The Mysterious Force

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  “It’s the burning heat of the dog days—of the star Sirius that frightened Virgil,” Langre said, one morning, while walking in the garden with Georges and Sabine.

  “The Dog Star is lucky for us!” Meyral replied, with a smile.

  “It is, strangely…we ought to feel harassed, sometimes by the heat, sometimes by the storms. By contrast, a surprising joy animates everything that crawls, walks or flies. There you go! We’re not yet out of the mystery…”

  The old man furrowed his bushy brows, with the expression of impatience that came naturally to him—but he was joyful in spite of himself. “I’m a captive of the moment!” he complained. “Never, even when tumultuous youth was burning in my veins, have I known such happiness!” As anxiety returned, he added: “We’ll pay for it!”

  “We have paid,” Georges retorted. He continued: “Have you noticed the need to gather together that the people of the village feel, and which we share? Look!”

  The children and Césarine had joined them; Catherine had emerged from the house and was approaching the group; the dog was capering around them, and the donkey, in its stable, uttered appealing cries. In all directions, chickens were pecking, songbirds, pigeons and doves were fluttering; toads were displaying their topaz eyes and three frogs were hopping along the bank of the stream.

  “Am I mistaken?” the young man asked.

  “Oh, no!” Sabine exclaimed.

  “Notice that, instinctively, we’ve drawn closer to the house—which is to say, the favorable center. What astonishes me more than anything else, all things considered, is that it’s not a matter of a social instinct, strictly speaking. We have no desire to join other groups, and the groups in the village don’t want that either. Yesterday, when I went for a walk on my own along the Yonne, I felt a veritable sense of distress as I distanced myself from all of you.”

  “We were all anxious during your absence,” Gérard said, “as if you had departed on a long voyage.”

  “We have to let that poor donkey out!” said Sabine.

  As if he had only been waiting for these words, the old gardener went to open the stable door. The donkey, a young animal with lively eyes and supple limbs, arrived prancing.

  “Bizarre, indeed!” said Gérard, who was very pensive. “I firmly believe that the interstellar adventure has not concluded.”

  “You don’t think that it might happen again!” said Sabine, horrified.

  “It’s a million to one that the wave that broke over the planet won’t come back—but there’s a residue. Until that residue is completely expelled or absorbed, we have to expect unusual phenomena…like those we’re witnessing.”

  “That might be pleasant.”

  “If they remain analogous, no doubt—but I’m afraid things might change!”

  “Don’t say that!” Georges exclaimed. “Let’s enjoy these delightful hours in peace.”

  Langre did not reply. His anxiety had scarcely any force; his pessimistic faculties surrendered to the universal intoxication.

  In the gardens and the fields, the harvest was extraordinary. The fruits attained unprecedented dimensions; there were peaches as large as Jerusalem oranges. The wheat-fields resembled reed-beds. The foliage, as thick and green as the land of Erin, was reminiscent of a tropical jungle. Everything grew in abundance; the granaries and cellars were overflowing. A magnificent improvidence invaded human hearts.

  One morning, Langre and Meyral made two exciting discoveries in quick succession. The old man observed that the violet band of the solar spectrum was visibly enlarged, while Meyral observed that a radio-wave detector he had invented was showing an unexpected sensitivity.

  “That fits in well with our hyperesthesia and the exaggeration of vegetal growth,” Georges said.

  “But why haven’t we observed it before?”

  Minute measurements revealed a few other anomalies, but very tiny. For instance, the electrical conductivity of metals was diminished, but the phenomenon was masked in practice because various items of apparatus—batteries, dynamos, electrostatic machines—had above-normal yields.

  “All this,” Gérard remarked, “leaves us in complete ignorance. Through all the observations we’ve made, during and after the disaster, I can only see one specific characteristic.”

  “Obviously!” Georges concluded. “It’s that only the yellow, orange and red rays have resisted; they’ve been subject to an increase in brightness. The infra-red rays too.”

  “Those closest to the visible spectrum, at least! The others have been subject to the common fate—just like radio waves.”

  “I find, however, something quite characteristic in the present release of energy. Indeed, the ‘disease of light’ created the impression that the enemy forces were devouring terrestrial and solar forces. The result clearly shows that the antagonism has formed potential energies.”

  “Exactly!” cried the old man, resentfully. “It’s the release of these virtual forces that ought to furnish us with the key to the mystery—but it only provides us with curious but banal anomalies. We also have to account for the singular refraction that marked the commencement of the attack. It’s exasperating! And it’s ridiculous.”

  “We can’t climb up on our own shoulders!” Meyral concluded, philosophically.

  The following days were undoubtedly the most beautiful the human species had ever known. Life—the simplest life—was filled with indescribable grace. An immense florescence covered the Earth all the way to the poles; everywhere, plants revived a new spring. The air was heavy with perfumes; an inexhaustible tenderness floated in the twilight and seemed to color the stars. Nature became virginal again; every meadow evoked the savannah; woods became forests; the crazy increase revived all the mysteries of reproduction.

  There was one evening more beautiful than all the rest. It was toward the middle of the heat-wave. After dinner, the family had gathered on the terrace. Immeasurable angles were hollowed out in the depths of the Occident. The unsteady countries of the Clouds simulated the splendors of land, water, forests, mountains, and even the works of humankind. There were not only lakes and marshes, caverns and peaks, amethyst rivers and quicksilver gulfs, savannahs and brush; there were also cathedrals, pyramids, blast-furnaces and a colossal ship, a tabernacle shaded with sulfur, pearl and hyacinth, a pile of chasubles…

  The donkey and the goat were wandering over the little lawn; the gardener had taken shelter in the shade of a laburnum, an old Gothic profile with hollow cheeks and a curly beard; his grandson was crawling toward the spring; the dog got up periodically, sniffing the air, its eyes ardent, as if it perceived things invisible to humans; the intoxicated sparrows inflated their little syrinxes and sang recklessly.

  Georges was sitting next to Sabine. Clad in white, with her hair gathered into a bun, she condensed the brilliant symbols that make a woman’s figure delightful. Every gleam in her eye, every tremor of her silvery neck, the pearliness of her teeth visible between her scarlet lips, and the caress of the light on her slender cheeks, added vivid hues to the beauty of the evening.

  At the same time, that bizarre linkage binding the whole group together was tangible.

  “I’ve never been so happy!” murmured Langre.

  “Who has been,” Georges whispered, “save for those moments that pass like fleeting wings before a window, and vanish into darkness? Who has known the mysterious host for which humans have been waiting since they acquired an imagination?”

  Large evening moths passed by with their cotton-wool wings; bats multiplied their sinuous flights in front of the western windows, and Meyral never ceased to contemplate Sabine. It seemed that he was, in some way, part of her; whenever she moved, rapid and delightful currents passed through every fiber of the young man’s being.

  II. The Living Patches

  One morning, while she was dressing, Sabine noticed stains on her arms and chest. They were very pale patches, scarcely tinted with brown. Although their form was somewhat irregular, thei
r contours were made up of curved lines. Sabine studied them with more astonishment than dread, and tried to define them. She could not do it. At the most, they reminded her, vaguely, of slight bruises.

  While she was thinking about it, the chambermaid, Césarine, appeared with Marthe and Robert.

  “Look, Madame,” she said. “It’s strange.”

  Sabine examined the children; the same patches were manifest on their young bodies, but more visible and extending as far as the abdomen. Then, a slight anxiety entered the mother’s heart.

  “What about you, Césarine?”

  The chambermaid unbuttoned her bodice. Her skin was darker than Sabine’s or the children’s, and also harder; it only took a moment to discover the characteristic patches there.

  “The children don’t feel ill?”

  “No, Madame.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me neither.”

  “That’s what’s surprising!” said the young woman.

  The anxiety came and went, but the great joy, which seemed to be spread out like an elixir, prevented Sabine from being positively emotional. “I need to consult my father,” she said. Putting on a dressing-gown, she went to find the old man, with Marthe and Robert.

  An early riser, like most old men, Langre was in his laboratory. In normal times he would have been disturbed by seeing Sabine appear at that hour with the two children, but he showed hardly any surprise.

  “Hannibal ad portas?”15 he said, with a smile—but when he had examined Marthe and Robert he became serious. “Unusual, to say the least!” he muttered. “And you’re affected too, you say?”

  Sabine pushed back the loose sleeve of her dressing-gown. The patches, scarce on the forearm, were more frequent beyond the elbow. They yielded no impression to touch; the skin was still smooth and level. At first glance, they seemed to be uniform, but a brief examination revealed striations, dots and confused shapes.

  Langre picked up a magnifying-glass, and the contours revealed a certain regularity; they formed triangles, rectangles, pentagons and “spherical” hexagons. The exterior details were more precise. The dots became ellipses; the stripes were approximately parallel; the shapes were analogous to the general form of the patches. A certain number of delicate pale surfaces were also perceptible.

  “I once studied medicine,” Gérard declared, “and I never saw anything like this—no, nothing!”

  For a few more minutes he inspected little Robert’s chest, where the phenomenon was manifest most intensely.

  “What about me?”

  Having rolled up his shirt-sleeve—the weather was too warm to work in a jacket—he saw nothing. Sabine, however, thought she could see patches; the magnifying glass made them stand out clearly. They exhibited, albeit more indecisively, the particularities already observed. Evidently, the impreciseness of the whole and the details was correlated with the brown color and the horny texture of the skin.

  “I was right,” said Langre, in a somber tone. “The planetary drama is continuing.” For the first time in many weeks, he felt the renaissance of the pessimistic inclination that doubled the bitterness of his vicissitudes. His heart weighed him down like a cannonball. “However,” he exclaimed, “we haven’t, so far as I know, felt any malaise.”

  “None!” Sabine replied. “The children have never been in better health.”

  Meyral came into the laboratory. “Are you talking about the stains?” he asked. “I noticed them yesterday evening, when I went to bed, without attaching any great importance to them. There were only six or seven then—they’ve multiplied during the night.”

  “But you aren’t worried?”

  Georges raised his arms in a gesture of perplexity. “Apparently not,” he said. “I’ve tried to be, but I’ve discovered nothing deep down inside me but curiosity—and seeing you all full of vigor…truly, I can’t see any reason for anxiety.”

  Perhaps he was bluffing, for the sake of the others, but only to a degree. His words caused the anxiety that Langre’s attitude had awoken in Sabine to vanish.

  “I couldn’t put it better,” the old man agreed. “In fact, if I were sure that this would remain inoffensive, I’d be glad. Who can tell whether we might finally learn something?” He smiled. His scientific mania eclipsed the fear of the unknown. “For safety’s sake, let’s call the doctor,” he concluded.

  The doctor presented himself shortly afterwards. In his fifties, with a surly face, coarse hair and toothbrush-like eyebrows bristling above his sardonic eyes, he only smiled with one side of his mouth.

  “I’ve just seen the same oddity at the Ferrand house,” he said, after looking at Robert’s arms and chest. He spoke leadenly, and indifferently.

  “What is it?” Langre asked, impatiently.

  “I don’t know, Monsieur. I’ve never seen anything like it. If it’s not a new disease, it’s a malady unknown in France—and, I suspect, in all Europe. Is it even a disease? Nothing proves that. This little boy is as normal as one could imagine. It’s the same with the young Ferrands.” So saying, he listened to the little girl’s chest. “This child too. So, I don’t know. I’m at a loss. In this regard, I’m as competent as my dog—perhaps less so.”

  In the silence that followed, they heard the hour chime in the tower of Saint-Magloire.

  “Obviously, it’s not usual,” the doctor finally muttered. “But for two months, what has been ordinary? Personally, I confess that I no longer have the least space in my brain for astonishment. Nowadays, I find everything natural.” He yawned. “Excuse me!” he said. “I’m upset. I get upset every time I leave home; if the journey is a long one, it becomes torture. Happiness is in my bachelor quarters, with my old maidservant, my old manservant, my old horse, my dog, my cat and my livestock. All the inhabitants of the village are the same…”

  “The pigeons no longer go far from the loft,” Gérard remarked. “Even some wild birds are keeping ever closer to the house.”

  “Try to go away!” said the doctor. “Tell me how you get on!”

  He took his leave, and was visibly in a hurry to get back to his car.

  “Well?” said Langre, his eyes fixed on his grandchildren.

  “Let’s wait and see,” Meyral replied, almost insouciantly. “The mystery dominates us to such an extent that we can only repeat the old formula: Pater, in manus…16 The hour is charming, and hope is pampering us.”

  They had breakfast on the terrace, in luminous intimacy.

  “I’m going as far as the Yonne,” Georges said, then, having had an idea. For three weeks, he had not taken a walk of any real extent on his own.

  As he went out of the garden, he felt a need to return to the house that he knew by experience. He did not yield to it; he went along the street that led to the river. As he progressed, a malaise took possession of his entire being. It was as if elastic threads were pulling him backwards. The further he went, the stronger that traction became. At the same time, he had a sensation of the presence and the actions of the people he had just left. He witnessed, with some imprecision, the movements of Langre, Sabine, the children, the servants, and even the animals. Having reached the Yonne, he stopped, in order to carry out a fuller analysis of the state of his nerves.

  The pause rendered the traction less painful; it was effective upon his entire skin, his muscles, and also within his skull and his breast—except that, while the part of his body turned toward the dwelling was subject to a sort of chill, the part turned toward the river was contracted by a sensation of warmth.

  Georges sought to define the movements of his friends. Each of those movements gave rise either to a traction or to a release. Delicate as they were, these perceptions seemed gross by comparison with others that had no relationship to the usual sensory data, but which, however, were not purely psychic…

  He divined that Langre had resumed his experiments; he knew that the children were playing on the front steps with the dog, Chivat, and that the gardener was picking fruit. The ma
nner in which he knew all this was neither tactile, nor auditory, nor visual…he simply knew it. And if, for example, he was excited by the idea that Césarine was combing Sabine’s long hair, it was because a visual image superimposed itself on the unknown sensation, almost as if it were being superimposed on something he was reading or a daydream.

  “In sum,” he concluded, “a part of their life is linked directly to mine. Nevertheless, I’m not reading their thoughts…”

  He scribbled a few notes in his notebook and resumed his walk. It was difficult, and then painful. The difficulty increased by the minute. When Meyral, having passed the islet, saw the aqueduct come into view, his step became heavy; it was as if he were pulling a cart. Large drops of sweat ran down the back of his neck. At the same time, a sharp pain invaded his entire body; it seemed that his temples were being squeezed between two blocks of wood; his heart faltered; burning sensations shot through his lungs.

  He knew that his pains were echoing in the distance, albeit less intensely, shared out and diluted.

  He kept going as far as the aqueduct. Finally, the fatigue became intolerable and, feeling that he was at the end of his tether, he stopped. “No point in taking the experiment any further!”

  The muscular relief was instantaneous. There was no more than a tension, annoying but bearable. The pain also decreased; it took on a sort of static expression: no longer stabbing, but a continuous headache, a sort of intercostal neuralgia and a burning sensation in his limbs

  When he returned toward the village, the sensation was almost one of well-being. He walked with extraordinary ease; his weight had diminished. Level with the islet, he broke into a run, and reached a speed greater than he had attained in the days when he had trained for races. In parallel, the pain faded away. As soon as he reached the turning, it disappeared.

  He finally reached the spot where he had paused the first time. His stride became normal and, when he started running again, he only achieved a normal speed.