I thought, therefore, that it was all over. After a time, I woke up again, recovering a little consciousness. In my despair, I grabbed hold of a projection of the rock, which I shook frantically, as if in the puerile hope of shifting it.
I only succeeded in provoking a slight rain of fine sand, which started trickling slowly over my hand.
Already weary, defeated and resigned, I fell unconscious again. I left my hand where it was, in the little stream of sand, which caressed it as it fell, slowly….
Again, time faded away, becoming an indeterminate notion. Pessimism weighed upon me in consequence. Hideous visions passed before my eyes. The passage of blood through my cerebral arteries metamorphosed into the sound of a drum, trumpets or cymbals, and then into choirs of angels, very soft and very distant….
I had closed my eyes….
Suddenly, the cessation of the drizzle of sand over my hand interrupted my lethargy. I opened my eyes again….
Then life flooded my veins with magnificent waves.
Daylight! I could see daylight!
Above me, in the hole hollowed out by the flight of the sand, light was filtering through a pane of dirty glass. I tapped on it with my fingertips. The pane was thin; it resonated. I struck it with a stone; it shattered, and a rush of pure air hit my face.
A few seconds later the opening had been enlarged and I emerged onto the surface of the shiny mica that surrounded, like a dazzling frozen pond, the islet on which my balloon was moored.
My poor balloon! Something terrible had happened to it as well. I saw that it was utterly deflated, lying limply over the rock like a rag. Even before thinking about digging into my reserves of food, I gazed at the envelope. It had large gashes all over it, all of the same nature and the same size, through which the gas must have escaped in a matter of seconds. By their pattern and the neatness of the lacerations, I had no difficulty deducing that they were due to the large spines of the Antheans.
That new catastrophe, arriving at the very moment that I had thought I was saved, floored me. I don’t know what primitive and instinctive force prevented me from lying down beside my nacelle, prey to a mortal torpor.
After having pulled myself together somewhat, I examined the canvas and gutta-percha envelope for some time in order to take account of the exact extent of the disaster. I was already thinking about repairing the gashes, but I realized that they were too large, and I did not have the necessary materials.
No, it was no longer permissible for me to think about returning one day to the society of my fellows, to the gentle Earth on which wheat grows, where flowers are rooted in the soft ground amid silky grass, and where women’s eyes cause one to dream in the evening….
I was condemned to live for a few more days on that mineral globe and then to die of hunger, even if the frightful Antheans left me in peace.
Perhaps I might escape them by taking refuge in the dark subterranean tunnels from which I had just emerged, but what was the point in running away from them?
Yielding completely to reflections of that sort, I gradually slipped into a heavy and reparative sleep.
I had doubtless been asleep for several hours when I was half-awakened by a light breath that passed over my face several times.
Still exhausted by fatigue, I paid no attention to that phenomenon, which would have been striking had I been awake, for no wind ever blew over the surface of Anthea.
I went back to sleep.
After an interval, the breath recommenced, and then there were slight touch sensations. Still drowsy, I tried to make a gesture with my hand to chase away the importunate contact—but my hand did not obey; it remained bound to something whose nature I could not discern. Suddenly, I woke up completely.
I had been recaptured!
Numerous Antheans were surrounding me, their vegetal claws holding me tightly everywhere. A second after I had opened my eyes, they all took off together, and I found myself suspended twenty meters above the ground. This time, it was impossible for me to defend myself; my feet, my hands and my head were tightly confined by mobile and vigorous tendrils; I could not move so much as my little finger.
It soon seemed to me, however, that the Antheans that had captured me were less well armed and less turbulent—less malevolent, if I might put it that way—than those from the rock city. They did not press their spines against my flesh; they did not squeeze me to the point of suffocation, and—most significant of all—in the keen blue eyes that their leafy tentacles parades around me, I thought I could discern a gentler, less savage gleam.
That aerial journey lasted a long time. We passed over huge masses of rocks, unfathomable precipices, formidable blocks of quartz, ruby obelisks, immense violet, yellow or pink petrified forests.
Finally, the flight of the Antheans slowed down and descended. They circled over a strange round area stranger and even more fantastic than everything I had so far seen on the little planet. It was constituted by a narrow circle of aquamarine blue cliffs. The cliffs, which narrowed in the form of a funnel, were translucent in all their sections; all around their perimeter, mineral concretions affected the forms of monstrous or gigantic flowers and animals. Beryl, lapis lazuli, agate and opal, and numerous unknown stones were blossoming there, under the influence of a mysterious force, in an unimaginable glittering flowering.
Between the marble stems and the delicate sculptures of calcium carbonate, among the calcite foliage, the Antheans took me down gently as far as the narrow opening of a corridor that plunged beneath the rocks. They drew me along that subterranean tunnel, which was faintly illuminated.
Finally, they set me down in an immense and more brightly illuminated grotto. They released me. I stretched myself, and massaged my stiff limbs while already searching with my eyes for an escape route. All the exits were, however, guarded by one or two Antheans, solidly planted on their crampons with their spikes advanced.
At any rate, they did not appear to wish me any harm. The numerous individuals who were in the immense cave paid little attention to me; they continued their fidgeting, their fluttering or their conversations. They seemed to me to belong to a different race from the savage inhabitants of the stone city. Their form and organization was similar, but their voices, still produced by membranes disposed around the perimeter of the globular body, were softer and more musical, their leaves more delicate and covered with a silky down instead of the glandulous cilia with which the other day’s pirates had been barbed, and, finally, their flowers were pure marvels. Oh, if it had not been for the anguish of the moment, how I would have been able to admire them!
We think we know on Earth what a beautiful flower can be, evoking the corollas of lilies, the petals of poppies, the cups of buttercups, the bells of campanulas, the faces of pansies, and the strange splendor of orchids. Bah! That’s nothing. It’s necessary to have seen, as I have, those multicolored corollas, those dreamlike hues, those indescribable forms, all stroked by divine light.
I now regret not having looked more closely at those marvels, but at the time I saw nothing but presages of death everywhere. I was, however, able to walk freely about the caves, each of which must have been hundreds of meters in length and breadth, and which followed one another in sequence like the reception rooms of a palace. The light therein came from outside, through the vitrified layers that I had so often observed on the surface of Anthea.
The successive rooms contained marvels: stalagmites grouped into inextricable forests; colored concretions formed multitudes of frightening and monstrous figures; calcareous deposits formed fringes and lacework. Crystals sparkled everywhere. Shallow bowls superimposed in steps were made of opaline quartz as translucent as glass. Entire walls of columns, like huge organs, were ornamented with prisms of white, yellow or pink calcium carbonate, which sparkled with stony vegetation like gigantic polyps. Then there were the bas-reliefs, the fluted columns, the strange sculptures, the rounded bosses.
A well organized activity reigned throughout
the home of that Anthean people, composed of ten or twelve thousand individuals. I could not discern at first the precise objective of their activity, but I recognized later that their organization was perfect; they went in search, outside or in distant caverns, of mineral substances that they brought back, manipulated and stored. Thus, they prepared reserves of nutrients, which they enclosed in geodes or hollow stones, which abounded everywhere in all the grottoes.
Having walked for a long time through the workshops and storerooms of the Antheans, and feeling hunger gnawing at me, I was obliged to taste that aliment, initially in small doses. It was a slightly sugary substance, apparently very rich in carbon and nitrogen. Several individuals, on seeing me consuming that nourishment, assembled around me and considered me with curiosity, but they made no attempt to stop me from eating. I suppose that, like bees, those creatures subject certain unknown substances to a kind of fermentation—or, rather, chemical transformation—from which that slightly insipid sustenance results, but in sum, nourishing.
After several fruitless attempts, I made no further attempt to escape. The Antheans were keeping me at their disposal with some mysterious objective that I could not fathom. Doubtless, for them, I was a monstrous and bizarre creature that they were studying. Several of them came to see me every day; they prodded me, considering me at length, and conversed between themselves. At length, I recognized that they were always the same individuals. They retired after each visit to a little gypsum grotto. They must have been that people’s scientists.
Gradually, I took more interest in those laborious sages. Morning and evening they met up and sang in chorus hymns of a sort that surpassed in harmony, softness and magnificent sweetness the purest trills of nightingales and the most sonorous cantilenas of crickets.
I was often witness to the nuptials of those strange creatures: the males and females circled slowly beneath the high vaults of the caverns, and when their flowers, extended at the end of spiraloid peduncles finally came together for the sacred exchange of pollen, a formidable clamor of joy rose up from the entire city.
I spent several months there. I eventually began to aid the Antheans in their labors. I rolled before them the nodules of flint that they filled with their alimentary preparations, and replaced them afterwards. Was I their slave? Perhaps, but what does it matter? Activity is a law of life, and I could not get used to doing nothing.
I therefore rendered a few services to certain Anthean workers, who showed unmistakable signs of gratitude toward me. They gathered around me in the evening, during and after the songs that concluded the working day. By dint of repeating the same sounds and pointing to objects with the tips of their leafy tentacles, I began to understand a few of their words, and I was formulating the dream of learning their language, of writing it…what do I know?...when an event rich in consequences caused upheaval in the city of the Antheans and put my life in danger again.
It will be remembered that it was due to an earthquake that I was able to escape from the little cave where the malevolent Antheans of the surface were keeping me imprisoned. The subterranean rumblings that I had heard then were frequently reproduced, filling the grottos with loud rumors reverberated from wall to wall and followed by fearful cries from the people. It even happened that fissures opened up in the rocks and cracks streaked the walls of the large rooms.
Evidently, the central fire of the little planet was not extinct. The entire globe probably being composed of caverns superimposed like a honeycomb, all the somersaults of the molten central nucleus had enormous effects. In any case, the very recent neighborhood of terrestrial mass sufficed to explain the increasingly numerous perturbations that were produced in the entrails of Anthea. Whatever the reason was, the quakes and subterranean rumbles increased progressively in frequency and intensity. I saw the Anthean scientists making several inspections of recent crevices, but the mass of the people remained calm.
Over several days, the volcanic agitation had increased considerably, when, all of a sudden, one morning, an intense shock shook the grottos and dislocated a part of the wall of the one in which I happened to be. Blocks of basalt fell and crushed several Antheans. A few seconds later another subterranean convulsion broke thousands of stalagmites and opened a large fissure in the vault of the cavern, through which air and light from outside entered in floods.
Then the people became excited. All work ceased. Leaders twirled their leaves turbulently and went to take up positions on the outer edges of the opening; guards launched themselves outside and occupied a number of elevated positions in the vicinity.
I soon found out what it was that the Antheans feared.
A few hours after the seismic upheaval, without any further quake having taken place, the Antheans uttered loud cries of fright. The strongest rushed outside, the others hid in cracks in the rock, hid behind stalagmites or enclosed themselves in small caves.
Personally, I climbed onto a sort of ledge that ran around the side wall, rising progressively toward the accidental opening in the vault. I was waiting for a propitious moment to slip outside when I perceived a furious flock of Antheans of the other race.
It was an assault of pillagers, the brigands of the rocks, against the good people of the caverns. The laborious individuals defended themselves valiantly but their enemies were better armed: their spikes were stronger, longer and sharper; their branches were covered with formidable spines or rigid, glandulous, poisoned tendrils. They pierced the bodies of the defenders and poured into the grottos like a whirlwind. One might have thought them a swarm of monstrous hornets raiding a fortunate hive. There was a terrible battle. Hundreds of workers fell, and the attackers soon set about savagely consuming the aliments heaped up in the storerooms. Their leaves were agitating frantically, the elongated flowers on their peduncles waving with proud satisfaction.
As for me, I could not flee. There were still ten meters of sheer wall between the surface and the narrow ledge on which I was crouched. I dared not budge, for fear of revealing my presence to the pirates, and I dreaded that after they had gorged themselves on nourishment, the terrible Antheans might return to the hunt.
This is what happened. They killed many more defenseless individuals, and then, finally, two of them perceived me and flew toward me. They did not strike me immediately, but limited themselves initially to carrying me up to the surface. There they assembled several of their fellows, and then, simultaneously recoiling slightly, as they had the habit of doing before plunging upon an adversary, they aimed their spikes and launched themselves forward.
Facing imminent death, I closed my eyes.
Then, as if the blink of my eyelids had been able to shake the little planet, the subterranean thunder resumed with formidable violence. At the same time, rocks as big as mountains shook, cubic kilometers of basalt rose into the air, and there was a universal chaotic upheaval.
The whole of Althea convulsed.
In a matter of seconds the little globe was dislocated; it broke apart and crumbled. Cracks hundreds of meters long zigzagged in all directions with lightning rapidity. One might have thought that they were running like cracks over breaking ice.
Finally, there was one last explosion, and the asteroid itself shattered into smithereens, its fragments radiating though space in all directions.
The mass of pumice stone on which I was standing was hurled into the sky with an incredible violence. After a few seconds, I saw that it was not falling backwards, as there was no longer a center of gravity behind it, since Anthea, pulverized, was no more.
I no longer had the sensation of being drawn along; my rock seemed to be motionless. It had the form of a pyramid; it might have amounted to a few dozen cubic meters. I reflected that it was bearing away, attached to its mass, a certain quantity of air—but for how long would I have it, and where was I going? Toward what solar system? Toward what constellation?
I hoisted myself up to the summit of the pyramid that now formed the entirety of my world, and had the
surprise of seeing on the opposite face the old flattened envelope of my balloon.
I succeeded in crawling underneath the mass of rigging and fabric. It was only an inanimate thing, but in the circumstances in which I found myself, it was pleasant for me to rediscover that object, which had come with me from good old Earth.
Thinking that my minuscule asteroid was continuing to move rapidly through space, I looked around, anxious. I soon had the joy of perceiving a vast blue globe beneath me that appeared to be rapidly increasing in size. Ah! It was the Earth, finally, the Earth! My rock had therefore been hurled in the direction of the Earth, and its initial velocity had been sufficient to bring it into the field of terrestrial attraction—and now it was falling toward our globe with the velocity of a stone falling from the heavens.
I reflected that, after the fashion of shooting stars, it would doubtless catch fire and become incandescent under the friction of our atmosphere. I therefore hugged the punctured envelope of my balloon more violently, attached myself to it by the ends of the mooring ropes, and waited…but not for very long.
Soon, a wind of extreme violence swept the surface of my rock, and I felt it becoming hot. We were entering the terrestrial atmosphere at high speed. It was time to act. I raised myself up to my full height and tried to deploy against the wind the shreds of canvas to which I was attached. The air that was rushing passed with hurricane force inflated the envelope, lifted it up, detached it from the rock….and the fall that was beginning to cut off my breath stopped.
I remained suspended from my improvised parachute…which oscillated for several hours in more or less contrary atmospheric currents, and finally descended slowly, approached the ground and deposited me there, safe and sound…a good kilometer from the coast of Spain.
I thought that destiny wanted to add irony to cruelty by simply letting me perish after my miraculous return to our world, but no—that was only one more petty ordeal, for after a few minutes, I was spotted by the crew of a fishing boat, who picked me up and brought me back to France.
The Revolt of the Machines Page 33