Scientific Romance

by Brian Stableford

  Then, there was a sudden urgent alarm. In all the countries that had employed the Smithson method, conflicts of interest, and even of fantasy, were produced. Some people wanted rain and others wanted fine weather for the same day, some having need of water and others of sunshine. Civil wars broke out in weakly-governed countries. But those are no longer anything but memories. A long time ago, the executive powers took charge of the direction of the weather, and there are very few countries in which that management does not function to general satisfaction.

  Sir Benjamin Smithson is, therefore, for all humankind, without distinction of races, a unique, incomparable benefactor. We would like the United States to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of his discovery in a fashion that will dazzle the world, and we are expressing the wish that the festivals that we are proposing will be the occasion for new benefits a hundred times more extraordinary, which W. Benjamin Smithson doubtless has in reserve for us after a hundred years.

  For W. Benjamin Smithson—this might perhaps stupefy centuries to come or appear to be the most natural thing in the world, according to circumstances—is now a hundred and thirty-one years old. Everyone in the world knows that, but only those of his compatriots who know him personally know that he does not have the appearance of an old man, and that Mrs. Smithson, who became his wife thirty-nine years ago, appears today to be just as youthful, beautiful and as obviously young as on her wedding day.

  We therefore dare to say, out loud, what has been repeated for forty years in American drawing rooms. W. Benjamin Smithson, after having discovered fifty secrets that have profited his fellow men, must have found, a long time ago, a means of conquering death and of maintaining himself in a state of eternal youth and virility. It is no longer permissible to doubt it. His worthy companion has, thanks to him, conserved the delightful figure and mental vigor that she had at twenty. Evidently, he knows the great secret. We affirm that with a profound conviction, with an emotion that makes all our muscles quiver and our souls float in the serene regions of a enormous hope. He knows the great secret!

  But as he does not have the right to keep it for himself alone, we are convinced that the prodigious scientist wanted to wait for the moment of the centenary to which we have summoned all peoples in order to cause a frisson in human life that will endow it permanently with the most precious gift of all.

  It is, therefore, on 24 June 1999 that America will have the immense pride of inaugurating, by virtue of the genius of its most illustrious son, the new era in which people will be able to say: “I shall no longer die.”

  *

  Needless to say, this article was translated into all languages and commented on in every country. As with the power of making rain or good weather at will, a hundred years before, some people remained skeptical; others, secretly animated by a regrettable desire not to restore their souls to the Creator, did not hesitate to believe the promises of the American journalist.

  The centenary, therefore, was awaited with a furious impatience. As the psychological moment approached, the Earth, from pole to pole, was gripped by a divine shiver—for no one was any longer incredulous.

  On the eve of the great day, however, at the moment when humankind had nothing more to do than reach out a hand to see the supreme conquest fall into it, the joy, instead of turning to delirium, became anxiety, anguish and fever. What if, at the last moment, the certainty was acquired that the American newspapers were joking at the expense of the two worlds?

  But no—W. Benjamin Smithson really was a hundred and thirty-one years old. He had been seen, in person, in Paris and London in 1992. He looked forty-five. His wife was a sexagenarian; nothing was more certain—but ladies who had been her childhood friends, already wrinkled and decrepit, affirmed that Mrs. Smithson had not changed since the third year of her marriage. Thus, the great secret had been found.

  “Hosannah!” sang the most convinced. “We shall be immortal!”

  But the centenary celebrations, although worthy of the American people and the man they wanted to honor, went by without Sir Benjamin having spoken. Over the entire surface of the globe there was a disappointment that took on all the characteristics of despair.

  In Europe, the disillusionment was so rude that the American journalists were held accountable for it; there was talk of making them expiate, by revolutionary means, the fraud of which they appeared to be the impudent inventors. But they defended themselves energetically. The Chicago Tribune even took the lead—as they say on racecourses—in crying more loudly than the rest and putting all the blame for what had happened on W. Benjamin Smithson himself. So when, all over the world, it was known that the American was refusing to prolong the lives of his fellows, sheltering his conduct under the pretext of philosophical scruples, an immense clamor of protest rose up from summits and abysms.

  “What scandal! What infamy!” came the cry, from all directions. “What! Here’s a man who holds our immortality in his hands, and he has the right to dispose of it as he wishes, even to deprive us of it if such is his pleasure? A thousand times no! It’s necessary to force him, if you please. Let him be seized. A deep dungeon and, if necessary, torture in his honor, until he talks.”

  The most illustrious scientists wrote to Benjamin Smithson to demonstrate to him the meanness of his conduct. Some spoke of his duty, others of his glory, some of the rights of humankind, others of the will of God that had chosen him, Smithson, to bring the supreme news to his fellows. . . .

  A few, seeing that the objurgations were having absolutely no effect, went as far as insult, and finally, between the two extremes, there were vulgar reasoners who claimed that Smithson, driven by an extravagant ambition, wanted to be alone, with his wife, in possessing eternal youth, in order to hold the nations in a moral domination a hundred times worse than the most ferocious despotism.

  In brief, people competed in irrationality. The entire world had lost its head, and yet, in sum, no one even knew whether the American scientist really possessed the talisman of long life.

  The majority of European newspapers organized a conference in order to clarify that vital question. In the very first session, someone came forward to observe that a newspaper article is not an article of faith—even if the newspaper was from Chicago. No specific fact proved that Smithson was in possession of the secret that was attributed to him—in consequence of which, the conference ought to address itself to Smithson himself, in order to ask him whether there was any truth in the public rumor.

  A letter was drafted in that same session, and three members of the conference were delegated to leave for America.

  Smithson received them in the palace by means of which grateful agriculturalists had paid tribute to him a hundred years earlier, which was known as the Red House.

  “Gentlemen,” he said to them, without the slightest prevarication, “it’s true. So, the time has come when it’s necessary for me to explain myself. Yes, I have discovered the art of conserving youth—or, to put it better, of arresting the physical disorders produced by time on the human organism and, up to a point, of giving to those who employ my procedure an unalterable health. I was forty-eight years old when I made the discovery, and you can see that I haven’t aged since. Mrs. Smithson is over sixty; I shall have the honor of introducing you to her, and you will take her for a young woman. But don’t entertain any irrational illusions. I don’t boast of having conquered death. In a brawl, in a battle, in consequence of a fall, people can die as before if they fracture their skulls, if they receive a rifle-bullet or a dagger in the heart. . . .”

  Smithson was interrupted by one of the three delegates.

  “We shall not be so indiscreet as to ask for more details,” he said. “Without judging your discovery a priori, we assume that it has not modified the economy of the human organism.”

  “Indeed; it only consolidates it.”

  “How long do you think that an individual might live by faithfully following your method and prescriptions?”
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br />   “I don’t know—but I wouldn’t be surprised if he could live for ten centuries, if not forever.”

  A smile slid over the lips of the three delegates, reflecting their interior joy. They had no doubt, after the prodigious Yankee’s first declaration, that they would be returning to Europe with the secret of eternal youth.

  “Well, Monsieur,” said the most eloquent of the three, “we have come respectfully, in the names of the conference assembled in Paris, and, in consequence, on behalf of the City of Light in its entirety—in a word, on behalf of the whole world—to ask you to put the seal on your immense glory by finally unveiling the marvelous secret that will render us the terrestrial paradise. . . .”

  Benjamin Smithson replied, very gravely: “I’m flattered, Messieurs, that you have crossed the ocean to take that step, and I’ve given instructions that your stay should be made as agreeable as poor Americans can contrive—but with regard to my secret, I shall profit from our embassy to inform the world that I have decided never to reveal it.”

  As the three Frenchmen remained mute with stupefaction, Smithson went on: “After profound meditation, I have acquired the conviction that the indefinite prolongation of human existence would bring about, in a short time, an incomparable disaster more deadly than the benefit would be profitable. I shall therefore say nothing. Not because I want to keep the joy of living for myself alone—for, on the contrary, I have decided to suspend, at a given time, the measures to which I owe my incomparable old age. Whatever his genius might be, a human cannot encroach without folly on the attributions of God.”

  “What!” cried Pierre Seigreval, the most eminent of the three delegates. “You refuse . . .!”

  “Believe that I’m very sorry—but you’ll admit that, during my long life, when I have not lost the slightest fraction of my intellectual faculties, I have acquired an experience double that of other humans.”

  “So?”

  “What stands out most clearly from what I have learned,” Smithson continued, “is that progress, whatever it might be, does not bring in its development any element of true happiness for humankind. The causes of human happiness: the passions, egotism, vices—in a word, moral maladies—have not changed.”

  “Oh!” said Seigreval, scandalized. “What you are saying is blasphemy.”

  “No,” the old man replied, smiling. “How can you not see that truth? Evil people would have hundreds of years to wreak harm with the same fury. The good would be subject to their evildoing indefinitely. I tell you that it would be the triumph of malefactors and ingrates.”

  Having said that, Smithson made the gesture of someone who will not consent to hear further argument; he bowed gently, opening his arms in the fashion of Anglican pastors.

  The three journalists protested in vain; he insisted on the unshakability of his resolution. No argument succeeded in influencing him, in making him soften the rigor of his sentence. Soon, he even changed the subject and invited his visitors to dinner.

  It was as they were taking their places at the table that he introduced his wife to the delegates. Mrs. Smithson was a petite blonde woman with an amiable face. Her lips were incredibly fresh, her eyes extraordinarily limpid; one might have thought that she was eighteen.

  Pierre Seigreval wondered whether he and his companions might be being taken for a ride. Anyone would have been able to believe, like him, that it was all an act, a comedy played for the simple objective of deception. During the meal, however, Mr. and Mrs. Smithson described events that they had witnessed with their own eyes fifty years earlier, and in a tone so sincere that their good faith could not be doubted.

  Before leaving to return to France, the delegates made one last attempt.

  “At least give us another reason,” they said. “Just one.”

  “Gladly,” said Smithson. “Suppose, then, that I deliver my secret to humankind. From that moment on, people no longer die, do they? Now, everyone knows that millions of people are born every year. A simple arithmetical calculation will then suffice to identify the precise moment at which the terrestrial globe would be too small to contain its immortal people. Then what will happen? The strong will do what they can to preserve their place; the weak will band together to defend themselves; there will be war—a universal, internecine war. People will kill one another, and my secret will no longer have any value. All the more reason to renounce it immediately.”

  What Smithson said was wisdom itself, but it did not succeed in convincing the delegates. They belonged to the species of deaf individuals who do not want to hear. Besides which, all their faculties were concentrated on one unique objective: to extract the divine secret from the American scientist. After that, they would see. . . .

  So, when they left the Red House to return to New York, the French journalists were more determined than ever not to abandon the game. At the railway station, a crowd was waiting for them, avid to know the results of their mission. Needless to say, they were all in accord in deploring Sir Benjamin’s culpable obstinacy.

  “He’ll give in eventually, though,” said the director of the American Times.

  “He won’t give in,” replied Seigreval.

  “Well, he has to give in,” said a third person, with singular conviction.

  There really never was such a burning question for the entire world. Since people had begun to hope for that almost complete attenuation of death, there had been no other topic of conversation, from one end of the Earth to the other. Old people, middle-aged people and the sick could not contain their impatience. They waited hour by hour for the news to arrive. Those who felt themselves close to falling into the great darkness of the tomb, those of whom it was said “He won’t last the week,” gripped by anguish, sought news incessantly of the state of the negotiations. More than one mother, leaning over the cradle of her doomed child, demanded the miracle of which Smithson was capable—and who can tell whether it might not have been obtained from him by sending five or six desperate mothers as delegates?

  When it was learned that Smithson was determinedly refusing to reveal his secret, there was a perfectly comprehensible explosion of anger. Meetings were organized everywhere; millions of indignant protesters condemned the conduct of the famous inventor without reserve.

  It did not take long for them to be driven to extremes. What! There is a man who can prevent us from dying, and who is refusing to give us the supreme gift of unscathed life? But he does not have the right to rob us of that part of our heritage! It is necessary to force him, even if we have to inflict torture upon him to do so.

  The most furious proposed locking Smithson up until he had responded to the world’s demand.

  But nothing prevailed against the obstinacy of the Yankee, to such an extent that the nations, in accordance with the customary course of events, became used to that disappointment, which was transformed into a vague hope. People continued to die. Disasters and wars occurred. People occupied themselves with other things, and the years went by, slow and exquisite for the young, rapid and ingrate for the mature and the old.

  Smithson was still alive, and his wife too. Neither of them fell into decrepitude. Even better, the perpetual scientist, as he was now called, employed his genius—the greatest that had ever honored the human race—in performing new miracles, inventing improbable machines or processes.

  Thanks to him, aerial transport became commonplace. For the old balloons, which no one had ever succeeded in steering, he substituted gigantic aeroplanes in the form of birds, to which electric piles of enormous power but small volume gave movement and life. To those who preferred something more rapid to that still rather slow means of locomotion—it took eight hours to go from Paris to New York—he offered a submarine tunnel, in which the trains traveled at the vertiginous speed of postal communications in pneumatic tubes. In fifteen minutes, passengers who embarked at a station in New York were disembarking in the capital of France, on what was once the site of Les Halles.

  Humankind, weary
of so many marvels, no longer admired them. The means of production were so powerful that the workers, once so hasty to complain through the mouths of orators at public meetings, only worked for two hours a day. Work had become a distraction, a need, which caused Smithson to reflect, remembering the noisy demands of old, the excessive programs now fallen into profound forgetfulness.

  In the year 2073 he departed in a submarine, as a philosopher desirous of clarifying the mystery of the oceans, those of the land being almost entirely known. He admired the vegetation and the fauna of the submarine depths, and, after a few pauses in the most interesting locations, he landed in the vicinity of Bordeaux, where he was welcomed with all the demonstrations of crazed enthusiasm.

  But the man was blasé with regard to honors. On the other hand, there was in that triumph, contrived by a slightly intoxicated crowd, something other than recognition. The cunning were trying to daze Smithson, to cover him with garlands, to conquer him so completely, in fact, that he would finally consent to release the secret of long life.

  No man was ever subjected to such a diet of flattery and courteous temptation. For more than three months he was not allowed any rest. The Head of State visited him with great ostentation, as if he were the most powerful sovereign in the world. The Académie des Sciences offered him its homage in an extraordinary session, held outside the Institut in the old Galerie des Machines1 on the Champ-de-Mars, which proved to be too small to contain a crowd avid to learn how death might be defeated. Smithson was proclaimed by acclamation the honorary president of all the scientific societies in the world. He was carried in triumph to his armchair. Then the most eloquent voice in Paris made a speech in which, after having heard himself compared to a god, he was invited to put an end to mortal anguish by revealing the mystery of his life.

  He smiled impenetrably.

  The orator, doubtless unfamiliar with that smile, which the delegates of the 1999 conference had seen flourish on the Yankee’s lips, imagined that he had just caused conviction to enter into the softened spirit of the old man. He thought that by accumulating victorious arguments, he might strike the decisive blow, and launched forth into an admirable oration. Nothing more splendidly persuasive had ever been heard, anywhere, at any time. No one in the audience doubted that the advocate had won humankind’s case.