The Xenobiotic Invasion

by Theo Varlet

  XVII. Aurore’s Return

  The misfortune seemed less grave—almost insignificant—when I awoke. Like a hymn of joy, I repeated: “She’s arriving this evening, my darling girl! In ten and a half hours, I shall see her!” What importance could those petty blots on my canvases have, after that? If a restorer couldn’t contrive to neutralize the bothersome chemical reaction with another that would return the whites to their original condition, I’d just have to retouch them myself—two or three days’ work, that’s all!

  And to prove to myself that I was unconcerned about that contingency, I set about shaving, while humming the leitmotiv from Die Walkure.

  The concierge rang twice, as was her habit when she had mail for me. With the left side of my face shaved but the right still smeared with shaving-soap I ran to open the door, fearing some snag. What if Aurore…?

  “Le Matin, Monsieur Delvart! Le Matin’s back!”

  Thank God that’s all it is! “Thank you, Madame Taquet.”

  And very politely, I close the door in her face. To hell with her gossip! She’s already scared me, with her idiot doorbell-ringing.

  All the same, the paper will help me to pass half an hour…let’s finish dressing and install ourselves in that armchair...

  Let’s see…editorial dithyramb, eulogies to the staff, the workers...

  The prodigies of celerity that it has been necessary to accomplish to replace the electric equipment of the rotary presses with steam power…we have suspended publication for only five days, and we are the first to reappear today, at least 24 hours ahead of the fastest of our competitors...

  That was a premature boast; the Intran reappeared that afternoon, at its usual time.

  Summary of the events that occurred in the “interregnum of the Press.” Charming! They’re not kicking themselves! Yes, we know all this…nothing new: Demonstration of the unemployed on October 25... Imprudent infractions of the decree at the Saint-Denis power-station: the ardent lichen... Not many details. A particularly dangerous species of Xenobiota... It’s not here that I’ll find the truth of that dark tale; they judge that it’s not the time to frighten the public... Communist riots and criminal activity on October 26 and 27... The communists have broad backs! Attack on the central telegraph office... I know—let’s move on. Exhortation to calm: All that is needed is a few more days of patience…the lichen has exhausted the first fire of its new creation and is decreasing, according to Professor Nathan. The resistance of the spores is in inverse proportion to the advancement of the forms from which they emanate. The most tenacious are those of the inferior species, always capable of reproducing themselves in their descendants in favorable conditions...

  The present situation in France. Map, with the contaminated regions shaded. Well! It hasn’t changed much. The decree has done some good, then? Paris and the Seine, with a part of the Seine-et-Oise still form a kind of lop-sided crescent. The gray patch in the south-eastern region has reached Sète and Carcassonne. In the south-west, Bordeaux and Bayonne, as before. It’s in the north that it’s extended furthest: the zone now forms an irregular triangle from Dunkerque to Le Havre and Le Havre to Amiens...

  Abroad. Spain has not yet taken serious measures against the lichen. In addition to Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid and Burgos are affected... In Belgium and Italy, similar decrees to France, since yesterday. In the United States... Ah! Well, well! Honestly, I can’t help finding that funny. The ones who gave the signal to put France in quarantine! In New York, the Xenobiota are making rapid progress. It is assumed that bootleggers... Bootleggers, obviously. I’ll read that later...

  Uh oh!

  EVACUATION OF PARIS POSTPONED

  FROST FORECAST THIS EVENING

  Discussion of the plan to evacuate Paris, which was to have been submitted to the Chambres yesterday by the Special Commission responsible for its formulation and finalization, has been adjourned. It is improbable that the government will be forced to have recourse to that extreme measure, for the Meteorological Office is forecasting the arrival of a cold front, which has every chance of reaching Paris this evening... And: the population is exhorted... Yes, as in yesterday’s poster.

  But in the other column, I catch with the corner of my eye: Eyguzon—that name now familiar and dear...

  Professor Nathan informs us that the discovery anticipated by him is on course for imminent realization at the Eyguzon laboratory. The study of certain radioactive varieties has yielded to “the new Edison,” M. Oswald Lescure, the secret of provoking atomic disintegration at will—which is to say, the liberation of the energy that the atom contains in a degree of extraordinary condensation. Dr. Gustave Le Bon, the French scientist to whom the glory belongs of being the first to occupy himself with this question, in 1910, has, in fact, calculated that if one were to succeed in liberating all the energy contained in a gram of matter with sufficient rapidity, the power furnished would be sufficient to propel a goods train comprising 40 ten-ton wagons around the world. There is no need to emphasize the importance of such a discovery. It represents industrial omnipotence and global hegemony for the country that has the monopoly on it. Let us only hope that another prognosis issued by Dr. Le Bon will not be verified. “The person who makes that discovery,” he says, in his book L’Évolution de la matière, will undoubtedly not see its realization; he will be destroyed, along with his laboratory, by a formidable explosion...”

  Someone’s at the door! Who can it be, at this hour?

  Unexpected…just like the other morning, the day we went to Le Bourget, so close and yet already so far removed into the past, when Luce arrived unexpectedly with her brother...

  It was Luce again, but with Lendor Cheyne.

  A Cheyne more American than ever, in his suit with Cubist shoulders: a Cheyne with a rictus smile, his jaws contracted by an implacable businessmanlike will, jabbering a worse French than on the first day. But he had stopped chewing gum, and I deduced from his brick-red complexion that he had been assiduously pursuing his comparative study of cocktails.

  Luce, in all her red-haired Danae splendor.

  With a mischievous expression, as if she has a surprise in store for me, she tells me that she…that Lendor…or, rather, he and she…have come to buy a few canvases from me—“coves,” if possible.

  Bad luck, then! Yesterday’s accident becomes a calamity again, doubtless ruining the sale…and I tell them the story, displaying, to either side, the series of spoiled canvases propped against the walls.

  “The very coves that you would have wanted, my dear. The restoration will take several days...”

  She examined them, stroking her chin—but instead of the movement of recoil that I expected, I see her neck stretch, her eyes blink, and finally, she straightens up, saying: “Astonishing! Splendid! You’re an idiot, Tonton, to talk about restoration! That would be committing a crime, spoiling these chiaroscuro effects; the disinfection apparatus has wrought a stroke of genius; this has a powerful originality…as beautiful as African Art. I’ll take the canvases just as they are...” And, addressing Cheyne: “Aren’t they lovely, my dear?”

  The Yank opined, confidently: “Oh yes! Capital. Take the whole lot...” And, taking out his check book, he asked: “Combiène, Guéstoine?”

  It was Luce who quoted him a price, authoritatively—double the one that I might have dared to propose.

  That deal completed, my visitors sit down, and Luce starts talking about business…their business. In technical terms, in which I’m immediately lost, she explains astounding projects, vertiginous schemes, of which I can only grasp scraps: an oil cartel… synthetic fuels… cracking… dividends… shareholders. She gets around to the subject of the Moon Gold Company.

  “I can tell you, Tonton… thanks to me, my dear Lendor”—and, like a lion-tamer proud of her pupil, she strokes Cheyne’s arm, demonstratively, while he swells up, purring and rolling the comical eyes of an amorous hyena—“has come to understand that he’s too young to believe in the uti
lity of realizing a voyage to the Moon some day. He knows now that it will be sufficient to see in lunar gold a simple symbol of Credit. That has been evident to me from the beginning. And the proof that I’m right is that the new issue of shares in the European Moon Gold Company has been fully subscribed since yesterday, in spite of the deplorable condition of the financial market; the banks have all come in; the only opposition is from the electricity groups...”

  Animated and triumphant, she was in the full glory of her beauty. I caressed her with my painter’s gaze, as I would have admired an Old Master… but the sight of Cheyne tamed enabled me to anticipate a further revelation.

  Suddenly changing her tone, Luce declared: “What’s more, old chap, I have the honor of announcing my imminent marriage—on November 113, a fortnight hence—to dear Lendor. It’s to begin to furnish our gallery that we’ve just bought your canvases...”

  I must have gone pale, or red, with a flabbergasted expression. A vertigo of joy whirled within me. Tears of happiness, I think, came into my eyes.

  She misunderstood. Truly, Danae didn’t suspect a thing. After my distancing myself from her, and with the proof before her very eyes, in the portrait, that I was in love with someone else, she still believed—God’s truth!—that I was weeping for my lost hopes...for regret at seeing her marry someone other than me! She imagined that I still retained a secret weakness for her!

  “How emotional you are, Tonton! I wouldn’t have believed…anyway, it’s your fault; you’re too timid. I’d never have guessed, myself. Then again, think—it would never have worked, the two of us. While, with that nice little astronaut...”

  I didn’t want to leave her under any illusion.

  “No, Luce, don’t be deceived. It’s not that, simply surprise...”

  “Don’t defend yourself, Tonton—I don’t want that. On the contrary, they suit you, those romantic tears. Don’t worry, we’ll remain friends Anyway, we have to talk business again…to regulate the disavowal of their contract, Lendor and his ex-fiancée, who’ll become your future wife...for you’ll marry her, won’t you?”

  “That depends on her...”

  “She desires nothing more. That leaps to the eyes. So, there are questions of interest to discuss with her and her father. Don’t worry—I’ll make sure that Lendor conducts himself like a gentleman.”

  For a second, I wondered whether Luce might have come to see me, in reality, to obtain a compromise with respect to Oswald Lescure’s invention, announced by the Matin, the rights to which would belong exclusively to Aurore, if Cheyne did not marry her—but I realized that I was overestimating her Machiavellianism.

  And what did it matter? I would have forgiven her all her petty roguery, my dear beautiful enemy, Luce! Thanks to her, the last obstacles had been removed; thanks to her, Aurore was free, my beloved was mine!

  “What do you say, then, Tonton? Are we still friends?”

  With the warmest and most sincere effusion, I shook her satin-clad hand, as firm, full and healthy as that of a living statue.

  At 5:30 p.m., wrapped up in a thick winter overcoat—for the weather had grown noticeably colder, I was feverishly pacing back and forth on the platform of the Gare d’Austerlitz at which Aurore’s train was due to arrive at 6. Impatiently anxious, I was rehearsing what I would say to tell her about Cheyne’s marriage; I was savoring I advance her joyful surprise, the renewal of her confession of love...

  At 5:55, feeling someone tap me on the shoulder, I started nervously, and even uttered an exclamation. I turned round.

  “Monsieur Nathan!”

  In my optimism, in my benevolent goodwill toward everyone and everything, I greeted the great biologist spontaneously, forgiving him wholeheartedly for all his impoliteness, past, present and to come, happy that he had done me the honor of recognizing me. The imperious familiarity of that tap on the shoulder astonished me, though; it did not fit in with the memory I had of his Olympian attitude. The old scientists had to be deeply troubled, not in his normal state of mind.

  Immobile in his fur-collared overcoat, he considered me pensively, his thick white eyebrows frowning...

  How can I put it? Some high-tension concern radiated from his contracted features.

  Finally, with a leaden and almost absent-minded gesture, he offered me his hand. “Monsieur Delvart, you’re also waiting, I suppose, for Mademoiselle Lescure? I’m glad to find you here, and that you’re friends. Let me say…I don’t have much time…her train will be here in less than four minutes…I need to charge you with a delicate mission, which you’ll fulfill better than I could with regard to her...

  “Something terrible has happened…which is also a great misfortune or science. Her father is dead. The news has just reached me by telegraph from the Eyguzon Dam. Mademoiselle Lescure had only been gone two hours this morning when an explosion destroyed the research laboratory. A very violent explosion—nearly two kilometers away, the telegraphy post at the dam received a rude shock. It’s the proof, Monsieur, the atrocious and definitive proof that the new Edison has just realized his discovery…it was, alas, almost inevitable, as Dr. Gustave Le Bon foresaw in 1910... In spite of everything, it astonishes me, though, in a first rate experimenter like Oswald Lescure. Would he not have taken all the precautions indispensable in such a case, including the first and foremost one of only using an infinitesimal parcel of matter?”

  I was scarcely following the scientist’s reasoning; his voice arrived indistinctly, as from a distance. A lamentation of dolor filled my skull, drowning the triumphal song of a few moments before. Aurore! How could I tell her the frightful news? How could I talk to her, at the same time, about my egotistical joy?

  The whistle of a locomotive...

  The hall vibrates to the rhythm of the rain that advances along the track, slows down, stops…

  In the crowd of disembarking passengers, I perceive her lacy capeline, her beloved face, her eyes, searching for me. Leaving Nathan behind, I run toward her...

  Here we are, stopped face to face, a double reef in the midst of the flowing wave, battered by elbows and the corners of suitcases.

  A mysterious divination of feminine and amorous instinct? Telepathy? What do I know? In my words of welcome, spoken feverishly, in the grip of my hands, in my anxious, avid, imploring gaze, which dedicates my pity to her wholeheartedly, she has read the terrible news that I was kneading in secret, searching for the best way to offer her the dolorous essence without causing her too much suffering.

  She takes my hands again, having released hem. “Gaston! What’s the matter with you? No—what’s happened? Tell me, quickly. It’s not you that it concerns?”

  The temptation, for half a second, to begin by liberating the joy of my love, trapped beneath the mountain of sadness…while I suppress that desire, the other, calamitous news melts, escaping from me under the pressure of her gaze.

  “No, beloved, you. Your father. He’s...”

  She suddenly freezes, into a frightening calm. She has seen the biologist, who rejoins us, and who stands before her, hat in hand, his baldness respectfully inclined. She fixes her ardent eyes upon him. She doesn’t want to learn from me the misfortune that she has deduced, of which she is now intuitively sure.

  In a strange, quasi-automatic voice, she asks: “The catastrophe has happened, Monsieur Nathan?”

  The member of the Institut raises his head, then nods in a gesture of assent. “Yes, Mademoiselle, the new Edison has joined the most glorious martyrs of science in immortality.”

  “Oh! That’s why he sent me away at the decisive moment…that he sent Dr. Alburtin and he laboratory assistants away. He foresaw…he knew...”

  And as she falls silent, pale and absent-minded, her eyes wide with mortal sadness, he goes on: “My car is at your disposal, Mademoiselle…and yours also, Monsieur Delvart, if you wish...”

  But I only just have time to catch her. She has fallen into my arms, sobbing—and between the sobs, I perceive words that open within my
sympathetic sadness a trench resplendent with happiness: “My beloved Gaston, I’m yours; I have no one but you in the world...”

  Magnificent moment! I have not had to tell her that Cheyne’s marriage has liberated her. Of her own accord, she has renounced the interests that still bind her, she believes, to her ex-fiancé. She is throwing overboard the contract that would make her rich; she is sacrificing her fortune for me. She is giving me proof of a love that is the only thing capable of overcoming filial affection...

  In strictly logical terms, I could end my story there, since that gesture, in assuring me of Aurore’s love, closes the era of uncertainty and opens that of happiness, which is story-free by definition. For the sake of completeness, however, I shall give a synopsis of the rest of that day, since the predestination that had made my adventure begin with the story of the lichen and had linked the two together in such a narrow fashion, manifested itself again, in cutting short the effective reign of the Lichen on the day when I concluded the conquest of my beloved.

  At the exit from the Gare d’Austerlitz, Nathan showed an awkward but touching concern for Aurore. That bachelor, with a sentimentally arid life, having sacrificed everything, even simple domestic bliss, to science, revealed a paternal soul. While supporting my companion by the other arm, he murmured words of encouragement to her.

  On the sidewalk, beside the limousine guarded by a chauffeur and a Xenobiota policeman, he asked: “Where should I drop you?”

  In her distress, Aurore turned to me. She put herself in my hands.

  My decision was made: to surround her with an illusion of family life. I gave the Frémiets’ address. The ever-ready benevolence of my uncle and the assured compassion of my aunt permitted me to hope that Aurore would not spend the night in a hotel. At the very least she would spend the evening among friendly faces.

  I had not counted in vain on my aunt’s good heart. As soon as she spoke, she took pity and made me the expected offer.