“Thus, our grain in the pyramid and egg in its incubator are similarly able to live for a given time without modification: a muted, dormant and slow life, it’s true, but also undemanding.
“What does it take to determine the reawakening, the initiation of progress toward true life, towards birth? Light? It’s not indispensable. On the contrary, the seed in the earth and the egg beneath the chicken have no need of it. Air, no more than the former. More warmth is needed—the egg even demands a fixed level. As for humidity, unnecessary to the normal incubation of an egg, it’s necessary to produce it in great quantity in the case of retarded incubation, for the germ-cell is then desiccated. The grain, in all circumstances, needs water to germinate. Thus, given a certain interval of a second regime founded on these principles—the time of a germination or a habitual incubation—the wheat will grow green and the chicken will chirp.
“It only remains for us to apply this ingenious theory—new to me, I admit—to our own case. Given that the life of a stalk of wheat grown from a grain lasts about a year, and that one can succeed in delaying that life for 4000 years—the acknowledged age of the pyramid—that existence is thus retarded by 4000 times its own duration.
“For a hen’s egg, because of the dissimilarity, the figures are considerably lower—for five years of existence, three months of retardation at the most. But we have an iguanodon as our subject—which is to say, an oviparous creature, the contexture of which is still vegetal, to some extent, and whose existence places it in an era equally distant from our own epoch and that of the original gelatin. By virtue of this fact, it is more vegetal than the animals of today by a factor of a half.
“Let’s assume, then, in estimating that fraction of differentiation acquired by virtue of distance from the common ancestor, that an iguanodon’s egg—which is as much a seed as an egg—can only lie dormant for a lapse of time not 4000 times but only 2000 times as long as the creature’s normal existence.
“But how long did a dinosaur live?
“These animals, more than three times as large as an elephant, presumably might live three times as long. Now, it appears that there are pachyderms 299 years old. One the other hand, the dinosaurs belonged to the order of reptiles, the longevity of which, as I’ve told you, is paradoxical. Adding this particularity to the first, I do not think it an exaggeration to say that, if they had only been gigantic, the dinosaurs would have lived at least 500 years—which is less than three elephant lives added together—but they were also reptiles, and that probably doubled the figure. I want to be reasonable though, and I’ll only add two centuries instead of five. Thus, they attained an age of 700 years, at a low estimate.
“Now, we can delay the germination of their eggs for two thousand times the duration of their actual lives—which permits us to make these eggs hang around for 1,400,000 years.”
“Is that sufficient?” I said, a trifle dazed.
“More than sufficient. The middle of the Secondary Epoch, according to the thickness of the strata, was only 1,360,000 years from our own era.11 At present, I’m wondering how the egg of our iguanodon happened to find itself in the requisite conditions to prevent it from dying, and then to hatch suddenly.”
“First of all,” I said, “it’s necessary to know the incubation temperature for its species.”
“These creatures didn’t sit on their eggs,” Gambertin said, severely. “Like the majority of their relatives—with the exception of the iguana, however—they abandoned their eggs to the open air. Besides, if they had sat on them, that wouldn’t add anything to our data. As cold-blooded animals, they adopted the ambient temperature.”
“And that was high?”
“Fifty degrees everywhere, I told you, including the cold zone. These cold-blooded animals were, therefore, warmer than us. If I bring the reckoning of scholarship to our problem, the thermometric point of dormancy for an iguanodon’s egg ought to vary between forty and forty-five degrees. It’s necessary that some cause enveloped that scarcely-laid egg with air less warm than the general atmosphere…”
“The landslide, of course!” I cried.
“It’s possible. The avalanche, by the hazard with which you’re familiar, left empty spaces beneath the rocks. The egg might have been preserved by that miracle—it really is a miracle, for a slight shock would have broken that shell-less egg. In the utmost depths of the caverns, a constant temperature and dryness must have been maintained thanks to the proximity of lava flows; it was dark there, the air renewed by the tunnels. The incubator was perfect.”
“But what about the hatching?”
“Oh, that’s quite simple. The other day, the molten lava attempted an eruption. You recall that the humidity rose in the cavern then, and the heat increased to become equal, and even superior, to that outside; then it became constant, probably at about fifty degrees. The egg supported the exaggeration at first; then its persistence, doubtless assisted by the evaporation of the stream, caused that animal seed—or vegetal egg, as you prefer—to germinate.”
There was nothing to contest. The infallible calculation gave us the irrefutable solution. It was necessary to yield to the fantastic evidence and accept that two and two no longer made four, since that had been proved to us by A plus B.
Nevertheless, I felt a delightful quietude; I knew.
Gambertin continued. “The iguanodon might survive until the first cold spell. This year’s exceptional warmth allows that. A mild summer would have killed it. But it loves marshes, dryness is harmful to it; fortunately, it’s been alleviated. Then again, everything leads me to believe that it will find the essential bath and source of drinking water in the underground stream—and that’s fortunate, for it must require a great deal of water. I’ll wager that it drank the old cistern dry—hence Saurien’s perspiration, as he sweated in terror at the sight of the monster.
“Now, why don’t we encounter it in broad daylight? Ah—I have it! Its eyes are organized to sustain the soft glare emanating from a dark Sun, filtered through mists. Our brightness blinds it. It can only tolerate that of night, dawn and dusk.”
I took up the thread. “Can you figure out what pushed it to venture so far from the cavern? Why didn’t it remain prudently in the woods nearby?”
“It was in search of foliage tender enough for its young beak. It walked as far as the catalpas; then, when its beak had hardened, it started attacking the plane-trees. You’ve observed its first attempt on that sort of tree yourself. At present, I don’t see anything impenetrable in the entire story. What about you. Dupont?”
Suddenly, I grabbed his arm. “Gambertin,” I said to him. “What if there’s more than one of them?”
“They’d all die in a few weeks, in autumn—but it’s alone.”
“How do you know?”
“Follow me carefully. If, by some extraordinary chance, several of them had been miraculously preserved by the avalanche, and if they had shared the fate of our iguanodon, they would have hatched at the same time, since the conditions of germination would have been the same for all of them and were not reproduced in previous epochs. The newly-hatched creatures, experiencing the same appetites and guided by instinct, would have accomplished similar actions. They would have come in number to eat our catalpas…”
“”But what if it weren’t a matter of iguanodons but of other dinosaurs?” I observed. “Compsognathus, for instance?”
“In that case, their presence would be manifest in one way or another, you can be sure of it. You’re forging objects of terror gratuitously, though. Think about the thousand necessities that had to be realized in order to produce the birth of an iguanodon in our own day! It would be insane to suppose that such a coincidence of circumstances might be multiplied…”
This reasoning seemed to me to be defective. My fears, however—as I admitted—had no serious basis, and the certainty excited too much interest to leave me dreaming about contingencies. Furthermore, Gambertin drew me into ideas of another order. He had
decided to capture the iguanodon alive, and we searched for a means of attracting it to the empty grange and imprisoning it therein.
Gambertin proposed a new plan every ten minutes; each one was immediately declared impracticable. For myself, I was unable to submit any strategic project to him, recognizing no propensity in myself for chasing anachronisms.
It was the nearly midnight on July 20 when we saw the iguanodon. We were at the window in the second floor corridor—the one overlooking the woods. The animal was crossing the lawn to go to the cistern. Unless it was utilizing the steam in the cavern, it must have been suffering from lack of water, for the heat reigned in a troubling fashion and the storms, although quite close together, were unable to vanquish it.
Contrary to the opinion of paleontological naturalists, the iguanodon had ears—like those of a horse, or rather a hippopotamus. It ambled ponderously, with a gait that was solemn and baroque at the same time, dragging its tail. Rather than a true dragon, it resembled one of those carcasses of stretched canvas in which actors in fairy-plays dress up; its legs moved exactly like theirs and seemed too short for such a large body; as for its arms, they hung down stupidly, like a mannequin’s arms.
The creature was gigantic, awkward and grotesque.
We stayed quiet, until Gambertin suddenly became very agitated and started hissing “Pssst! Pssst!” as if he were calling a cat.
I stuck my hand over his mouth, brutally.
The monster stopped and looked at us, advancing its two terrible thumbs. Then it turned round and fled, waddling like a penguin, waving its arms as that bird agitates its vestigial wings.
“Look! Look!” cried Gambertin. “The tendency toward flight! It would like to fly…and that aspiration will stretch its fingers…and its descendants will soar…”
“Gambertin, Gambertin, what have you done?”
My friend looked at me strangely. “I wanted to laugh,” he told me, eventually. “There’s nothing to fear from a herbivore…”
“But what about its thumbs?”
“Bah! They can’t reach me on the second floor, at a window that I can quit in a second.”
“That’s true, but what…”
I was interrupted by a strident cry, of unexpected violence and ferocity. It was the same grinding of wheels against rails that had once made such an impression on me at dinner, but that comparison was no longer applicable to it. If cataclysms howled they would utter such cries, splitting the calm as a lightning-bolt cleaves the darkness. In my opinion, the animal had roared close to the cavern, just as it went back in.
With a fearful impatience, our eardrums hurting, we waited to see whether it would begin again. The wait was in vain.
“I never imagined that an iguanodon’s throat could produce such a sound,” Gambertin murmured. “Did you notice that tone of anger? It wasn’t amused, I think, by my little joke—for it was a joke, I assure you. We’d better take precautions from now on.”
The situation made us nervous, to the point that the sound of a door opening made us jump. Thomas and his wife came running out in their night attire, alarmed by the cry. Gambertin, deep in thought, seemed not to see them. Very anxious myself, I had a great deal of difficulty calming them down.
“Go back to bed,” I told them. “We’re not in any danger. The runaway pigs are probably hunting, and the silence has magnified their clamor. It’s over; you won’t hear anything else. Only, don’t go into the woods for a while; those pigs are undoubtedly rabid. It’s best to avoid them.”
Finally, the couple decided to go.
Still at the window, Gambertin was gazing intently into the darkness.
“Come on,” I said. “Go to bed.”
I put my hand on his shoulder—but, without moving, he kicked me hard on the leg. In a composed voice, as if talking to himself, he said: “I have to capture it. If it’s only for one day, I have to be able to study it alive. Afterwards, it will be useful to dissect it. I’ll make a description of it…a handsome volume with my name on it, in the library, between Darwin and Cuvier…”
“Gambertin…” I begged.
He turned round. “Imbecile! You aren’t capable of designing a trap! Bicycle-merchant! Imbecile! Subhuman!”
“Come on, Gambertin! I’ll find the trap—it’s a lengthy business. I already have an idea, you see for a trap. Tomorrow, I’ll demonstrate the principle to you, if you’ve slept wisely.”
By means of promises, I succeeded in taking him away and putting him to bed.
The adventure was turning tragic.
In the days that followed. I kept a close watch on my host. Fearing the effect of the Sun’s fires on him, I kept him in the château by every possible means, and I was careful, especially at night, to avoid every chance of his catching a glimpse of the iguanodon. We talked about the monster, but calmly, and Gambertin’s speeches denoted a saner state of mind. I thought the attack had been fleeting. Besides, fate came to my aid.
I soon perceived that my nocturnal precautions were needless; the iguanodon had disappeared. The storm-water built up in the cistern; no more sweat-soaked horse; no more devoured trees; no more cries; no more footprints after the rain. Several days went by. Everything pointed to the departure, perhaps even the death, of the animal.
It would have been a pity, all the same, not to take advantage of that unique opportunity and to neglect the autopsy the last dinosaur, the sole survivor of the Secondary Epoch. The fear that, if it died without our knowing it, its cadaver would then fall prey to scavengers, caused me to propose to Gambertin that I should go to the cave, alone and in daylight, in search of news. I confess that the beast’s death seemed to me to be certain.
Gambertin’s reply surprised and charmed me, for it proved that he was cured. “Take good care of yourself,” he told me. “What if this absence is a trick? Perhaps the iguanodon’s eyes have become accustomed to modern sunlight. What convinces you that it’s dead? The climatic conditions are, on the contrary, more propitious than ever to its existence: the heat remains tropical, and it rains at regular intervals. The monster is capable of having established its quarters close to a distant pond in the forest. Moreover, it’s young, full of strength, capable of struggling even against an unfavorable environment. You might object that the germ-cell was old, and that the animal had lived long enough in the bosom of the egg for its nascent organism to be old already…but when we last glimpsed it, it appeared to be in excellent health, strong and supple…and growing with a singular rapidity.
“Lay this hypothesis of a violent death to rest, therefore—I don’t entertain it for a moment, myself. Fortunately—Lord knows!—no one, whether hunter or woodcutter, wanders around these woods now that they’re infested with pigs. Thomas has spread the fable of the rabid pigs around, and the country folk are now so afraid that some won’t let their livestock out, while others, more backward, have made the sacrifice—and then, when their pigs try to come back into the farm, they chase them into the woods for fear of rabies!”
“A strange thing to do…”
“Well, they believe in the Devil, who is, for them, every evil: drought and flood, thirst and hydrophobia. In expelling their supposedly-contaminated—and therefore demonically-possessed—pigs, they’re simultaneously getting rid of the demon. They’re poor folk, Dupont, people of the Middle Ages. It’s not necessary to descend to their level to commit futile imprudences. So trust me, stay here. Autumn, which is drawing nearer, will slay the iguanodon mercilessly. Then, when the thermometer has marked the degree of its death, we can set forth on campaign.”
“Oh, my dear Gambertin, here you are, being totally reasonable.”
He looked me up and down in amazement. “Haven’t I always been?”
VI.
Abbé Ridel came to visit us frequently. His courteous debates with Gambertin were veritable feasts for the understanding. I listened to them respectfully and provoked them as best I could, even though they could not convince me one way or the other.
The idea that the soil of France had not always existed and would not always exist could not annihilate my affection for the country as I knew it. Does not the mariner love his ephemeral ship, and is not that, likewise, patriotism? The thought that humans would perhaps no longer be human centuries hence, and might no longer exist in a more distant future, did not impel me irresistibly—under the pretext of a common destiny—to desire universal brotherhood. In spite of my host’s prediction, therefore, I did not become an anarchist, no more did atheism gain possession of me, thanks to the curé’s replies—which, moreover, denied human evolution strenuously.
Gambertin was now pleased to receive his adversary; these meetings became increasingly charming as our anxieties faded away and the certainty of being disembarrassed of the monster chased all afterthoughts from Gambertin’s mind and my own. After five weeks of peace, therefore, we were enjoying the most pleasant of existences in an African climate, and my vacation finally began to merit its name.
One day, Gambertin said to me: “Here we are on August 30; I sincerely believe that our tarasque12 is no more. We may invite the curé to dinner. I haven’t done so because it would have been painful to watch him go back after dark along the edge of the wood. Let’s go find him and ask him if he’d like to have supper at Les Ormes tonight.”
Doctor Lerne Page 7