The Xenobiotic Invasion

by Theo Varlet

  The interplay had, thank God, escaped Aurore.

  At the clinic, the cablegram had arrived. As soon as we were in the vestibule, the chambermaid gave the form to “Mademoiselle Constantin,” who opened it, read it and, remaining pensive and perplexed, re-read it twice more.

  Finally, she said to me: “My father says that he’s embarking with my fiancé on the Berengaria. I have to meet them in Paris on the 21st.” An anxiety striped her features, an effort to understand the inexplicable.

  Only one thing mattered to me, though. Affecting a placid smile, I asked: “You’re not leaving immediately?”

  I could have kissed her hand for her reply. “There’s no urgency, since it’s only the 16th. I have another five days. I like Cassis, and I’ve a right to a short holiday. But as I’m no longer an invalid, I’ll leave the Doctor’s house tomorrow and get a room in a hotel…yours, since you say it’s a good one.”

  But Albertin arrived, and took us into the drawing-room. He asked about our walk, and started on hearing my answer.

  “The coves! You took her to the coves, Delvart? Mercy! That’s too far. I only let me patient out on the strength of her formal promise not to tire herself out.”

  “I’m not tired at all, Doctor.”

  “You might not feel it, Mademoiselle, but while you’re at the clinic I’m responsible for your health. Madame Narinska will have orders to put you to bed this evening at nine on the dot.” He had affected a severe tone, but then became amicable again. “Believe me, my child, don’t stay up too late; you’ll be more alert for it tomorrow.”

  I was about to take my leave, regretful about not having been invited to dinner, as I had hoped, but Alburtin gave me one of his jovial and exasperating slaps on the back.

  “One moment, Delvart—come up to the laboratory…and you too, Mademoiselle. It’s still growing, my little indoor horticulture.”

  It was, indeed, growing! As soon as we reached the door of the laboratory a slight odor of putrefying roses gripped my nostrils. Invading the table, the spongy mass born of the meteoric dust, beneath the still-active X-ray tube, was now a large, vaguely pyramidal mass the color of coffee-grounds, agitated by a seething effervescence. The swelling of blisters and the tiny explosions of fine dust were succeeding one another from second to second, in a continual crepitation. One might have though it a continuous volcanic eruption. The impalpable dust covered everything in the room with a brick-colored veil. As for the red stains on the wires of the tube, they were now tumors as large as walnuts.

  So far as I was concerned, the spectacle had something disturbing and repulsive about it, but the two scientists were merely interested, and they exchanged such remarks as “Splendid!” and “Prodigious!”

  “Who can tell whether what we’re experiencing here is a unique phase in the evolution of the extraterrestrial seeds?” said Aurore, pensively. “Perhaps we’re losing observations of inestimable value. It needs a specialist in plant biology.”

  “My old friend Nathan, a professor at the Sorbonne?” murmured Alburtin. He pointed at the green box and continued: “Given that the supply of meteorites isn’t exhausted, we could send him a few grams tomorrow?”

  As we left the laboratory, Aurore and Alburtin, who had handled the vegetation, were obliged to go into the bathroom. Being covered in dust, I too was obliged to accept a vigorous brushing by the chambermaid before leaving the clinic.

  At the Hôtel Cendrillon, I confronted the mocking welcome of the Ricourts, when I asked, in the most natural tone: “How was your excursion to Saint-Maximin? Did it go well?”

  “Not bad,” Géo sniggered. “What happened to you, yesterday? We didn’t see you in the evening.”

  “We were worried,” said the old lady. “We thought you and Dr. Alburtin had broken down in the hills.”

  Luce looked me up and down with a sardonic expression. “So, Tonton, you’re giving up painting for medicine...and trucking. But I don’t like the way you ran away like that just now. I’d have loved you to introduce me to your pretty aviatrix.”

  How I detested Luce! How vulgar I found her, with her contraband Americanism, her noisy and gilded laughter! What scorn I had for her now, and what difficulty I would have had, that evening, tolerating her gibes without throwing my opinion in her face, stripped bare of all pretence. The thought of Aurore sustained me, however, and it was with brazen effrontery that I invented the necessary lies to respond to questions about “Mademoiselle Constantin,” her nationality, where she had come from, and so on.

  I nearly blushed, though, when Luce said: “It’s curious, Tonton—she resembles that American woman we were talking about yesterday at Tauroëntum…you know, Miss…oh, yes, Miss Lescure!”

  I stared at her, but she had made the reflection without attaching any importance to it, and did not insist when her brother replied, in a spirit of contradiction: “Where do you find that resemblance, Lucy? You’re dreaming. Mademoiselle Constantin is visible stronger, shorter and French. Nor from the Midi, eh, Gaston?”

  “No, from the North.”

  I was relieved when they finally went to join their friends a La Réserve.

  Discontented with my evening, myself and everything, anxious for Aurore’s tranquility, I spent a hour sorting out my Cassis canvases—and being harassed by itching.

  “Fleas now!” I cursed. “That’s the final straw! For a fortnight there hasn’t been one in the hotel…and she’s coming to stay here tomorrow!”

  IV. The America Agency’s Rumor

  Woken up with a start by an imperious knocking on the door of my room, I opened one eye and read on my watch, by the light of dawn: 6:15. Peevishly, I groaned: “What is it?”

  The voice of the floor attendant replied: “Monsieur, it’s that Monsieur le Docteur Alburtin has just phoned asking us to wake you up and tell you that Mademoiselle Constantin is leaving immediately.”

  “Thank you. Tell him I’m on my way.”

  Jerked into action as if by a cold shower, I leapt out of bed and began to get dressed, quickly but methodically, mastering the anxiety that was making my fingers tremble over the buttonholes. What was happening? What did this unexpected early-morning departure signify?

  In six minutes, my chronometer on my wrist, I was ready. An inspiration: three more minutes spent stuffing a valise—and with that in hand, I ran to the doctor’s house at a gymnastic pace. I would ask him to settle my bill. My canvases? Oh, they could be sent on to me. At 6:32 a.m., I was at the clinic.

  I had no need to ring. The chambermaid was on the doorstep, on the lookout for my arrival. She took me through the house and into the rear courtyard, where Alburtin, in shirt-sleeves, was just closing the hood of his car, which was out of the garage, in a quasi-professional manner.

  “Ah, Delvart!” he said, wiping his hands with a fistful of oakum. I knew you’d come. Read this!”

  Out of his jacket pocket he took a Petit Marseillais, with the ink still fresh, and held it out.

  As my name was pronounced, however, I saw Aurore Lescure emerge from the shed where the metallic mass of the MG-17 was gleaming vaguely. Her hands were full of packages wrapped up tightly in old newspaper; she went to deposit them in the car, while addressing a knowing smile to me, which briefly brightened her unusually grave and resolution-hardened features. Returning to the shed without pausing, she called:

  “Read it, Monsieur Delvart—I’ll be back.”

  On the first page, under the headline AN AMERICAN HOAX? THE INTERPLANETARY ROCKET HAS REACHED THE MOON a snapshot leapt to my eyes: the well-known photograph of “Miss Aurore Lescure” smiling at the lens in front of her apparatus.

  At top speed, I read: Stupefying news—which, however, will not seem implausible to people who have followed with some attention the progress of astronautical science in the last two years, has been transmitted to us by the America Agency. The interplanetary rocket MG-17, of which we announced the probable departure with the intention of reaching the moon, should have comple
ted the prodigious flight. For the first time, an apparatus, piloted by a young woman only 25 years of age, the gracious and bold Miss Aurore Lescure, the daughter of the inventor Oswald Lescure, “the new Edison,” has extracted itself from the Earth’s atmosphere and gravitational field and, under the acceleration imparted to it by its atomic hydrogen engine, has reached the surface of our satellite in two hours ten minutes. There, still according to the America Agency’s dispatch, the space pioneer, after having collected a few mineralogical specimens, including nuggets of gold, has planted in the soil of the night-star the American flag, the “stars and stripes.” Then, re-embarking in her apparatus, she has made the return voyage in a lapse of time approximately equal to the outward one. Departed from Columbus, Missouri at 6 a.m., local time—noon Greenwich Mean Time—she made contact again with the Earth after only five hours of absence, at 5 p.m. “in France, in a location not far from Marseilles,” which the telegram does not identify precisely, where she is being cared for in a clinic, after the shock caused by an abrupt landing.

  Assuming that the news is true, it seems astonishing, at first sight, that we have not had notification sooner of this sensational landing, but it is only fair to observe that, if the injured astronaut has suffered a prolonged loss of consciousness, her apparatus, in the absence of her explanations, might have been mistaken for some kind of aircraft by inexpert individuals who made the discovery. At any rate, our reporters are making inquiries at this moment, and they will soon discover the truth.

  I raised my eyes again. Aurore Lescure was standing in front of me.

  “You see,” she pronounced, vibrant with concentrated anger. “I can’t stay here any longer. I’d be prey to journalists. I have to put them off my track.”

  I didn’t understand. “But Mademoiselle, if it’s just a rumor, why not put a stop to it right away? Establish the facts in a statement to the press, and you can rest easy thereafter.”

  “That’s what I said to Mademoiselle,” Alburtin interjected, while checking the inflation of the tires.

  “It seems perfectly simple to me,” I insisted.

  The young woman uttered a brief laugh. “It seems that you’re mistaken, my dear Monsieur. In reality, there’s only one thing I can do: disappear. I didn’t want to leave Cassis without saying goodbye to you, but I have to go. The doctor is being kind enough to take me to the station for the 8:15 train. I’ll be in Marseilles by 9, and will take the 2 p.m. express, which will get me to Paris at 5 a.m.”

  While she was speaking a bell—the bell at the front door—had been rung vigorously on the far side of the house. I was about to reply to her when the door to the corridor opened and the frightened chambermaid said: “Monsieur le Docteur, it’s the gentlemen from the Petit Marseillais. They’ve come by car and one of them has begun taking photographs. They insist on seeing Monsieur le Docteur and Mademoiselle, and I had to let them in. What should I say to them?”

  “Zut! Zut! Zut!” groaned Alburtin. “What an idiot you are, Jeanne. I gave you orders not to let them in on any account. Well, tell them I’ll be there in five minutes…that I have to carry out an operation…a childbirth…ah! Give them a glass of mulled wine. That’ll help them to be patient.”

  The chambermaid disappeared.

  “And now,” Alburtin went on, “go! We don’t have a second to lose. In five minutes they’ll get impatient; in ten they’ll come to see what’s become of me without authority—and the interval might bring more reporters, from the Petit Provençal, the Marseille-Matin and I don’t know what else. They find out about the back door; we’ll be surrounded...”

  And he went to open the coaching entrance that opened on to the Marseilles Road.

  Aurore Lescure, standing at the car door with one foot on the running-board, offered me her hand. Without taking it, however, I raised mine in a gesture of negation to refuse the farewell she was about to pronounce.

  “Mademoiselle,” I said, resolutely, “permit me to accompany you. There’s nothing to keep me in Cassis. I’m returning to Paris—I have my valise, as you see. We can travel together, if you don’t mind.”

  As soon as I had spoken the first words, her smile had accepted. I put my valise in the car, on the left front seat, while she said, simply: “I don’t mind, Monsieur Delvart—on the contrary.”

  She got in and I followed. Having opened both battens of the coaching entrance, Alburtin took his place at the steering-wheel and pressed the starter. Three turns of the wheel and the car was outside, climbing the hill in second gear—but we hadn’t rounded the calvary before several passers-by—including two gendarmes—had greeted us with a “Bonjour, Doctor!”

  “We’ve been spotted!” grumbled Alburtin, putting the car into third gear. “That was inevitable.”

  “Evidently, Mademoiselle can’t leave from Cassis station,” I declared. “The train won’t pass through for half an hour. We’d have ten journalists on our back before then. If you have another hour to give us, Doctor, you need to take us to Marseilles.”

  “All right!” said Alburtin, laconically, without turning round.

  It is three kilometers from the town to Cassis station. Half way, therefore, instead of continuing straight ahead, we turned left on to the highway that rises up in a series of sharp bends to the Gineste Pass, through a wild and grandiose landscape: ravines with steep cliffs, bare limestone slopes cutting through the cruel azure. Idly, I thought that the landscapes of the Moon must look like that—but I refrained from imparting my reflection to my neighbor, who remained silent, absorbed in the vague contemplation of the road unrolling its tarry ribbon beneath our wheels.

  Several times since leaving Cassis, Alburtin had taken one hand off the steering-wheel to scratch the back of his neck, which caused the vehicle to serve. After one swerve more exaggerated than the rest, as we reached the Gineste Pass, he stopped the car.

  “Many apologies, Mademoiselle! It’s stupid, but I’m being devoured by fleas. If I don’t have two minutes’ respite, I won’t be able to drive properly during the descent.” He scratched himself shamelessly, with a jovial rage. “I dread, Mademoiselle, that you might have them too? My wife complained of them; there must be an infestation at the clinic.”

  “In Cassis, rather,” I interjected. “I also had them at the Hôtel Cendrillon.”

  The passenger’s face cleared momentarily. “That’s reassuring, Doctor. When I started itching yesterday evening, I thought I was afflicted by a skin disease, and this morning, but for my precipitate departure, I’d have asked for a consultation.”

  Cheered up by this comical episode, while we were stopped she consented to gaze at Marseilles harbor, which was visible in the distance, vaporous in the glory of the early morning light and the giant breath of the city and its docks. When we set off again, emerging from the deserted slopes, the arrival of a more rapid automobile appeared behind us, whose driver amused himself by overtaking us, returned our companion to her preoccupation. She had evidently feared that it might be journalists launched in our pursuit.

  The suburbs: red petrol stations; clusters of chalets buried in the pines; a tramline advertising the city limits; interminable pavements; a street bordered by oil-refineries and soap-works, plowed by thunderous lorries…and we emerged into the middle of Marseilles, in the Place Castellane, where cheerful and luminous life stages a tourney of exuberant activity around the fountain.

  “Where shall I set you down?” Alburtin asked, over his shoulder, as he turned into the Rue de Rome. “It’s 8:30 a.m. There’s no train to Paris before 2 p.m.—but first, Mademoiselle has to deposit her parcels…after packing them up a little better.”

  “For that I’ll have to buy a suitcase.” She pointed to the packets wrapped up in old newspapers and bound with string at my feet, whose continual slippage had inconvenienced me in the course of the journey. “These are the most precious parts of my apparatus,” he explained. “Doctor, I won’t abuse your kindness any longer. You have to get back to Cassis. Drop me o
utside a shop that sells travel goods, and we’ll bid you farewell.”

  This was done—but not content with going into one of the department stores on the Cannebière and helping in the acquisition of a small trunk in which the packages were stowed, the doctor then wanted to take us to the station in his car, to deposit our luggage, and then return us to the city and install us in the Café Riche. Finally, having drunk a toast to wish us god luck, he consented to leave.

  “And have no fear for your apparatus, Mademoiselle. I’ll have it packed up properly, with the parachute and send the boxes to Paris as soon as possible from the P.L.M.11 station. I’ll notify you at the Hôtel…Métropole, isn’t it?”

  “The Hôtel Métropole, Rue de Villiers. And don’t forget to enclose a bill for your expenses. Thank you again; you’ve been extremely kind; I’ll never forget the god luck that put you and Monsieur Delvart in my path.”

  After a final handshake, the doctor rejoined his vehicle, moved off, and was lost in the host of vehicles.

  His departure left us disorientated. Now, sitting at the table in the café, in the indifferent crowd, we were truly alone. Alone…and separate.

  Where, I thought, is the insouciant intimacy of yesterday’s walk to the coves? Bah! An illusory intimacy. In evoking her memories in my presence, she was treating me as a good comrade, that’s all. But now, if we talk, it can only be about the secrets that she’s allowed to remain between us. And I won’t commit a further gaffe by stepping out of my role; I’ll be the good comrade, who respects the secrets, with whom one isn’t hesitant to yield to one’s preoccupations.

  Aurore smoked her cigarette silently, her expression anxious, her nostrils quivering imperceptibly in nervous spasms, while I ruminated my bitterness. I respect her silence, judging myself an idiot for not being more sociable, for not knowing how to distract her with pleasant trivia. That was evidently all she could be expecting of me, since she was keeping quiet about her secrets. Not even capable of that! What a miserable companion I was, to be sure. Wasn’t she regretting letting me come with her?