Timeslip Troopers

by Théo Varlet

  Before disappearing, we had fulminated an anathema against the invaders—demons, properly speaking, Moors, and the apostate Monk in particular—and an excommunication against anyone who trafficked with them. But already, when the demons on foot, or “blue-helmets,” and the innumerable Moorish cavalry filed past, I saw that many had eluded our defenses and I looked at them with avid curiosity. Our necessary eclipse, the all too evident power, the threats and violence of the strangers, quickly multiplied disobedience to our orders. Deputations of all the professional guilds, not content with having furnished their quota to the enormous ransom of the city, went spontaneously to offer the conquerors gold, more gold and yet more gold—the better part of which would have reverted to us one day, in the form of tithes or confiscations; gold lost to our Order, which I had the dolor of seeing engulfed, by a bitter irony, in the Palace that had been the Palace of the Faith, where Hell will henceforth hold its assizes, and exact tithes in our stead.

  This gold, which they subsequently distribute to the people, is for demons the primary means of recruiting adherents to their infamous cause. The second means is the influence that the apostate Monk has retaken over the youth of the University, whose intelligence he is corrupting, in concert with other demons who are teaching science and an accursed language. The third means is a magical beverage, which they cause their victims to drink. Thanks to the skill of our spies—although they are still too few, as we lack gold to stimulate their zeal and increase their number—we have been able to procure two bottles of this beverage, and try it out on a Moor secretly captured in a tavern kept by one of our affiliates, Alfonso Escobar. The fire of Hell, liquefied, constitutes this beverage, which—a frightful prodigy!—burns like a torch if ignited!

  Under the influence of this fire, the condemned began to proffer voluble and insensate speeches, blasphemies and obscenities. When he had absorbed two pints, Hell took possession of him; furious and foaming at the mouth, he broke his bonds, fell in convulsions and expired, strangled by invisible demons.

  But the demons in human form, the “blue-helmets,” as they are known here, distribute this fire in small doses, and in small doses it excites gaiety and urges the flesh to voluptuousness. Prostitutes, women of the people, and even a few well-born ladies, attracted by this lure and by an unhealthy curiosity, have delivered themselves to it and to daily fornication with the blue-helmets. And it seems that the latter procure frightful delights for their succubi, for the number of these debaucheries is increasing every day, and the excesses of Sodom and Gomorrah will soon be equaled by those of Valencia. The women of the people are forgetting all their duties, great ladies are delighting in their crime, and instead of devoting to the good of the Faith the jewels that they were able to save from the requisition, they are going so far as to make gifts of them to their monstrous lovers.

  One noble lady, whom I dare not name, has already weakened in the embrace of a blue-helmet supposedly born, like her, in a foreign land. And to complete the abomination, it extends as far as the Lord’s brides, the pious Daughters of Mercy. The gardener at the convent of Santa Cruz has reported orgiastic scenes to us—angels of the Lord, veil your faces!—in the course of which the nuns, not content with abandoning themselves to fornication, try to imitate their incubi in the use of the magic wheels, on which they sustain themselves and roll around the garden by virtue of the power of Hell. And it saddens me to add that their Mother Abbess only intervenes mildly.

  If the women of the city were only yielding their bodies to these Satanic incubi! But several virgins of the best families, forcibly dragged into the Emir’s seraglio, have denied the faith of their fathers and embraced Islamism. All the young women in society, moreover, whether or not they are chosen concubines of the Emir, are subjected to an examination accompanied by impure touchings, and see their souls stolen.

  That last point may seem obscure to Your Paternity, but you will find in the documents attached to this report, in appendix A, two specimens of this animic theft. With the aid of an apparatus that, unfortunately I have not yet seen, the young woman, put in a state of nature, is subjected to the aphrodisiac beverage and stripped of a part of her spiritual substance, which is fixed on a square of diabolical papyrus, which reproduces her features instantaneously, including the most secret details of her body, more accurately than the most skillful artist could achieve in a month. This apparatus is called “photographic” by the demons.

  Appendix B contains:

  Item 1. An papyrus ornamented with stamps, written with an inconceivable regularity and perfection. The title, EXCELSIOR, is the sacrilegious motto of these fallen angels. The text, which has taxed the sagacity of our best linguists, seems to relate to an infernal war that will happen in the year 1917 of an enigmatic era. But that to which I call Your Paternity’s attention is one of the stamps, on which I can discern several individuals in red ink. It is THEM! It is the demons of Valencia, figures with their helmets and bee-lances, in their primitive costumes.

  Item 2. A volume entitled The Mysteries of the Inquisition, the atrociously blasphemous character of which is evident, although we have only been able to make an uncertain and incomplete translation. (See Appendix C.)

  I have limited myself to sending these few justificatory pages and I shall not extend and further the list of prodigies produces by the stranger, with the aid of which they fascinate the popular imagination. I shall say nothing about the quasi-miraculous cures operated by their therapeutics, nor the daily magical spells that they realize with the aid of fire, nor the stars that they are able to make rain down from the sky. Their demonic origin is sufficiently proven without that.

  The important thing, for the moment, is to prepare for a secret war against them.

  The situation is grave, the peril excessive, but I now have several reasons to hope for a better future:

  Firstly, in addition to the documents collected by our spies, other information from an unknown source has begun to reach us, written on papyrus analogous to that of item B in Latin—exceedingly incorrect, denoting foreign origin—and deposited by an unknown hand in the alms-box for the Faithful Departed in the cathedral. Might we have a secret ally among the demons?

  Secondly, Your Paternity will perhaps recall that during the defeat of the demons taken by surprise in the Puerta del Sol quarter, we took possession of a certain number of their infernal weapons—large and small bee-lances and thunderballs. With God’s aid, it might be that these weapons, in our hands, can one day be turned against our oppressors.

  Thirdly, the rage of fornication that the demons inspire in the feminine fraction of the population furnishes us with a means of investigation, and perhaps of action, that I have resolved to put to work. Several subjects of incontestable good will have been acquired.

  Fourthly, the demons are not invincible. In addition to the few surprised and massacred with the Moors before the great battle, two have expiated their abominable sins, one by means of poison, the other by strangulation. The people believe blindly in their power and their invulnerability, but if these examples are multiplied, we shall be able to disabuse them.

  Before obtaining that preliminary result, however, we need gold, the sinew of war, to encourage wavering good wills—and we lack gold. We are plunged into the most complete destitution; our palace is in the profane hands of Demons, and the defenders of the Faith, reduced to eating onions and black bread, have a dark and damp crypt for a refuge, while the abomination of Sodom and Gomorrah triumphs, while the Moors have transformed four of the city’s principal churches into mosques and synagogues and the blue-helmets mock the priests who administer extreme unction to the dying and throw tomatoes and rotten eggs at them!

  Spain cannot remain indifferent to our peril, which is also its own, for our invaders dream of extending their domination and the winged Vampire has already taken flight, several times, to mark with a sign the lands that they intend to conquer. Moreover, even if they were alone, the Moors, emboldened by the recapt
ure of Valencia, will attempt to regain everything that Their Catholic Majesties have taken from them.

  Toledo, advised by Your Paternity of the news that I have the dolor of sending him, will understand. It is not just a matter of Valencia: it is Spain and the Faith that are in danger. Adversus Diabolos! Take up arms against the demons! It is necessary that the Faith be alarmed, from the Manazares to the Pyrenees, that by means of an untiring propaganda, a new Crusade is being prepared by Your revered voice—perhaps even on the order of His Holiness Benedict XII, to whom I have sent a reliable courier.

  I shall not have the audacity to say any more about this subject and to appear to dictate Your Reverence’s duty; I shall leave to Your Reverence the care of organizing matters, and rendering us prompt aid—initially by sending us some subsidies.

  We shall redouble or zeal and vigilance, and I shall not fail to keep Your Paternity up to date with the result of our efforts.

  From the depths of affliction, I bow my unworthy head and humbly solicit Your Paternity’s blessing.

  In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

  FRAY JUAN TORTORADO.

  Part Three

  THE COUNTER-ATTACK

  I. Civilization!

  Things went on in the same sleepy vein. They drank, they feasted, they amused themselves, they sweated, they gave themselves to all the pleasures—but they also worked hard, making every effort to introduce progress to the ignorant.

  They all did so with good intentions, under the impulsion of Monocard and the monk, drunk with apostolicism—and those who had followed the movement with the least conviction were now the most enthusiastic.

  For it was no longer a matter of commanded service, of vague duty, of fatigues; it was a matter of earning good money, every man for himself, since Renard, in consequence of one of his projects born over drinks in the General Staff’s mess, had recruited the skilled workers and organized the management of the factories by means of which civilization could be imposed on Valencia, as a prelude to the conquest of the 14th century by the 20th.

  Assembled in the Court of Myrtles, all the men were interrogated in turn.

  “You, Debray, what did you do in civilian life?”

  “I was a foreman at a factory in Saint-Étienne; I made bicycles.”

  “Well, you’ll continue that here: find assistants, and make bicycles.”

  “But I don’t have any metal tubing.”

  “It doesn’t matter—make wooden ones. And you, Loustalot?”

  “Me, Lieutenant, I had a rather haphazard education. I was at Clairvaux, I made espadrilles.”

  “Good—we need them; it’s still summer. Make us espadrilles. Marloie?”

  “Present, Lieutenant. I was a compositor at the Imprimerie Nationale.”

  “Then you’re going to build us a printing press. That will be indispensable, for proclamations—the typewriter isn’t sufficient. Lénac, you’ll show the local engravers how to engrave letters. Bousquet?”

  “Me, I’m from Angoulême.”

  “Excellent. You can make paper.”

  “But I only sold manila envelopes.”

  “Well, get help. Use your initiative—learn. Cendron?

  “Distiller at Pantin.”

  “Perfect. You can distill in Valencia. Is there anyone who can help him?”

  “Me, Thomassin, Lieutenant. I was a waiter in a café. So was Domec.”

  “No, I was a dishwasher at the Brasserie Gruber on the Boulevard de Strasbourg.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Thomassin and Domec, you’ll help Cendron in the capacity of engineers. Let’s get on. Champeaux?”

  “Me, I’m from Saint-Claude. I was a lathe operator, specializing in egg-cups and napkin-rings.”

  “Ah! A lathe operator? In the munitions factory—you’ll turn shells.”

  And so on. Everyone was attributed a branch of industry conforming more or less to his aptitudes and previous experience—and on that very day, buildings and materials were requisitioned, Moorish or Spanish workmen hired, and everyone set to work.

  To tell the truth, the majority of these enterprises were unable to deliver immediate results, but what did that matter? The future was there! And almost everyone was a director; they saw themselves making millions, like “those in clover behind the lines.”

  The example of the manufacture of alcohol, at any rate, sufficed to justify all hopes. Thanks to Cendron’s efforts, with the aid of local boilermakers, his still had been set up in an old convent near the palace, and four workers were toiling away there under the direction of Thomassin and Domec. Every day, ten liters were produced of an eau-de-vie of mediocre taste but considerable potency. That was a big deal for the poilus, and that general activity at least had the advantage of keeping them busy and putting a break on the perpetual blow-out in which they lived.

  The monk, however, who was following their endeavors passionately, was astonished by checks that it was impossible to hide from him. Thanks to his reading, he was already able to form an idea of the industrial apparatus comprising 20th century civilization, and he imagined that a tiny French colony ought to be able to reconstitute it in its entirety, in a matter of weeks. He was astonished, most of all, that they had not yet instituted railways and telegraphic communications.

  Monocard, who delighted him with the spectacle of his youthful enthusiasm and rivaled him in his determination to accomplish his “mission,” never tired of enlightening his ignorance. He did his best to explain to him the principal reason that was limiting their civilizing effort: they lacked specialists.

  “And they’re rare, in each branch. Of a hundred thousand individuals transported by locomotives, not one of them is capable of designing one correctly, or even of constructing the smallest component of it!”

  For Geronimo, however, the division of labor was a closed book. In his view, Monocard and Renard, not to mention the major, ought to be capable of realizing, or supervising the realization, of everything they knew theoretically.

  Despairing of his cause, de Lanselles fell back on the shortage of natural products. There was, for example, no coal in Valencia; copper was scarce, and so was iron...

  “Why don’t you go find them?” the monk replied. “Andalusia is a land of mines. Send someone with the motorbike to the Caliph of Cordova, on behalf of the Emir...”

  Seduced by this ingenious idea, de Lanselles persuaded Geronimo to accompany the motorcyclist Vidal, the latter holding a baccalaureate and being sufficient well-educated to help him in his research.

  Such was the origin of the communications established, in the second month of the occupation, between Valencia and the kingdom of Grenada. First the truck, and then caravans of horses, mules and camels, brought coal, iron pyrites, copper, mercury, wines, Cordovan leather, dates…and they returned with gold and jars of alcohol.

  Thanks to these imports from elsewhere and the ingenious perseverance of some of the troopers, some factories delivered more than hopes. With sulfur, carbon and saltpeter scraped from cellars and dungeons, the munitions factory was already producing sufficient powder to load grenades for the Moorish police. Rifle cartridges and shells would come later. A modest gas plant permitted the lighting of the palace, in anticipation of that of the city. Dupuy extracted an ammoniac salt from camel dung with which he equipped his piles, originally charged with sea-water. He had established a wireless telegraphy link with Port-sur-Seille and dreamed of linking Valencia to Grenada by means of a telephonic wire. The laying of temporary wooden rails was begun on the road to Andalusia.

  The development of movable type, for official documents and newspapers, was not yet complete, but lithographic presses facilitated the work of impression. As paper was still awaited, they employed the pages of antiphonaries and the folio volumes of the monastic libraries, washed with oxalic acid. “The just revenge of the palimpsests!” proclaimed the major. It was on parchment that Lénac, in superb posters, boasted of the perfection of the Debray bicyclette, in guarant
eed dogwood, or celebrated the benefits of the “Alcohol of the Eighth,” “Nénesse Orangine” and “Duranton Anisette.”

  For alcohol no longer emerged from the distillery in the single coarse form of the early days. The distillation of wine had been combined with that of oranges and lemons, and even the confection of a redoubtable kind of Pernod, originally based on marine wormwood, Artemisia maritima.22 Several factory directors, tempted by the benefits, had abandoned their manufacture in order to lend themselves to the industry of their peers. Fifty workers were employed there; alcohol flooded from the stills. Initially sold cheap, the price had risen rapidly as profit and speculation had entered into the picture.

  In view of the increasing demand, Jews and Moors formed syndicates in order to buy up all the factory’s produce and inaugurate the rein of mercantilism. Melchisedech, the licensed victualler of the occupying troops, bought up food commodities. The cost of living rose. Gold, monopolized by a few trusts, soon imitated by the poilus, became scarce. Seduced by the mechanism of fiduciary circulation, the monks suggested to Renard the idea of creating banknotes, and pretty vignettes bearing the stamp of the eighth were soon issued in place of quadruples and dinars, augmenting the economic difficulties...

  Civilization extended its benefits throughout Valencia.

  Thanks to the multiplied relationships between the troopers and the feminine fraction of the population, the initial prejudices concerning the Demons were gradually attenuated. The priests and Tortorado’s secret agents found it harder to exploit the fear of Hell and patriotism. The hatred of the strangers no longer had the original strength and unanimity. If alcohol and banknotes had transformed the factory workers into Blue-Helmet fanatics, directly interested in their preservation, the liberty that everyone enjoyed under their reign also won them a considerable number of partisans. The Jews, in particular, since the famous proclamation decreeing equality of rights and freedom of religion, had become partisans of the new regime en masse. As for those who, like Melchisedech, who were making enormous profits from the perturbations of the economic equilibrium, they knew that they would be doomed if Tortorado and the Inquisition ever returned to power.