The World of the Variants

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  The Sun was already dissipating the pale veils of mist. The rocks stood out with somber authority, a majestic aridity, and the plain on the opposite shore, with its harsh desolate and dazzling antique wreckage, was like one of those accursed regions in which religions often see divine wrath.

  Slowly, the boat headed for the cave.

  The subterranean stream was, indeed, tranquil and profound. At first, the searchlight illuminated uniform sides, pale stalactites, gray rocks strewn with bright sequins of crystal or metal. An infinite darkness reigned there; the electric beam generated troubling penumbras; something confusing, fantastically alive, seemed to be crawling slowly along the moist walls, with vegetable patience. The water was jet black, indecisively reflecting the furtive forms sketched out by the searchlight.

  Beneath the high vault, amid the cold odor of a cistern, in motionless air saturated with vapor, the souls of the companions were penetrated by a great and noble melancholy, a religious curiosity, an august sense of the unknown—and also by an invincible apprehension: a vague presentiment that occasionally rendered their chests heavy and tight.

  After two hours sailing, the landscape—if these phantoms of banks glimpsed in the cold gleam of the searchlight could thus be described—was transformed.

  The sides, at first quite narrow, broadened out. A very pale and frail filamentous vegetation, composed of a kind of stringy lichen and thread-like mosses, marked out matt silver gardens with filigree foliage the color of hemp and white meadows. Here and there, pale animals fled from the cone of light: marsupials with pelts the color of marine groundsel, giant rodents, rapacious nocturnal birds flying smoothly with fleecy wings, and a few large-sized insects that looked as if they had been dusted with chalk.

  At the same time, the temperature rose by a dozen degrees, climbing slowly from 20 to 25, and then to 30.

  “Should we get off?” Véraguez asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Alglave replied. “I think we should extend the reconnaissance as far as possible, to begin with, observing the broad features of this marvelous terrain. Later, when it’s necessary to mount a series of expeditions, we can proceed to detailed studies.”

  “That’s fair.”

  In spite of his wounds, Fugère soon joined his friends, and they spent entire hours admiring the miraculous subterranean country. It grew, and it developed. The vegetation, though still pale, became more vigorous.

  Chlorotic ferns raised elegant fronds along the river-banks, forming virtual forests; gigabit rodents showed themselves: rats as large as leopards, which did not flee when the light reached them from a distance. It was necessary to move closer and send forth an intense beam, as hard as metal, to make them retreat. The marsupials seemed scarcer, as were the nocturnal raptors. On the other hand, increasing curious varieties of bats flew skittishly over the ferns in pursuit of insects. It seemed strange to see animals that humans only knew in dark colors—russet, fawn and brown—as white as ermine. Quite tiny at first, they grew in size, attaining the stature of the vampires that live in the vast Brazilian forests.

  The temperature was no longer climbing; it leveled out at 32 degrees—but in the humid, unrefreshed air, that heat was nonetheless oppressive.

  After dinner—dusk must have fallen outside, on the countries of the surface—Whamo announced, on behalf of his companion, that the tribes of his race had never been so far underground, and that he was forced to forsake his role as a guide. He also made allusion to a legend that the river ended up falling into an abyss, where there were countries even more mysterious than those through which they were passing.

  “That’s good,” said Alglave. “For myself, I propose to continue.”

  “Until the end?” asked the injured man.

  “Until the end,” Véraguez repeated.

  And, indeed, neither the soul of a poet nor the soul of any scientist in the world would have been able to resist the magical attraction of those shadowy lands, with their promise of extraordinary sensations and discoveries. There was an immense perspective now; on the left bank there were abrupt declivities, a hectic succession of cavernous rocks, hard red granites and basalts hollowed out into cyclopean staircases, with overhanging summits, seemingly ready to collapse: an eerie necropolis pieced by tunnels, long corridors that lost themselves in the bowels of the Earth. To the right was a veritable plain, a forest of ferns punctuated by phantasmal mushrooms as tall as trees, forming striking silvery clearings in which the rodent fauna were augmented by albino lemurs, sadly perched, whose soft plaints were sometimes audible, and by owls as white as swans, alternating with livid vampires as big as eagles.

  “Wonderful! Marvelous!” whispered Alglave, as he wrote his notes.

  Even the crewmen were stupefied with admiration and superstitious terror.

  Then, suddenly, a new miracle was added to all the rest.

  In the distance, a sort of violet light emerged, which seemed to expand like a dawn, although no original source could be seen. It increased rapidly, tinting the pale plain, and its animals and plants, with a fairy glow. It settled on the rocky shore in a vague enchantment, in which all the shades of violet were blended.

  Dark at first, it brightened, and soon had the softness of a ray of moonlight filtering through glass faintly stained with indigo. As some animals retreated, others emerged, and the white vampire bats mingled with other huge bat species the color of lead.

  From then on the view extended to the limits of the subterranean horizon, about a kilometer away. A startling beauty emanated from fields of snowy lichen, mysteriously-opened penumbras, and mushroom clearings arranged in colonnades as tall as old bare-created willows on the edge of fish-ponds. Pallor was everywhere! A pallor full of silent life; a pallor emerging in the gentle alternation of darkness and lunar light; a supernatural pallor telling a tale of prodigies, of patient conflicts far from the Sun that nourished the world above; a pallor conserving forms of fauna and flora that had once lived in the pride of coloration!

  “Shall we get off, now?” asked Fugère.

  “Let’s go on further!” said Alglave, feverishly. “I think even greater surprises are in store for us.”

  Meanwhile, the two Indians pricked up their keen ears and displayed a certain anxiety.

  “What can you hear?” Véraguez asked.

  “We can hear running water!” Whamo replied.

  Alglave, whose ears were almost as good as an Indian’s, listened in his turn. Soon, it seemed to him that he could hear the sound of white water: the turbulence of rapids or a cascade. “Watch out!” he said. “I believe that legend will prove correct once again, and that we’re about to reach the abyss.” He shouted “Slow down!” to the engineer.

  Anxiously, the explorers kept a careful watch on the current, directing the searchlight, whose beam was brighter than the mysterious light. Two hours went by in this fashion. Soon, they could all hear the sound of a cataract quite clearly.

  “Stop!” shouted Alglave. “Drop anchor!”

  “And this time, let’s get off,” Véraguez added.

  Within a few more minutes, the boat was anchored, and then solidly moored to the bank on the side of the plain. Six of the 12 crewmen were chosen to accompany the explorers, along with the two Indians; the other six remained with Fugère, who having acquired a slight fever, did not feel strong enough to go with his companions. Well-equipped and armed, furnished with battery-powered electric lanterns, Alglave, Véraguez and their escort got under way.

  The ground underfoot was soft and slightly damp. The friction of livid conifers and ferns generated a slight apprehension even among the most courageous, including Alglave.

  As the little troop came out into an uncovered space, four or five of the rats whose colossal proportions had surprised the travelers appeared. They stared at the humans with their reddish eyes, and did not recoil, being masters of this domain, whose tigers or lions they were. They hesitated, though, seemingly disinclined to take the offensive, surprised to
see these enormous bipedal newcomers.

  At that moment, one of the men in the escort raised his rifle. Alglave knocked it down again. “Don’t fire without our orders!” he said, in an authoritarian tone. “If no one had fired at the jaguars last night, they wouldn’t have attacked us—and we wouldn’t have had the pain of seeing our companion wounded. If you attack these rodents, they’ll almost certainly fall on us, along with hidden relatives that will be attracted to the battle.”

  He had stopped, and he looked at the strange beasts. “They bear a certain odd resemblance to large peccaries. You know what solidarity those animals show—they sacrifice their lives to the very last if anyone touches one of them rather than let the aggressor escape. These appear to be very strong and well-equipped with teeth. Look, they’re increasing in number!”

  Three or four more rodents had, in fact, joined the troop—and they certainly presented a formidable appearance, with the stature of wild boars, solid jaws and sharp teeth.

  “They don’t seem to be determined to attack, though,” murmured Véraguez.

  “They’ll almost certainly leave us alone,” said Alglave. “We’re too astonishing—but that’s mutual. Let’s go!”

  The hesitant rodents let them go without following them. Marsupials made off. Silky wasps brushed their faces. The bats sometimes came close, and were especially inclined to follow them, as if curious.

  “What astonishes me most,” said Véraguez, “isn’t the animals—it’s that the giant ferns can sustain themselves!”

  “Yes, that’s unusual. A naturalist wouldn’t admit it, any more than a physicist would admit that light! Can’t we suppose that the light—whatever its source may be—was once stronger, and that the vegetation has adapted to its infinitely slow diminution over the course of millennia, utilizing rays that are scarcely utilized at all on the surface? That, combined with the constant temperature, perhaps particular magnetic conditions, and perhaps…but what good are chimerical causes, where the reality is in front of us!”

  The noise of the cataract had increased in volume. After an hour the sound had become deafening.

  “We’re getting closer!”

  Suddenly, Whamo and the other Indian, who were marching some way ahead, stopped.

  An echo of thunder shook the vaults. Animals were rarer here, especially those of large size. The current was calm and uniform. Its bed broadened out over a declining slope. All the torrential fury was some distance away, at the falls, which were revealed to the ear but not the eye.

  Whamo raised his arms and shouted, but his voice was lost in the din like a swarm of insects in the wind.

  Véraguez and Alglave hurried forward, and then—motionless, open-mouthed and prey to vertigo—they stared into the gulf.

  The immeasurable pit! First, the furious sheets of water, the battle of waters as resplendent as the summits of the Himalayas, resounding like a herd of storms, with the gracefulness of lace and the ponderousness of granite—and the pale rain of spray leaping up above that subterranean Niagara. The legions of the torrent ran over four ledges: four steps of a staircase, each one 20 meters high. And from top to bottom, the streaming, the leaping, the ruptures, the rocky islets, the oblique encounters, and the infinite play of the light, symbolizing the violent force, the irresistible force, the unconscious fury of the element with 1000 nuanced delicacies…

  And yet, it was not the cataract that exercised the greatest dominion over the imagination of the voyagers.

  More grandiose and even more unimaginable were the surroundings: the pale gulf that was a pale country. Beneath vaults that retained the same height, there was an immense territory down below. Life there appeared to partake of a superabundant splendor: vast sylvan extents, mossy plains, marsupials and giant rats, and, most especially, an extraordinary quantity of bat—this time of an absolutely unprecedented size, as powerful as the largest Andean condors. Oh, those giant bats, flying majestically over the cataract, and soaring over the plain! All the grace of birds was in them, with something more—some mysterious intelligence of movement, marking a race of superior mammals.

  They’re the kings of this creation, Alglave thought. An attempt by Nature to make—who can tell?—a flying man.

  The strange structural resemblance between bats and humans, which had often struck him, came to mind.

  A voice shouted in his ear, however: that of his companion, seemingly intoxicated by the unknown: “Let’s go on! Let’s go on!”

  “Yes, that’s it. Let’s go on!”

  It was not difficult. Beside the cataract there was a perfectly accessible downward slope, which the troop set about descending.

  They had scarcely begun when numerous flocks of vampires came toward them and then hovered, seemingly observing them. They continued to move forward, and the animals went with them; above their heads, in front of them and behind there was a swarm of wings, a disturbing, curious—possibly hostile—animality.

  When they reached the bottom, Alglave and Véraguez stopped.

  The bats were still arriving. Soon there were several thousand. Many of them settled in niches, on ferns or on trees. And everywhere, other animals made way for them, with a sort of respect, as for a victorious species.

  “What shall we do?” shouted Véraguez.

  “Keep going!”

  And on they went. For an hour they followed the course of the river without the country varying much, without any animal attempting to bar their way but still followed, albeit to a lesser extent, by the curiosity of the vampires. Their astonishment was silenced; all that remained in them was the desire to go forward, to keep going: the devouring curiosity of scientists.

  Eventually, however, Véraguez said: “Fugère’s waiting for us.”

  “Well,” Alglave replied, “let’s send him a messenger or two, while we have something to eat and then continue on our way. We can go on for another two hours. We won’t leave the edge of the river.”

  “What if the light goes out?”

  “We have our lanterns!”

  “So be it!”

  When the messengers had been sent and the meal taken, they stubbornly resumed their march.

  Symptoms of fatigue were becoming manifest among the companions, save for Alglave and the two Indians. Even Véraguez asked to take a short rest.

  As they stopped, they noticed for the second or third time, through a mushroom clearing, bats falling upon marsupials or rodents, then remaining attached to the animals’ flanks without the latter putting up any resistance.

  “Look, Véraguez!” said Alglave. “Doesn’t that seem bizarre? These vampires nourish themselves on the blood of quadrupeds, and the latter submit to it meekly.”

  “Yes,” Véraguez replied, in a dull voice. “The slow jaws...that’s surprising…”

  “Well, I have an idea that these beasts are domesticated…I’m increasingly inclined to believe that these immense bats are possessed of superior intelligence, have been able to tame the rest of the fauna, and that they only take the ration of blood that each animal can donate, as we take milk from cows…or as ants take the sweet secretion of domestic mites.”

  “Certainly!” Véraguez’s tone astonished him, as did the attitude of two of the men of the escort, who were huddled on the ground and seemed to be trying to stop themselves going to sleep.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he shouted.

  “I’m sleepy,” Véraguez replied, dully.

  “Sleepy?”

  “Yes.” And he curled up like the two men.

  Anxiously, Alglave looked around. It seemed to him that the light was getting dimmer—that a mist was descending on the clearings, the lichens and the water. He felt his own eyelids growing heavy.

  “What’s happening, then? That’s strange!” Seeing his friend lying down, he shouted: “Véraguez! Get up, Véraguez!”

  Véraguez was asleep. Two of the men were also asleep; the others—even Whamo—were struggling painfully against torpor. Only the India
n they had saved was resisting successfully; he and Alglave exchanged an anxious glance.

  “What is it? What is it?” Alglave repeated, with increasing anguish. He was terrified by the notion that the mysterious sickness might be mortal: a subtle poison or an asphyxiating gas. He shook his companion again.

  “Véraguez! Be brave, my friend!”

  Véraguez remained inert; soon, Whamo and the others were obliged to lie down, succumbing in their turn.

  “But this is frightful! Death, perhaps…futile, cowardly death…without having been able to study these mysteries…” For, in the depths of his disturbance, the stubborn curiosity of the scientist still remained, the immense regret for a scientific treasure that would be lost if their expedition perished.

  At that moment, he felt someone touch his arm. It was the Indian, who plucked at his sleeve and pointed to a sort of mound. Mechanically, Alglave followed. His anguish sank into torpor; with difficulty, he reached the mound. There, within a minute, he recovered his strength and the lucidity of his gaze and his mind.

  “Thank you! Thank you!” he said, shaking the savage’s hand.

  The latter signaled to him to wait, and, rapidly going down again, he ran toward the group of sleepers. Soon, Alglave saw him return, dragging a body—that of Véraguez—awkwardly. He ran to help him; they succeeded in towing the explorer to the top of the mound. Only then did Alglave reflect on the intelligent significance of the Indian’s actions. A cave-dweller, he must have compared what had happened, by analogy, with asphyxiation by carbon dioxide.

  He was more intelligent than me!

  Successively, taking the rest necessary to dissipate the numbing effect that followed each excursion, Alglave and the Indian towed all their companions to the mound. Strangely and ominously enough, though, although their respiration was normal and their pulse-beats regular, none of the sleepers woke up, in spite of shouting and shaking.

  It’s not carbon dioxide, then? Alglave thought, despairingly.

  Standing on top of the mound, he no longer felt the numbing effect; his companion showed the same endurance. Sadly, he studied the landscape. He observed instinctively that his conjecture regarding the vampires seemed to be correct; everywhere, they were falling upon quadruped animals and sucking their blood, with the tranquility of owners exercising incontestable rights.