The Xenobiotic Invasion

by Theo Varlet

  Well, the living matter born of the cosmozoans, the Xenobiota, is, as we have observed, permanently in this phase of hyperactivity. Instead of decreasing, of attenuating, it is following an ever-increasing curve from one hour to the next. It is a new creation, crazed by the initial impulsion that is operating the primer of its reign, seeking its path in all the impetuosity of a genetic liberation. In the same way, terrestrial evolution passed thousands of species in review in order to end up with the types that took turns as monarchs of the planet: ammonites, dinosaurs, mammals. But here the research is proceeding at a accelerated pace; within a matter of hours several new species have been “invented” and tried out by the Xenobiota in progress toward the procreation of superior forms, and perhaps toward the equivalent of the supreme success that is, in terrestrial creation, Humankind.

  For my experiments have permitted me to establish a fact that has escaped the public as yet: in spite of the apparent identity of the reproductive spores, the generations of the Xenobiota are polymorphic and protean. The lichen generated under an electric lamp is not the same as that on conductive wires; it is different on a battery-container and different again on a magneto. The intensity of the electrical fields appears to influence the differentiation much more than the voltage. I have, thus far, already catalogued 32 distinct species divided into seven genres; and, in spite of the increasing rapidity of reproduction in the wild, I believe that I have anticipated, in the laboratory, several dozen generations of the normal succession. I have observed the ultra-rapid development of certain giant forms, and others corrosive to copper and aluminum, which literally devour the conducive wires to which they are attached.

  I cannot write at length, in a simple popular article, about the morphological and chemical composition of Xenobiotic tissue. Suffice it to say that the Xenobiota have no analogue, whether animal or vegetable, in the organic world known thus far. Their fundamental chemical composition is of the type NO7Ar2 (nitrogen, oxygen, argon). They are therefore formed at the exclusive expense of the atmosphere. Under the influence of electromagnetic waves, Xenobiota assimilate gases directly from the air in order to construct their substance, rather like the way that the chlorophyll in the leaves of our plants assimilates carbon dioxide under the influence of solar light. Certain species also construct a resistant skeleton by the adjunction of Si (silicon), Cu (copper), Fe (iron), Al (aluminum) etc., appropriated for their support: the glass of a bulb; the conductive wire.

  One aliment indispensable to the Xenobiota is electricity. In the absence of any induction field, the starved lichen ceases to grow, and then perishes; its excretion is no longer compensated by is nutrition and it slowly resorbs itself, volatilizing in 30 hours—without any residue, save for those varieties with a skeleton.

  As for the reproductive spores—which is to say, the microscopic grains of the impalpable powder that the lichen’s vesicles project and propagate it at a distance, it I remarkable that they have properties entirely different from those of the initial cosmozoans.

  The cosmozoans, or meteoritic seed-germs, are designed to conserve potential life, to be the receptacle of future creation during its transference through space, so they are practically immortal and indestructible. Neither the cold nor the void of space, nor ultra-violet radiation, affects them; it requires a temperature of more than 300 degrees to kill them.

  Conversely, the reproductive spores generated on Earth, whether from the initial magma or the lichen, have the role of bringing about an immediate transmission of life, and only possess a feeble resistance. A temperature above 120 degrees or below zero, or traces of chlorine, bromine or iodine, are sufficient to kill them, and it is possible that they only conserve their ability to germinate for a few days: a lack of resistance, we hasten to say, that will facilitate the battle against the lichen’s expansion.

  It is necessary to recognize that a new kind of life has taken up residence on the Earth and is striving, with all its youthful energy, to secure its place on our globe. But the reader, perhaps alarmed by the initial results of the invasion, may rest easy. The battle is unequal between this rudimentary, purely organic lichenoid vegetation and the active intelligence of human beings. Science, which has conquered the cosmozoans, will be able to master the Xenobiota.

  In the extreme case that we did not succeed in hindering their development and they became a real inconvenience to civilization before the first frosts rid us of the new creation, it would be sufficient to starve them by cutting off the current and suspending the production and distribution of electrical energy for a few days in the contaminated zones.

  But I am not addressing the subject of public utility. My role as a popularizer is limited, for the moment, to projecting the light of science on the strange and singular facts that have disconcerted the inhabitants of Paris, and to allow them to glimpse the utility that might drive from the importation to Earth of the Xenobiota, which I shall persist in calling a conquest.

  The slight radioactivity with which the spores of the lichen are endowed—to which they must owe the urticarian properties that make them resemble itching-powder—and other phenomena of the same order that I have observed in some of the more highly-evolved species authorize the most considerable hopes. The study of these new facts will probably assist us to resolve, in the near future, a crucial problem of which science awaits the solution: provoking atomic dissociation at will. And that discovery, formidable in is consequences, thanks to which we will realize without difficulty something that is still only a utopian idea, “a hundred horse-power in a matchbox,”24 will compensate abundantly for the few temporary inconveniences that Parisians will have to suffer today with regard to the comforts of existence linked to the efficient functioning of electrical apparatus.

  Once again, and more magnificently than ever, science will have played its role, which is to disrupt the apparent course of natural laws, using them against themselves in order to make them finally pliant to its ends, to the utility of humankind and the greater benefit of civilization.

  IX. The Accident on the North-South

  The article has interested us so keenly that we almost forgot Aurore’s appointment. When we finished reading it was ten past three. In order to reach Nathan’s house by half past, we only just had time to take the North-South to the Madeleine station and cross the road.

  On the way, we talked about it.

  “You see, Aurette, you’re no longer at risk of disgrace when people discover your identity. Now they’ll crown you with honors. Thanks to the anticipations of this enthusiastic scientist, you’ve become a benefactress of humanity. It’s good for you, this article—I no longer hold his rudeness against him.”

  “It’s good for me, and for the reception that awaits my father and Lendor tomorrow…yes, but all the same, it commits an injustice that I won’t forgive him. It doesn’t say a word about Dr. Alburtin. To read it, one would think that it was Nathan who had the inspired idea of experimenting on the meteorites with X-rays.”

  We reached the Metro entrance at the junction, facing the tramway stop. A hand-written placard fixed to the double doors at the foot of the staircase announced without commentary: The circulation of trains on line 3 (Champerret-Gambetta) is suspended between Saint-Lazare and Villiers stations. The latter station is temporarily closed to the public.

  The same idea occurred to us, provoked by the professor’s commentaries on the acceleration of the lichen’s growth.

  “Some minor accident,” I said, in a tone that attempted detachment.

  “Villiers station is near the Hôtel Métropole,” Aurore added, simply, without looking at me.

  At the entrance to the platform, a suffocating odor of rotting flowers replaced the phenol of the corridors, which testified to an attempt at disinfection. Under the vault of the station a dull, non-human rumor was audible. One might have thought that it was the noise of a forest whose branches were cracking under a winter frost, mingled with crepitations. The lights—“diseased” for th
e most part, wrapped in vegetal networks—were reddening. Crowded on the platform edge, the travelers were opening their eyes wide and scratching themselves silently.

  The Xemobiota had invaded the tracks—but it was no longer a timid offensive, as at Villiers that morning; a vehement thrust of the extraterrestrial creation was developing aggressive battalions of lichen on the rails, a reddish-purple coating bristling with spikes, like a giant crystallization. In the vault, packets of branched stalactites were hanging from the two trolley-wires and the three feeder cables. Here and there, new prolongations of these vegetal masses, as thick as a thumb and as long as a hand, were visibly surging forth, developing like the sections of an expanding telescope...or, better, like those party balloons into which one blows. After a brief interval, a blood-red bubble formed at the tip of the arm, which burst with a noise like a child’s pop-gun, projecting its dust of spores.

  The spectacle hypnotized us all. Not a word was pronounced during the four or five minutes that the train made us wait. Finally, it arrived, whistling. It stirred up a cloud of dust, noisily crushing the vegetation on the rails. The front of the engine was scared and stained with red, as if it had just cleared a path through an abattoir. Oblique traces of the same kind striped the walls of the carriages.

  It was hideous, but the force of habit engulfed the passengers in the carriages. The people getting out were uttering sighs of relief and hastening toward the exit. The doors slammed. The conductor gave the signal. Slowly, the train went into the tunnel.

  Our first-class carriage was moderately furnished. Aurore was able to sit down on a folding seat; I remained standing beside her. Our neighbors, afflicted with mutism, gazed apprehensively at the sick light-bulbs while scratching mechanically. Seeing one of them completely masked by its carapace of crimson lichen, a tall and gangling boy-scout took a “Swedish knife” from his belt and started scraping the bulb. His example was soon followed, and the cleaned lamps brightened, lightening the moral atmosphere of the carriage.

  At La Concorde, a flood of passengers getting on jam-packed the carriage, pressing me against Aurore, who was obliged to get up from her folding seat—but I had the warmth of her body against my side and shoulder, and the communion of our gaze rid the silence of its constraint.

  Meanwhile, the pause went on. On the platform, facing us, the station-master, leaning over his telephone was alternating replies directed into the apparatus with remarks to the train conductor, who was waiting at the door of his glazed cabin. Finally, the difficulty seemed to be resolved. We moved off—at reduced speed, as if the train were groping its way. Half way from Chambre-des-Députés we slowed down even more, and then stopped. After two or three minutes, there was a false start; we went forward a few meters, then stopped again, definitively.

  Even though they are quite familiar to Parisians, these breakdowns in mid-tunnel are always slightly disturbing; people think about possible accidents. Today, in that carriage lit by blood-stained bulbs and surrounded by a rumor of monstrous menace, it was agonizing.

  Stopped indefinitely…the impatience among all those people, in a hurry to reach their destinations, broke the silence. People murmured, in low voices at first, then loudly.

  “What are they waiting for, then?” complained a man in a bowler hat and tinted spectacles—doubtless a teacher.

  “Take care of the lamp above your head, then,” the boy-scout said to him. “It’s starting to get murky again.”

  Aurore raised her wrist-watch toward me, on which I read 3:27. “I won’t get there by half-past.”

  “And he’s perfectly capable of refusing to see you, if you’re late!”

  Silence fell again. People stopped talking, in the hope of hearing a signal outside—an order from the conductor, or the noise of an employee’s footsteps on the track. In the sonorous silence of the tunnel, however, there was still nothing more than a dull rumor mingled with crackling, rustling and snapping sounds…the enormous growth of the Lichen at work…and also the purr of a violent air current, whose movement through the open ventilators was tangible.

  “Can you hear it?” Aurore said to me. “That’s the rush of air created by the lichen’s nutrition, which is absorbing the atmosphere of the tunnel on a massive scale.”

  I admired her scientific presence of mind.

  Behind me, though, there is a shrill, strangled scream. I turn round, as all the passengers do.

  “There…there! It touched my neck! It’s all warm!”

  A fat woman, her features twisted in fear beneath her make-up and her eyes bulging, is pointing to an open ventilator art the top of a window, through which a hideous red thing has surged, like a flayed fist. People jostle one another trying to get a look at it. Peering more carefully, I distinguish behind the glass, among the reflections of the illuminated interior objects in the blackness of the tunnel, an enormous tentacle of lichen, whose growth has introduced its tip into the carriage.

  “The fungus! The Lichen! The Xenobiota!” All the names applied to the cosmic vegetation spring forth at once. The danger has been realized: the accelerated, lightning-fast growth.

  Shrill female squeals…frightened, indignant exclamations.

  “They aren’t going to let us go...”

  A confirmed alarmist affirms: “The lichen has invaded the tunnel; the train’s stuck inside; we’ll be crushed, asphyxiated...”

  Everyone looks at his neighbors, tensely, only waiting for a signal…and there’ll be panic. I see Aurore’s lips quivering, her eyes searching mine for a composure that is in the process of escaping me, under the pressure of the unanimous folly. Desperately, I take refuge in the obsessive idea of protecting Aurore at all costs. I lean toward her.

  “Pay attention, my dear.” She is backed up in the angle formed by a seat-back and the window of the carriage. I turn slightly and enclose her within the barrier of my arms, may hands on the aluminum bar. “Don’t move. We’re going to get out through this door here, since there’s an emergency ladder to get down to the track.”

  Outside, the tunnel is filing with cries, the sound of footsteps: the gallop of a stampeding herd. The passengers in the other carriages fleeing toward the station?

  In our carriage, everyone runs to the forward doors and, in the reddened penumbra of the invaded bulbs, they strike out with their fists, trying to break down the doors. In vain—they’re blocked.

  “What about us? Aren’t they going to let us out? They’re going to let us die! Guard! Here! The first-class coach! Never mind—let’s get out of the windows.”

  The sound of breaking glass. Outside, the majority of the fugitives have gone past. Calls for help, vituperations, blasphemies from the laggards…a revolver shot resounds, close at hand.

  “Ger out, quickly! Move, damn it! Damnation!”

  At our end of the carriage, however, the small communication door opens, and the white beam on an acetylene lamp, brandished by a controller, leaps to my eyes. And a sub-officer commands: “Attention in there! Order to evacuate the train and proceed on foot to Chambre-des-Députés station. But the current hasn’t been cut off…we haven’t been able to telephone the sector. Watch out—beware of the electric rails. Walk well within the rolling trails or outside to the left. No jostling, one at a time—but hurry up!”

  While everyone starts running, the man comes to the door close to which Aurora and I remain in isolation, and pulls a lever that opens the battens, through which the wind rushes in, and the tempestuous racket of the growing lichen. He hangs his searchlight on the bar of a luggage-rack, lifts the chain securing the iron ladder flattened against a seat-back, rotates it on its axial support and, guiding it outside the carriage, lowers it into the retaining groove, amid a muffled sound of breaking branches.

  “Exit this way!”

  The man goes down first, lantern in hand—and the bright acetylene beam reveals the spiky red thicket of the lichen that is extending its tentacles underneath the carriage.

  I hoped that, in view of
our favorable position, Auriore and I would be the first to get down after him, but all the passengers have flooded back en masse toward that doorway.

  The disappearance of the lantern has left us in almost complete darkness; the light-bulbs, left to their own devices, have ended up masking themselves. Clinging to a bar with one hand, holding Aurore in front of me with the other, I succeed initially in retaining our position of priority in spite of the pressure, but at the moment when, letting go of the bar, I advance my hand toward the vertical ramp at the top of the ladder, some big devil takes advantage of it to knock my hand away with a blow of his fist, pushes me back furiously, takes my place, and gets down.

  For two seconds, at the very edge of the gaping opening, wedged among the frightful jostling of the front rank, in which people are using their elbows to resist he pressure, I sway, with nothing more to retain me, and with Aurore in my arms, braced with all my strength.

  “Don’t push, damn it! Let us get down!”

  A surge shoves me…we are thrust over the edge.

  Not directly on to the track; branches deaden the fall, breaking dryly like elder-twigs. I fall on my side, my companion on top of me; she hasn’t even made contact with the ground. Getting to her feet first, she helps me to do likewise.

  “No harm done, Aurore?”

  “No harm done, Gaston?”

  The ladder, a few paces away, disgorges the fugitives one by one. Hand in hand, we insert ourselves into the Indian file, for the space between the carriage and the wall of the tunnel is not wide enough to walk two abreast.

  Under our feet, a path has been cleared, but the proliferation is continuing frenziedly under the carriages: a confused mass from which menacing limbs project, tentacles that brush us as we pass by. The cries of the fugitives ahead of us and behind us don’t drown out the confused din of the busy lichen; it fills the tunnel with its gigantic and hectic growth. And ever stronger, the roar of the formidable flood of air that lashes our faces, and against which we labor.