to do good. Our successful people, as you call them, have no other recompense than the intimate satisfaction of their conscience and the pleasure of being useful to the weak and the less well endowed. However, as paltry sentiments sometimes die with difficulty in the human heart, our successful people can also savor the triumph of what you called glory, which we call vanity or vainglory; they’re surrounded by the esteem, respect and amity of all the people in the world.”
Marcel was thoughtful. Blas continued, with animation: “Our outcasts do, in sum, what they want. They’ve chosen for themselves the part that suits them best. Too bad for them if it’s the worst. In any case, progress in morality, science and education is reducing their number year by year. We can foresee the moment when no more of them will exist among human beings.”
“In the meantime, you can count, you say, on about two million. Are those outcasts distributed here and there, all over the globe?
“In truth, they’re divided into two categories. Mastif belongs to the first. Those of the second are scarcely more unfortunate. At the North and South Poles, they occupy the two industrial cities tha
t furnish us with the electrical force necessary to the functioning of all the machines in the world...”
A sudden idea occurred to Blas. “Look,” he proposed, “Since we have a few hours of leisure, and you appear to be particularly interested in the situation of our outcasts, would you like us to go visit Artika, the city of the North Pole? I have a cousin who, alas, has been an inveterate idler all his life. He can serve as our guide.”
VII. Artika
Marcel and Blas left the study room. After following the circular gallery for some time they went over a footbridge to a comfortable elevator. A few minutes later, they disembarked on the highest terrace of the school. It was a vast oval surface surrounded by balustrades in the Italian style, decorated at intervals by large pots in which flowers were growing.
At one of the extremities was a sort of hangar, from which half a dozen steel and crystal hulls were projecting, surmounted by large wings, vertically raised. One might have thought that they were strange ships with metallic sails.
“These,” said Blas, “are aeroscaphs, aerial ships that we use as a means of transport.”
Marcel was alarmed by the mere thought of that audacious navigation. “You know,” he said, “I’ve never been up in a balloon, or any apparatus of a similar sort. Are you sure that we’re not running any danger?”
“Not the slightest. Aeroscaphs are in current use among us. There is no public or private establishment that doesn’t possess several of them. You can judge for yourself the facility with which they’re governed. A starter wheel and a simple lever command the entire mechanism. After two or three trials you’ll be able to handle one as well as I can.”
Blas and Marcel had already taken their places aboard a light aerial skiff when they perceived one of their comrades on the far extremity of the terrace, who was walking nonchalantly, contemplating the immense perspective that was unfurling at his feet.
“Look,” said Blas, “here comes Serge, one of the witnesses of your mysterious arrival, if you remember—one of those who were introduced to you by Monsieur Futural and me.”
“Shall we take him with us?” Marcel suggested.
“As you wish. I’m certain that Serge would find it a veritable pleasure to come with us. Nothing whets the appetite and is more hygienic than an excursion through the pure oxygen layers of the high atmosphere.”24
While Marcel and Blas were reaching that agreement, Serge had drawn closer, and after having bowed courteously he said: “I see you’re about to depart for a little aerial excursion.”
“Yes,” Blas replied. “I’m taking our new comrade to visit the city of Artika, which he’s manifested a desire to see. It’s up to you, my dear friend, if you’d like to join the party.”
“I accept gladly. Let’s take our places, and forward ho!”
The three young men crossed a metal footbridge and found themselves inside the hull, which was about ten meters long.
The carcass of the aeroscaph was formed by sold metal circles, which served as an armature for thick sheets of crystal. To the right and the left, above and below, nothing arrested the gaze of the travelers. They were able to contemplate at their ease the earth or the clouds, the region that they were quitting or the one toward which they were steering.
After having shut the door of glass and metal through which they had entered, Serge installed himself at the starter wheel. Blas sat next to the lever that served as a tiller.
“All set?” Serge asked Marcel, who was sitting at the back of the apparatus, not without a certain anxiety.
“Yes,” he replied, tremulously.
“Let’s go, then,” ordered Blas.
At that signal, Serge pun the wheel he was holding through two rotations. There was an audible release. The aeroscaph slid slowly over an inclined plane and fell into the void...
Marcel uttered a cry of fright. “We’re doomed!” he cried, pale with terror.
It seemed to him now that the aeroscaph was motionless. Under the impulsion of a powerful electrical motor, the wings were agitating so rapidly that their form was no longer perceptible.
“Have no fear,” said Blas, smiling. “All’s well. We’re flying at the tidy speed of fifty kilometers a minute...”
Marcel, who had recovered promptly from his fright, looked in front of him.
The landscapes were succeeding one another with a vertiginous rapidity. Marcel scarcely had time to see them before they were effaced, giving way to others. He noticed, however, that in all the regions they traversed, the ground presented the same aspect of prosperity, luxury and beauty. One might have thought that it had been changed into an immense garden, designed by a landscaper of genius, and strewn with splendid edifices in which sandstone, porcelain and colored glass competed in splendor with gold, silver and marvelous blue, green and violet metals unknown to him.
“In spite of the rapidity with which the perspective is unfurling,” said Marcel, “I can see at intervals exceedingly high towers that don’t resemble other buildings. They must have been constructed with a particular purpose?”
“Those towers,” Blas replied, are nothing but aerial stations. They’re all constructed on the same model as the one from which we departed. They each have a hangar, which serves as a garage for the aeroscaphs, an inclined plane for departure and an arrival platform. Many of them are fitted with wireless telegraphy and telephony equipment, which have rendered communication between human beings very rapid, and thanks to which the diffusion of ideas and news has become instantaneous.”
The aeroscaph had traversed successively the countries formerly known, as Belgium, Holland and Denmark. They had just passed the North Sea, a small gray pond that disappeared rapidly. The travelers were now soaring over the Dofrine Mountains in the heart of Scandinavia.
To Marcel’s great astonishment, that chain of mountains, which the geographers of his time had represented to him as covered with wild forests of firs furrowed by sinister fjords and buried for half the year beneath ice and snow, appeared to have a vegetation as rich as the terrain they had just traversed. Everywhere, even on the same high summits, a large number of which had been utilized as aerial stations, beautiful trees and cheerful habitations rose up.
Thus, Marcel was able to convince himself of the exactitude of the information Blas had given him a few hours before. Yes, it was true that human genius had triumphed once and for all over the vicissitudes of the seasons; it had equalized all climates harmoniously, and all the productions of the earth.
Another subject of preoccupation soon came to absorb his thought.
“How is it,” he asked Serge, that I can’t perceive any other aeroscaph similar to ours? You told me yourself that this mode of locomotion was the most commonplace.”
“I wasn’t distorting the truth. At this moment, thousands of aeroscaphs are moving in the atmospheric layer we’re traversing, but they’re traveling, like us, with such velocity that they’re almost invisible. With a little attention, however, you can perceive some of them. Over there, for example, do you see that blue flash?”
Marcel looked hard. “Yes,” he said, after a moment’s attention. “I can now distinguish sparks of a sort, doubtless produced by the rapid reflection of light from steel and crystal.” After a momentary silence he added: “It’s veritably amazing.”
The aeroscaph was now soaring over the open sea. Marcel perceived that Blas, still sitting at the tiller of the machine, was slowing the progress of the apparatus. They had to be approaching an aerial station, because aeroscaphs became visible in all directions, doubtless having relented their own speeds. They were gliding through the air in hundreds, like swallows.
Abruptly, Marcel saw a Babelesque circular rampart surging forth at the limit of the horizon, the base of which lunged into the sea, whose summit, more than a hundred meters above the waves, was covered with towers and edifices of every kind.
“We’re arriving,” said Serge. “We’re no more than sixty kilometers from the city of Artika. Th
e titanic wall that you can see is called the Polar Rampart.
“A strange name!”
“Which says, however, exactly what it means. That wall, which leaves far behind it the Pyramids of Egypt, the sole monument of ancient ages with which it can be compared, cost humankind more than a century of labor; but it’s thanks to that rampart that the suppression of manual labor throughout the world began, by virtue of the utilization of the enormous force of congelation of the polar ice. It was only two hundred years ago that our ancestors finally renounced the employment of that still-imperfect procedure. We only conserve the wall as a monument to history and science.”
“We’ve also installed numerous aerial stations and telegraph stations on it,” added Blas. “That’s presently the sole practical utility of the Rampart.”
As Blas concluded his remark, the aeroscaph vibrated with a trepidation. It had just slighted on the platform of one of Artika’s aerial stations.
The three young men emerged from the aeroscaph and got into the elevator.
On the advice of Blas, who had visited Artika several times, they went into a vestry that was placed near the bottom of the tower. They put on gutta-percha diving suits, which would permit them to circulate freely in that inferno of electricity.
A few minutes later, all three of them were in a vast plaza, swarming with a crowd clad like them in insulting suits.
Marcel gazed through the crystal lenses of his mask. The city that extended before his eyes did not recall in any fashion the esthetic landscapes that he had previously contemplated. It was bizarre, baroque and ugly. However, everything there was admirably clean. The broad streets and the spacious monuments showed that much had been sacrificed to hygiene in that industrial city.
Marcel and his friends were already leaning on the balustrade of a moving sidewalk that was taking them rapidly in the direction of the Rue Marconi, where Blas’ cousin lived. In front of them filed constructions of a strange architecture. There were high metal towers devoid of any ornamentation, the shiny summits of which were pointed like awls. A blue-tinted plume of electric light floated at their summits, like a flag of flame.
Journey to the Isles of Atlantis and Other Fanciful Excursions Page 19