The Xenobiotic Invasion

by Theo Varlet

  The greater part of the article, devoted to the detailed description of accidents that had happened in these various places, told me nothing more than I had already seen for myself. I scanned the rest:

  …At the corner of the Boulevard Malesherbes and the Avenue de Courcelles, opposite the Hôtel Métropole, a proliferation of these strange plants occurred on the electrical cables of a conduit that had been exposed in order to carry out repairs. It resulted in a short-circuit and started a fire in the neighboring gas-pipe...

  …We are informed shortly before going to press that a center of contamination—as the propagation of this strange epidemic what strikes electrical apparatus must be called—became manifest yesterday afternoon in the well-known photographic studio of Monsieur Marcel Frémiet in the Boulevard Saint-Michel. The appearance of the evil in a part of Paris so distant from the others listed above deprives us of the hope of localizing the invasion, the origin and mode of propagation of which remains a total mystery at this point in time. Rumors are circulating in certain quarters, in the vicinity of afflicted buildings, attributing the responsibility for these facts to some malignant foreign power; there has even been talk of “microbial warfare.” We advise our readers to be wary of fantastic interpretations of a phenomenon that will doubtless prove to be purely natural in kind when its origin is discovered, and which has thus far remained almost wholly inoffensive, with the exception of the material damage, which is not very considerable. These vegetal proliferations are more inconvenient than dangerous, and one can affirm that microbial warfare taking the form of an abrupt attack would not be limited to the use of such anodyne means.

  …The Prefect of Police has opened an inquiry. The municipal laboratory charged with analyzing the substances formed on lamps and conductive wires has not yet published its conclusions.

  …A telephone call received from Marseilles as we go to press informs us that analogous outbreaks have been occurring in the great marine city and its suburbs for the last two days. Will this “electrical epidemic” not be restricted to Paris, then? Judgment reserved pending further information.

  As I was leaving, the concierge stopped me in the vestibule.

  “So it’s true, then, Monsieur Delvart, that the Boche are spreading itching-powder shells throughout Paris? It began in your apartment, then your neighbor Monsieur Noguès’, but we’ve had it in the lodge since yesterday evening. Me, I don’t feel the ‘incests’ but my husband is red raw because of scratching all night. Before he goes to work at the Metro I had to put talcum powder all over him, just like a little child…and if we switch on the light, there’s dirt everywhere. It grows like calves’ lung over the lamp and the wires. What will become of us?”

  “Do as I do, Madame Taquet; don’t put the electric light on any more, use oil-lamps or candles. You’ll find that your husband won’t itch any more, and no more calves’ lung will grow on your lamps.”

  And I went out, leaving the good woman incredulous and mystified. I heard her murmur behind my back: “Always the joker, that Monsieur Delvart! Candles, fine—but that won’t stop the itching-powder itching!”

  Unlike the day before, it was fine October weather—a delicate blue sky, bright sunlight—which filled me with horror at the thought of plunging into the underworld of the Metro. I chose to go on foot along the Rue Caulaincourt as far as the Boulevard de Clichy. I did not see signs of any great preoccupation or real anxiety on the faces of the passers-by anywhere.

  I had just stopped a taxi at the corner of the Boulevard de Clichy when I noticed a thick reddish coating enveloping the battery-container on the footplate like some old rag.

  In response to my intrigued stare the driver laughed. “You can step up, Monsieur, it’s not excrement; it’s all over the taxis, too, this accursed Boche fungus! That stuck to my battery-box yesterday evening, and all the while I’m on the move, the more I wipe it off the more it grows back—so I’m leaving it, as you see.”

  I understood immediately that the spores were gaining ground from one hour to the next, and that, inevitably, all the electrical apparatus in Paris would soon be invaded by lichen. That contaminated battery-holder on the footplate suddenly gave me the impression, which I had not had thus far, of the beginning of a social catastrophe.

  “Where to?” asked the driver, as I stood there in a daze, with one hand on the door handle.

  I shook myself. “Hôtel Métropole.”

  Outside the hotel, at the corner of the Boulevard Malesherbes and the Avenue de Courcelles, a group of idlers, under the benevolent gaze of a policeman, had surrounded an electrical distribution inspection-hole, in which two electricians were working on the cable, repairing the damage caused by a short-circuit...

  In the hotel there was nothing apparently abnormal except for the odor of insecticide and the anxious and agitated attitude of the staff. The lamps had been cleaned and none was lit. Nevertheless, at the desk, a fat German in gold-rimmed glasses, a green Tyrolean hat and a waterproof overcoat was setting his bill, addressing vehement reproaches to the dignified and tight-lipped cashier. As I went by I caught the word “inzegdes” repeated abundantly.

  The electrical elevator was out of order. I took the stairs without asking anyone anything. I knew Aurore’s room number: 127, on the third floor. As I arrived at the door, I was surprised to hear voices inside. A visitor? Without knowing why, I was gripped by anguish. I knocked. The voices fell silent; I recognized Aurore’s saying: “Come in!” I obeyed.

  A bizarre spectacle caused me to stammer as I greeted the young woman, who came to meet me. She was in conversation with the valet de chambre, and the latter, in a red-and-black striped waistcoat, with a feather duster obliquely stuck in the front pocket of his apron, and a notebook and pen in his hands, was preparing to take notes, striking the pose of a perfect reporter.

  On a sideboard, a tray laden with croissants, a cup, a coffee-pot and a milk-jug was fuming. The man had just come in, on the pretext of bringing the breakfast she had ordered.

  “My dear friend,” Aurore said to me, “You’ve arrived just in time. This waiter, who claims to be a reporter, is demanding an interview...”

  On seeing me, the man became anxious. I advance towards him, scarcely containing myself. “By what right…?”

  He took a card from his pocket and replied, stranding up straight and attempting arrogance: “Here’s my pass, which Mademoiselle has already seen…Tristan Meffray, special envoy of the America Agency.”

  “So what? Is it the Agency that told you to come here?”

  “Y…es.” I could tell that the man was lying. “I need to complete my previous interview…which only concerned Mademoiselle’s lunar landing”—he emphasized the last phrase with sardonic intention—“and I’ve come, by means of this disguise, which I beg both of you to excuse, to ask her for a few details of the manner in which she collected the cosmozoans that are in the process of extending their benefits throughout the capital.”

  “Cosmozoans?” I replied, violently. “You said cosmozoans! Where did you get that term? No newspaper has so far employed it...”

  “Monsieur le Professeur Nathan has had the extreme kindness to inform me about the invasion of the lichen. The article whose substance he has communicated to me is in the press at this moment. I ought to admit that he refused to give me any information regarding Mademoiselle’s residence, but I learned that elsewhere. No one but an astronaut—and there’s only one of them in the world—could be keeping in her room, in a trunk secured by a cheap lock, the nozzle of a pipe made of refractory material, a liquid hydrogen compressor and a patented gravimeter...”

  “So you’re the one who searched my luggage!” Aurore exclaimed.

  “Oh, as a matter of professional duty.” The fake valet smiled in a self-satisfied manner. I experienced an ardent desire to slap his face.

  “Monsieur,” I exclaimed, “this espionage is odious! Mademoiselle Aurette Constanin has nothing to say to you.”

  “But Mademo
iselle Aurore Lescure has a great deal.”

  Aurore was about to speak, but anger carried me away; I got in ahead of her. “Mademoiselle will tell you nothing. Get out, Monsieur!”

  “You’re making a mistake. If it isn’t me who gets Mademoiselle to talk, it will be one of my colleagues…or the employees of Monsieur le Préfet de Police—for infractions of the law concerning foreign visitors; her passport isn’t in order. The customs authorities will have a word to say too, on the subject of her apparatus and the cosmozoans that were introduced into France without being declared on arrival.”

  I sensed that I was about to put my foot in it, since Aurore had resolved yesterday to submit to an interview, but it was too late to back off, and the man might perhaps take his revenge...

  A sudden inspiration struck me.

  “That’s all right, Monsieur. Mademoiselle will complain tomorrow to Monsieur Cheyne. We’ll see whether he approves of you overstepping your instructions.”

  I had hit the bull’s-eye. Going pale, the fake valet put on a tight smile, which he wanted to be casual and disdainful, and bowed.

  “Monsieur…Mademoiselle…since my presence is unwelcome at this moment, I won’t insist. Until we meet again.”

  The door closed. Aurore clapped her hands girlishly and said, with a hint of sarcasm: “Admirable, Gaston! You recovered from your precipitation by means of an even greater presence of mind. Without any reproach, my friend, had it not been for your violent intervention, I would have given the man a few details about my fishing for meteorites, and he would have gone away almost satisfied—but by invoking the name of Cheyne you’ve prevented him from carrying out his threats. You’ve ‘had’ him, as you say in France—don’t you? What gave you the idea?”

  “His hesitation when I asked if he’d been sent to see you by the America Agency. I deduced that the reporter was acting on his own initiative, in the hope of getting a story out of you that he could sell to some newspaper for a high price. And as you told me that the America Agency is more or less dependent on your fiancé...”

  “You concluded that the gentleman would be afraid of being severely reprimanded if he incurred my displeasure. That’s true. Thanks to you, my friend, he’s now out of the picture. He took his gamble and lost. Whether he’s a good sport or not, he must recognize that…I don’t have any more annoyances to fear until tomorrow, except the reproaches of my conscience with regard to the lichen…feeling like a criminal...”

  Still that obsession! It was necessary to distract her from it at any price.

  Without emphasizing the point, I simply proposed: “Shall we go out, Aurette? It’s 11 a.m.—time for an aperitif. Where do you want to go?”

  “To the Terminus Saint-Lazare.” The name had sprung forth spontaneously, as if by reflex. Seeing my disapproving pout, she added, with a sort of cruel humor: “That’s where I acquire the psychology of a true criminal, in its entirety. I want to return to the scene of my crime!”

  “Our crime, if you please!” I replied, forcefully. “If there is a crime, I claim my share in it. I’m a germ-carrier, just as you are, and I’d like to know how many Parisians aren’t, at the present moment!”

  In spite of the good weather and the short distance, Aurore manifested a desire to take the Metro; she had a very American weakness for that mode of transport. Villiers station was 100 meters way.

  At the entrance situated in the Boulevard de Courcelles, five or six people were slowly climbing the steps; they were arguing hotly, palpating something and passing it from hand to hand…something like a torn red rag. At the sight of it, my stomach clenched with apprehension, and Aurore uttered a kind of horrified sigh—but neither of us made any comment. At the foot of the stairs, as we passed the people coming out, we recognized between their hands the fateful coral felt born of the extraterrestrial sores. The lichen had begun to invade the Metro!

  It was still a minor matter, in truth, as we were able to see on the platform while we waited for our train. Here and there, along the six rails—the two conductive rails and those of the track—were red plaques where patches of fungus were staining the shiny metal. Among the array of light-bulbs in the ceiling, only four or five were carrying the characteristic red lattice-work of the contamination.

  “Who knows, Aurore!” I whispered in my companion’s ear. “Perhaps the virulence of the germs is diminishing, becoming exhausted...”

  She looked at me, a reproach in her frank and honest gaze. “Why are you trying to deceive me, Gaston? This is only the beginning.”

  That was the general opinion of the public around us. Leaning over the edge of the platform or raising their eyes toward he laps, people were pointing out the alarming stigmata to one another. In one group, a fat man was holding forth, vituperating against the Company and the Government.

  “Come on, there’s still hope!” joked one wag, as the train came into the station. “People are always scratching themselves in the Metro!”

  In the first-class carriage into which we climbed, the lamps were still unaffected, the travelers indifferent. The tunnels were doubtless not yet contaminated in the direction of the Porte Champerret.

  Europe…Saint-Lazare…the long subterranean corridor…the rotunda, with its stained-glass windows lit from within, as usual, but a few external lamps “diseased”…and the Cour du Havre staircase took us directly to the pavement of the Terminus.

  Numerous idlers standing in front of the café seemed to be waiting for something, but nothing was happening. In the fine October sunshine, the terrace populated with customers had resumed its normal appearance; it was the same inside, on the wall- and ceiling-lamps; the polished and unilluminated bulbs remained clear.

  But for what we had just seen in the Metro, we might have been tempted to believe that the threat had vanished...

  But no! On the road, in the flood of taxis and buses, only the occasional vehicle is not dragging along, either on the battery-holder on the footplate, or the chassis underneath the engine, its ragged goiter of red fungus growths. As for the trams, every passing vehicle is stirring up between its wheels, as it passes by, a spray of dry mud…of lichen, torn up by the “plow” from the gutter supplying the current.

  Not far away there is a sudden detonation, like a burst tire, and confused cries...

  It’s coming from the direction of the Rue de la Pépinière. At ground level, underneath a stationary tram, a white flame flashes: a short-circuit. But within a second, the spectacle is hidden from us by the compact rush of curiosity-seekers running toward it. We can no longer see anything ahead of us but the file of tram-cars immobilized by the accident. Then smoke rises up in the distance: the short-circuited vehicle has caught fire.

  Many customers have deserted the terrace to go take a look, but we don’t move. Aurore, very pale, gazes at me profoundly, as if she were investing her last hope in me. I attempt to distract her, affectionately, by chattering about anything at all, until the moment when, one after another, the idlers come back to sit down at her neighboring tables, and we learn—to our relief—that no one has been hurt, that the passengers were able to escape in time from the blazing vehicle.

  “Get the Paris-Midi!”

  Avidly purchased from the vendors, as if people expected to find therein the story of the accident that has just occurred before their eyes, the paper did not contain the article by Professor Nathan mentioned by the reporter from the America Agency. The only news we read there, other than that in the morning papers, was the admission of the invasion of the Metro by the lichen. The fact had been observed for the first time early last night on the North-South, between the Lamarck and Rennes stations…the one at which I embarked and the one at which I exited in order to visit my uncle. The contamination of the battery-containers, magnetos or dynamos of taxis and buses also began during the night; that of the tramways became manifest at 6 a.m., opposite the Terminus—this very spot.

  In spite of this worrying diffusion, the author of the article gave evide
nce of a fine optimism in declaring that “measures have been taken by the authorities to put a stop to the extension of the electrical epidemic.”

  After that, the dispatch announcing that the Berengaria would be in Cherbourg at noon tomorrow took on a rather ironic flavor:

  As soon as he arrives in Paris, which he intends to reach by airplane, Monsieur Lendor J. Cheyne will busy himself organizing the subsidiary of the Moon Gold Mining Co. Ltd. He has already made radiophonic arrangements with the banks in the United States and Europe. Shares in the European Moon Gold Company will be issued at a nominal value of 500 francs, half payable on subscription...

  Before lunch, Aurore took care to telephone Nathan. The previous day, she had made plans to visit the biologist today, if possible, and it had been agreed that I would let her go alone, but since the declaration of the America Agency reporter, I wanted to accompany her, in order to address to Nathan the reproaches that his unpardonable indiscretion merited, in my opinion.

  In spite of the regulation forbidding two people to make use of a public booth at once, I took my place at the apparatus with Aurore, in the Post Office at the Madeleine.

  “Hello—yes, this is Professor Nathan. What do you want, Mademoiselle Lescure? I’m in the middle of lunch.”

  The curt brusqueness of his tone offended me. With an impulsive gesture, I tore the receiver from Aurore’s hands and launched forth, unthinkingly: “Hello, Monsieur le Professeur—Gaston Delvart here. I’m with Mademoiselle Lescure. She has had a very disagreeable experience this morning: a journalist who came from your residence, to whom you wrongly revealed the confidences that she made to you under a seal of secrecy...”

  “Monsieur Delvart, your youth alone excuses your intemperance and your stupidity. I do not recognize your right to criticize my conduct or to doubt my word. Mademoiselle Lescure only demanded secrecy with regard to her place of residence. If the reporter from the America Agency has discovered that, I can do nothing about it. To each his own: to Mademoiselle Lescure, the brute fact of the discovery of the cosmozoans; as for my conclusions on that subject, they belong to science—which is to say, to the world. You aren’t going to claim the right to prevent me from making them public?”