The Germans on Venus

by Brian Stableford

  “And to think,” said Aloysius, pensively, “that successive generations have suffered hunger because they could not procure grain, meat or vegetables.” Each of these three words was pronounced with an untranslatable disdain, further emphasized by a snigger from Truphemus.

  “And yet,” the latter observed, “has not the wisdom of nations been shown the true path by the phrase living on air? But let’s pass on.”

  “Let’s pass on,” Aloysius repeated, once more.

  “It was therefore necessary to contrive ingestion into the human organism, and submission to its action, of the primary elements of all nourishment, after having carefully established the proportions of atomic weights. For an analyst such as you, dear master, that was child’s play….”

  “It was child’s play,” said Aloysius, flattered in his turn.

  “Then, to reduce these elements into a form such that their ingestion would be easy: a form that was obvious, the liquid form. Having succeeded in the liquefaction of nitrogen, previously attempted in vain, and modifying the combined proportions of oxygen and hydrogen in such a manner as to produce various solutions, we then composed these different liqueurs which, for a year now, have served as our nourishment.”

  “And we’ve not done at all badly out of it,” said Aloysius, whose thinness appeared to delight him.

  “I’m doing even better!” said Truphemus, closing is eyes and tapping his round and hollow abdomen with his fingertips.

  “It has to be said,” Aloysius went on, “that you’re a gourmand—a nitrogen gourmand, especially. Damn! What consumption! And you thrive on it…”

  “What do you expect? I’m a hearty eater!”

  “But what a joy,” Aloysius continued, “to feel free of all those ridiculous worries to which humankind has so long been condemned, no longer to have those pretended educated tastes which make one a slave to one’s nerve-endings. But why have you reminded me of all this, my dear master?”

  “Because, my friend, I’m on the track of a discovery even more astonishing, even more remarkable…”

  “Impossible!”

  “I assure you of it.”

  “Tell me! Tell me, quickly!”

  “I admit,” Truphemus said, “that our conversation has gone on longer than I anticipated. I’m hungry! If you’re agreeable, we’ll resume after dinner…speaking of which, what’s on the menu today?”

  “It’s egg day…C48H36,N16.61

  “Very well—let’s eat.”

  IV

  The box that bore the title of dining-room was not the least bizarre place in that eccentric habitation.

  When the two scientists went into it, by the described means, the two other inhabitants of the house—Dame Tibby and her daughter, that is—were already there.

  In the middle of the room there was a table, which would have been quite unremarkable if its sparkling white tablecloth had not been covered with objects that were hardly fitted to give rise to the idea of a meal. At the four places that were to be occupied by the diners, various strangely-shaped items of apparatus, intermediate between bottles and alembics, were set.

  At one end of the table a glass bulb with a slender curved neck was partly submerged in a little bucket filled with iron filings. Above the bulb was an electric lamp with two carbon filaments.

  When Aloysius and Truphemus arrived, the woman and child stood up.

  Dame Tibby was still young, scarcely 40 years of age. She had undoubtedly been pretty, to judge by the delicacy of her features, but her entire physiognomy was imprinted with such an expression of suffering, and her thin cheeks revealed a fatigue so profound, that she seemed less a woman than a tormented shadow.

  Netty was small; she was five, but had scarcely attained the stature of a two-year-old. Her complexion was so blanched, her forehead so pale, that one hesitated to believe that it was blood that ran in her veins. Her eyes alone were alive; there was a malice in her gaze—or, rather, a diabolical wickedness: not a glimmer of sweetness, but a limitless harshness. If she spoke, her voice was dry and hard; one might have imagined that one were listening to the grinding of an automaton’s wheels.

  Master Aloysius, her father, went to her and ruffled her hair affectionately; the child did not smile. She turned towards the scientist, her eyes dull and staring, with flashes of blue steel.

  Trumphemus greeted Dame Tibby gallantly, saying to her in his reedy voice: “Well, do we have an appetite today?”

  Dame Tibby seemed gentle, but it must never be forgotten that appearances are eminently deceptive. She raised her head at this remark like a horse that feels the spur. “An appetite!” she cried. “I’d certainly like to know whether hunger is a chronic illness here!”

  “What!” said Aloysius, with a snigger. “Here you are, my love, becoming accustomed to the use of scientific parlance…”

  “At least it’s better,” she said, angrily, “than swallowing your wretched drugs…”

  “There, there—let’s not get carried away!” Aloysius went on, while Truphemus judged it inopportune to get mixed up in the conversation. “I know that you’re attached to the paltry preoccupations of the lives of the ignorant…”

  “Certainly, if by that you mean rump steaks and mutton chops…”

  Aloysius smiled with an expression of profound pity. “You let yourself be seduced by color, and by taste!” he said, getting up and gazing at the bottles disposed on the table. “Here—look at this pure, clear liquid. It includes all the constituent elements of herbivorous mammals. Nothing is missing. How would it be more agreeable, I ask you, to wear out your teeth tearing and grinding that fibrous flesh? But enough of that. What Saint John Chrystostom said about fasting, I apply to our system: it’s the death of vice, the life of virtue; it’s the peace of the body and the ornament of life; it’s the rampart of chastity and the boudoir of modesty…”

  “Bravo!” said Truphemus. “A little more nitrogen, if you please.”

  “Be careful, my dear friend,” Aloysius went on, passing him the tube. “You’ll obtain a plethora, and then, watch out for congestion!”

  “Après nous, le deluge!”

  “That après nous won’t be long coming,” murmured the incorrigible Dame Tibby, sipping a combination of hydrogen and carbonic acid in small doses.

  “Again!” said Aloysius, impatiently. “My dear Dame Tibby, will we never reach an understanding?”

  “No, certainly not, as long as you condemn Netty and me to these accursed nutriments.”

  “I will point out to you, my love, that our Netty is not complaining about it.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me! She wouldn’t have the strength. Well, since we’re on the subject, I’ll tell you once and for all what I think. For all your scientific pretensions, you and your worthy acolyte Mr. Triphemus, are madmen…”

  “Oh!” said Truphemus, personally offended, and interrupted while partaking of a mixture with a hydrocyanic acid base, to facilitate his digestion.

  “You’ve no need to protest, Mr. Truphemus!” cried Dame Tibby, excitedly. “You’re madmen and murderers! Yes murderers! And what’s even more atrocious, great Doctor Aloysius, is that, not content with killing your wife, here you are poisoning your child!”

  “Madame!” Aloysius put in. “Poisonous substances…”

  “As to that, you only have to look at her, poor dear! Is that a child? She’s nearly five years old—five do you hear? In two months! Well, is that a girl of five? She’s too tiny, too weak. Ah! While I had milk—me, her mother—I sustained her, nourished her…during your first experiments, I succeeded in introducing a few scraps of that nourishment you disdain, but which she needed…today, nothing—nothing but your repulsive compounds! And she’s dying of your nitrogen and your oxygen—but you’re quite content, yourself! She’s sickly and rickety, she isn’t growing, she isn’t alive—death already has her in its grip. And you, shut up in your poisoners’ laboratory, you’re looking for the quickest way to rid yourself of her, and
me!”

  Exhausted by this violent effort, Dame Tibby slumped back in her seat.

  Aloysius had recovered the calm appropriate to adepts of the true science. He merely murmured: “Woman, as Saint John Chrysostom says, is the cause of evil, the author of sin, the stone of the tomb, the gate of Hell, the fatality of our miseries.”

  The child looked successively at her mother and the doctor, with expressionless eyes.

  Truphemus ate…scientifically.

  “Have you finished?” Aloysius asked, eventually. “To whomever has not faith, nothing can be given. Our system is based on positive data, which your whining cannot invalidate. I have spoken.”

  The doctor was, however, more disturbed than he cared to let on.

  Truphemus leaned towards him, and whispered into his ear. Aloysius looked at him, surprised and joyful at the same time.

  “Yes, yes,” Dame Tibby continued, having noticed this aside. “Plot, plot…but all this can’t last.”

  “Madame,” said Truphemus, drawing himself upright to the extent that his rotundity would permit, “let me tell you that you are mistaken as to my character, if you suppose for a single instant that I could give any bad advice to Doctor Aloysius. I am, on the contrary, convinced that you will thank me when you know the result of the conversation that I am presently requesting of Netty’s father…”

  Dame Tibby shrugged her shoulders. After this irreverent gesture, the meal came to an end.

  A few minutes later, the two scientists, thanks to the mechanical combinations of which we have spoken, were in the box known as Dr. Aloysius’ study.

  “My dear friend,” said Aloysius, “don’t play games with my impatience. I confess to you that Dame Tibby’s words have disturbed me greatly, although I didn’t want to let her see…and I’m not without anxiety regarding the fate of our dear Netty….”

  “And what did I say to you just now?”

  “That you’ve found a way to give her strength and health.”

  “And I’ll prove it.”

  The conversation then became so intimate that it would have been impossible for the keenest ear to catch a single word—except that, periodically, Aloysius could not restrain a gesture of astonishment, or shook his head doubtfully.

  Then Truphemus became more insistent; he talked incessantly.

  Aloysius became motionless again, listening attentively. Suddenly, he cried: “Admirable! Sublime! Dr. Truphemus, you’re a genius!”

  V

  The following morning, there was an unaccustomed bustle in Quiet House. It was evident that a great event had occurred, or was on the verge of realization. At dawn, the door opened and the scientists went out.

  Dame Tibby and the child accompanied them to the threshold; it was clear that there had been a reconciliation, for the mother seemed almost joyful. As for Netty, still indifferent, she gazed at the road and the rays of sunlight.

  “You see, my dear wife,” said Aloysius, “that science always has secrets in reserve for its fervent servants.”

  “God hears you!” murmured Dame Tibby.

  Aloysius and Truphemus did not pause in Hoboken; they hired a carriage there and headed straight for the highway. They were seen passing through Jersey City, Harlem, Yorktown, alongside Central Park, and—more remarkable still—going into Broadway. They continued on their way; when they reached Union Square, they looked around. They seemed as far out of their element as if they had come from the ends of the Earth, but their eyes encountered the sign of a construction company. It was there that they went.

  The businessman listened to them with appropriate phlegm, chewing his tobacco and releasing numerous jets of saliva; then he took a pencil, drew up a plan, inscribed dimensions, made his calculations and finally quoted his price.

  Truphemus took a gold ingot from his pocket. The merchant looked at it, weighed it, tested it and signed a receipt, which he gave to the two scientists.

  “You’ll begin work tomorrow?” said Aloysius.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “And it’ll take…?”

  “A week.”

  “Good.”

  And that is why the road going past Quiet House was animated by the comings and goings of workmen; and that is why, three months later, Frank Kerry wrote the following letter to one of his friends.

  VI

  Frank Kerry to Edward B***, in Baltimore.62

  Dear friend, you’ll finally be satisfied. You’ve berated me so many times for not being amorous that I expect your most enthusiastic eulogies by return of post. What do you expect? The hour had to chime, and I listened in vain to the days and minutes falling into the past without any sound striking my ears.

  You know me: born to an invalid mother, who was driven to despair by my father’s positivism, I’ve sucked the mortal milk of fantasy since birth. Poor woman! Tiny as I was, I still remember seeing her leaning over my crib, her huge blue eyes looking into mine, which had just opened…one might have thought that she was trying to plunge into them, as into an unknown world—and I opened my eyelids very wide, so as to leave her the largest possible field…then, as in a mirror, I saw unknown worlds appear in her dilated pupils, illuminated by sparkling radiance, or landscapes develop, profound and infinite in perspective, disappearing into distant shadows—or, better still, it seemed that beautifully contoured and colored shapes were approaching me, as rapidly as if they had wings.

  Those were my first excursions into the land of dreams: that attraction developed—that terrible attraction—which draws you so far, so very far, that no return in possible. Whenever I was alone I closed my eyes and looked…at what? The darkness, the darkness in which I experienced love, for which I sought, for which I yearned…. In that darkness, voluntarily formed for myself alone, I created by means of imagination a world that belonged to me, into which no other penetrated and never will penetrate: an egotistic enjoyment only appreciable by people who have sufficiently mastered themselves to savor it slowly and consciously.

  I grew up. I found myself thrown into the external world. How paltry it seemed to me by comparison with my own universe! What you called beautiful was only a deviation from that ideal of which I had the pure notion; your colors were garish, your lines irregular, your monuments grotesque. I searched in vain; if I heard one of you talking eulogistically about some spectacle or building, I immediately went to the indicated spot, but never experienced any other sentiment than profound disillusionment.

  Would I be better off contemplating humankind itself than studying its works? Oh, there again beauty left me cold. Not one forehead on which the thought of Infinity was resplendent! Everywhere, on the contrary, the practical cares of everyday life inscribed in premature wrinkles. On the youngest faces, paltry preoccupations; in the physiognomies of old men, regret for the past—no impulse towards the future, imminent as it might be.

  And—need I say it?—materiality horrified me. I could not understand why anyone condemned himself to live in that icy environment called society, which is nothing but an immense cemetery, when it was so easy to create an entire existence of ecstasy and reverie.

  Adolescence came—what you call the age of passion, as if that impetuosity were not, on the contrary, an effect of matter, tending to dominate and enslave the soul. Within me, the struggle was violent. I was full of vigor, my blood boiled in my veins, my temples pulsed. Little by little, though, true sentiment was liberated; what spoke in me was a new aspiration towards the ideal that is beauty.

  It was no longer sufficient for me to contemplate it, to admire it; I wanted to possess it, to identify myself within it, to steep myself in it somehow by bathing in its effluvia. I made one concession to prejudice, however. I admitted relativity in perfection—which is to say that I loved a woman. She was admirably beautiful. Oh, upon my word, no more splendid manifestation of life could ever have been encountered. You would all have proclaimed her the masterpiece of masterpieces, and even women turned their heads as she passed by, irritated by the homag
e that they were obliged to render her.

  Ah, I remember…and I laugh about it still; I laugh about it, I tell you. I remember the flood of envy that was directed at me when the beautiful Themia chose me among all her admirers. Poor woman! She loved me…I’m convinced of it. When I talked to her, she tried to understand me and fixed her large velvet eyes upon me as if she wanted to read my thoughts. Poor, poor thing! She was as beautiful as your marble or your diamond: the marble that is the most beautiful striated stone, the diamond that reflects light and cannot retain a single ray of it for itself! One day, I left, cursing her, and never saw her again.

  Then I went traveling. It seemed to me that nature, with its superhuman dimensions, would eventually measure up to my creative imagination. Certainly, I am not a layman, and I defy anyone to refuse me the intelligence of the beautiful; I understand as well as anyone the enjoyment that a mind circumscribed in its aspirations can feel, particularly in the presence of the Ocean, when one is alone at night in the bow of a sailing ship. The creaking of the masts is a harmony that recalls the weakness of human works by comparison with that corner of the work of creation. There is something in the passing wind like an expiration of the immense All; the horizon is so distant that the eye can scarcely discern its contours…but further on! further on! Columbus, heading for America, had a goal towards which his thought was directed; he could be satisfied—but where is the end for someone who has the consciousness of infinity?

  The non-finite extends beyond conception, which is itself merely a way-station, a time of rest, thought being nothing but an emanation of the brain, an imperfect organ, since there is something above and beyond everything created: the creative force itself, the thought of which arises from the infirmity of its producer. Who knows of what a stone hurled upwards by a sling might dream? It senses itself climbing the ladder of the sky, it yearns for immeasurable space—but, the force of the sling being x, the forward thrust of the stone will be x. Momentarily, it falls back. Thought itself hooks on to the point that it attains by means of its special power, and from there, its fatigue repaired, hurls itself onwards towards new limits…. O thought! Sole joy of humankind, sole strength, sole power, real essence of humanity, which overleaps your grotesque worlds in a single bound, and finding there not even a point of support, asks itself: Where? How? Why?