Ever Smaller

by Albert Bleunard

  They had just set off again, avoiding the cliff—which might have collapsed again at any moment—when Camaret was heard to utter a new cry of terror.

  Knowing how prodigal their companion was with exclamations, Paradou and Soleihas were not unduly worried at first, but a new appeal, more pressing than the first, made them turn around and go to fetch the dentist, who had remained a few paces behind.

  An enormous beast with a sticky body covered with hair and furry feet, was descending from the top of a blade of grass, suspended from the end of a cable.

  “A spider!” shouted the doctor.

  Yes, but my God, what a spider! The monster was descending slowly, waving its long, slender, muscular legs, with hard and trenchant claws. Its open mouth showed off its two mandibles and two fangs similar to those of serpents, from which a venomous liquid was oozing.

  “Quickly,” said the optician, “let’s go look at this spider at closer range—I’m curious to see it spinning its web.”

  “You mean its cable,” observed Camaret.

  They drew nearer. The spider was still descending slowly. It was about 30 meters broad, counting its legs. Its body was formed like two balls, the larger of which as about five meters in diameter. Its thread, similar to a ship’s anchor-cable, was composed of a great many filaments twisted round one another.

  As it arrived close to the ground, the enormous animal became motionless. Soleihas called out to Camaret, in order to point out the four conical nipples, situated on the abdomen, from which the silken filaments emerged, but the dentist had disappeared. Frightened by the monster, he had gone to hide behind the trunk of a stout tree. The optician was getting ready to go in search of his timorous companion when the spider turned round and abruptly launched itself toward him. He leapt sideways, and was thus able to evade the enemy’s attack. Paradou tried to do likewise, but he tripped over a stone and fell backwards. In an instant, the spider had hurled itself upon him, seized him in its mandibles and spun him around in mid-air.

  What a horrid spectacle! There was not a moment to lose. Soleihas and Camaret raced to help the doctor, one of them armed with an enormous branch, the other with the photographic tripod, which they plunged into the monster’s soft flesh. The iron tips of the tripod wrought terrible damage. In the blink of an eye, the spider’s mouth was broken, and Paradou fell to the ground, unconscious.

  At the same moment, the trees of the forest were shaken violently and bent over, as if under the pressure of the most terrible of tempests. Soleihas and Camaret uttered screams of terror, believing that a new catastrophe had arrived to threaten them—but a transparent mass descended from high in the sky and came to rest a few paces away from them.

  “Heaven be praised!” cried the optician. “Quickly, Camaret—there’s the glass plate, Help me to get our poor friend on to it.”

  Picking up Paradou, who was still unconscious, they hoisted him on to the glass plate and took they places beside him. They scarcely had time to install themselves when Al-Harik’s hand appeared, and carried them away into the air.

  Farewell, forest, farewell, great trees: everything disappeared as if in a dream. But the optician and the dentist did not notice any of that; they were looking anxiously at the moribund man, dreading that he might die at any moment.

  Suddenly, under the influence of the air current that was blowing in the opposite direction to their movement, the doctor recovered consciousness, uttered a sigh and raised himself on to his elbow, like a man waking up from a profound sleep.

  “Where am I?” he demanded, looking around fearfully.

  “We’re going back to the bell-jar,” Soleihas replied.

  “What happened to me?” the invalid asked, effortfully. “I seem to have been the victim of a nightmare.”

  “No,” said the optician, “you’ve been the victim of a terrible accident.”

  “Ah!” the doctor interjected. “Yes, I remember now—the spider!”

  “Are you in pain?” Camaret asked.

  “Not too much,” the doctor, “but I feel stunned, and my head’s spinning, Where am I wounded?”

  In their haste, Soleihas and the dentist had forgotten to examine their companion’s injuries. They immediately made a search of the various parts of his body, but only found three rather deep gashes on the back of his left hand. Very little blood as coming out of them.

  “It’s nothing,” Soleihas said to the doctor. “You’ve only been bitten on the left hand.”

  “Thank you,” the wounded man replied, “thank you. I’m anxious, however, because I’m experiencing vertigo. It seems that the spider’s venom is having an effect on me.”

  At these words, Camaret knelt down and, sticking his lips over the doctor’s wounds, sucked blood from the cuts with all the force of his lungs.”

  “What are you doing, my friend?” asked the optician.

  “Sucking out the venom,” the dentist replied. The brave fellow’s eyes were full of tears.

  The doctor, who perceived that, was very touched. “Don’t worry, my dear friend,” he said, affectionately. “My situation isn’t desperate. The spider’s venom isn’t dangerous to humans.”

  Paradou had scarcely finished these words when they saw him go frightfully pale; then, his body stiffening, he was thrown sharply backwards and was seized by violent convulsive spasms. The poison was beginning to make its action felt.

  What could be done? What help could they expect?

  A slight trepidation told them that they had arrived beneath the bell-jar, and were gradually returning to their normal state.

  Paradou was foaming at the mouth now. His wide-open eyes seemed to be trying to emerge from their sockets. His body was still shaken by violent somersaults. The spider’s poison continue its ravages. His end was near; it would be too late when they emerged from the bell-jar.

  But it was only a temporary crisis. A few minutes later, a relative calm ensued. The convulsions ceased; the eyes resumed their normal expression and the mouth was no longer foaming.

  Might it only be a relative calm? Mightn’t there be an even more violent crisis, more dangerous than the first?

  They were quickly reassured. The improvement was maintained and became increasingly evident. Five minutes later, the doctor had completely recovered his senses. He stood up and took a few steps.

  “It’s over, my friends,” he said to his companions, joyfully. “I can no longer feel anything.”

  The optician tried to make him sit down again.

  “There’s no need,” he replied. “I assure you that I don’t feel the slightest malaise.”

  Indeed, the sick man, so afflicted—almost fatally—a little while before, now had a face as fresh and relaxed as if nothing had ever happened.

  It was unbelievable; it was almost a miracle.

  Suddenly, a hand came down on the doctor’s shoulder. “Well, Monsieur Paradou,” said a soft voice, which he recognized immediately, “here we are, returned to our normal state. It only remains to get out of the bell-jar.”

  It was Thilda, who had come from who knows where. Uniquely preoccupied with the health of their friend, Soleihas and Camaret had not kept track of the progress of their return to normality, and Thilda’s arrival had taken them by surprise. As for the doctor, the terrible shock that he had just experienced had rendered him even less capable than his companions of following recent events.

  The bell-jar rose up and everyone emerged, with the same sensation of singular bewilderment that they had experienced in their first experiment the previous day.

  “Accept my congratulations, gentlemen,” said Al-Harik, in his most joyful voice. “It seems to me that you haven’t done badly, with regard to seeing interesting things during this excursion…”

  “What!” cried Camaret. “So you don’t know about the catastrophe that almost cost the doctor his life?”

  “No,” the old scientist replied, with his customary phlegm. “No—I followed you everywhere, except into the interio
r of the ant-hill, and you never left the field of my magnifying-glass. If you wish, I’ll take you on to the lawn in a little while to show you the locations if your exploits.”

  “Gladly, Monsieur,” said Soleihas. “We must have covered a lot of ground?”

  About three meters, not counting the journey inside the ant-hill.”

  “Three meters!” cried Camaret. “But that’s not possible.”

  “Yes, it’s possible,” remarked the doctor. “At our natural size, that represents six kilometers—three going and three coming back.”

  “That’s agreed, then,” Al-Harik went on. “I’ll take you into the garden as soon as you’ve had a glass of sherry to recover your strength—for you need one. You no longer feel any illness, my dear doctor?”

  “Absolutely nothing, thank you,” the latter replied.

  “The spider-bite didn’t cause me any anxiety,” the scientist continued. “The spider’s venom is fatal to small animals…”

  “Fatal!” cried Soleihas. “But then…”

  “Don’t worry, my dear Monsieur,” said Al-Harik. “Monsieur Paradou is no longer a small animal. He has become very large since his accident.”

  “Ah!” the optician exclaimed. “I understand everything now. The spider’s venom, fatal to small animals, has no effect on large ones. So the doctor, in recovering his normal size under the bell-jar…”

  “Thank you,” Paradou interjected, “but it seems to me that your explanation is lacking in respect. You’re comparing me to a large animal.”

  Everyone started laughing, and they went down to the room in which lunch was served.

  Thilda had once again become the amiable young woman they already knew. “Monsieur Camaret,” she said, point-blank, once they had at down at the table, “I hope that you have brought back some fine photographs. You must show them to us when you have developed them.” While speaking, she had a malicious smile.

  The poor dentist, nonplussed, blushed deep red.

  “You’re not answering?” she added.

  “It’s just…Madame…”

  “Just what?”

  “Our friend hasn’t been very lucky,” said the doctor, taking pity on his companion’s embarrassment. “Monsieur Camaret tried three times to take photographs, but…”

  “And three times,” Thilda added, burst in into laughter, “Monsieur Camaret took nothing to all.”

  “It’s almost as if you or Monsieur Al-Harik had cast a spell on me,” said the dentist, lugubriously.

  “By the way,” said the optician, who judged it prudent to change the subject of the conversation, “Can you explain to me, Monsieur Al-Harik, where the bursts of laughter that we heard on two occasions came from?”

  “You heard bursts of laughter?” said the old scientist. Al-Harik’s face darkened—but only for an instant. He immediately recovered his cheerful expression, and added: “Ah! Yes, I have it. You would probably have heard, my dear Monsieur, the bursts of laughter that I could not suppress when, beneath my magnifying-glass, I saw you fall prey to comical terrors.”

  That explanation seemed quite plausible, and Soleihas was content with it. A quarter of an hour later, they went down into the garden to visit the part of the lawn where the singular events we have just recounted had occurred. Needless to say, there was nothing remarkable about the visit. That corner of the lawn resembled all he corners of all the lawns in the world. It contained sand, grass, lucerne, moss and a perfectly innocent ant-hill.

  As they went back into the house, it occurred to Soleihas to ask the doctor to show him his left hand, in order that he might see the state of the wounds made by the spider. Paradou gave him his hand. Strangely enough, there was no longer any trace of the wounds. Astonished, the doctor, in his turn, examined the scratch on the cheek that the optician had received when he was buried by the landslide. Strangely, once again, the scratch had vanished.

  VI. At War

  The following morning, the experiments recommenced, as on the previous day. The three friends had expressed a desire to return to the ant-hill in order to study the mores of the ants more closely. Al-Harik deposited them close to the objective of their excursion. As a precaution, they were equipped with revolvers. For Camaret’s part, he had judged it futile to bring his photographic apparatus. He did not want to come back empty-handed again.

  Here they are again, then, on the great plain, in the middle of which stands the cone containing the ant-hill. They reached the entrance, but it seemed to them that something extraordinary was going on. Large numbers of ants were running in all directions in an alarmed manner. What did that signify?

  The ants recognized their guests of the previous day, for some of them peeled off and came to met them amicably. The visitors followed them, and arrived at a group that was in the process of being organized. In a few minutes, the little troop was ready, and they set off, marching toward the edge of the forest.

  Ten minutes later, everyone stopped in front of a clump of gigantic trees. Without losing a second, the ants started scaling the trunk of one of the trees. My God, what a tree! The trunk must have been six or seven meters in diameter; as for its height, Soleihas estimated it by its shadow at 500 meters! The branches and leaves covered the greater part of the sky, disappearing into an infinite distance.

  Camaret decided to scale the trunk and imitate the ants, but after a few fruitless attempts he abandoned the project. The ants forming the rearguard had watched the dentist’s attempts curiously. When they had observed his impotence, they seemed to look at him with disdain. Camaret commented on it.

  “Too bad,” the doctor replied. “The ants must be forming opinions about us at this moment that cannot be favorable. How weak and awkward humans must seem to them. Let’s admit it: the king of creation cuts rather a sad figure here. Although he has invented balloons to rise into the sky and ships to navigate the oceans, he isn’t even capable of climbing a tree.”

  Suddenly, the dentist advanced toward one of the ants and butted it several times on the thorax.

  “What are you doing?” demanded the optician, completely taken by surprise.

  “I’m talking to them,” Camaret replied. “Didn’t you tell me that this is the way ants converse between themselves?”

  Suddenly, the ant turned round, seized the dentist in its mandibles, and lifted him off the ground. Then, taking hold of him with its forelimbs, it hoisted him on to its back.

  Surprised by this unexpected scene, Soleihas and Paradou were immobilized, as if petrified.

  “Look!” cried the dentist, on top of his mount. “The ant understood. Do as I did.”

  Indeed, two ants approached, and had soon placed the other two men on their backs.

  The ascent commenced, rapidly and vertiginously. The insects climbed with all the velocity of their six feet, not at all inconvenienced by their human burdens. It must be admitted that the three friends were not entirely at their ease. One does not sit astride ants as easily as saddled horses, especially when the ants are climbing up a tree. Their arms wrapped around their mounts’ necks, the felt themselves transported to prodigious heights, closing their eyes to avoid the afflictions of vertigo. Finally, after a few minutes that seemed like centuries, they found themselves reunited again on a sort of immense platform that trembled beneath them. The ants had stopped, and they got down.

  “Where are we?” asked Camaret.

  “My word,” said the optician, “I don’t know, exactly.” Then, taking out his binoculars, he set about examining the upper branches of the tree, the platform, and especially an enormous pink mass hanging down over their heads.

  We’re on a rose-bush, my dear Camaret,” he soon told the dentist. “The platform is a leaf and that huge mass a rose.”

  “A rose!” exclaimed Camaret. “I’ll pick it, in order to give it to Madame Thilda.”

  “Too much for you, my dear chap,” observed Paradou. “Your rose is 100 meters tall, and I defy you to get it into a buttonhole.”

>   “Yes,” Soleihas observed, “it measures at least 200 meters in breadth.” The optician added: “But enough joking—I’ve guessed why the ants are here.”

  “Why?” asked the dentist.

  “They’ve come to milk cows.”

  “There are cows here?”

  “No, not cows, but aphids,” said Soleihas. “Let’s go on.”

  They followed the ants, which were heading toward the trunk of the tree again. They soon left the blade of the leaf and moved on to the petiole. It was necessary to walk slowly and with great precaution, for the bridge suspended over the void was rounded and slippery. One false step might lead to a fatal fall.

  Close to the trunk, the base of the lead expanded and hollowed out, and the three men were able to contemplate at their leisure the extraordinary panorama offered to their view.

  All around them, the space was filled by an ocean of pale green leaves. Only aeronauts floating in a balloon above the clouds can admire a spectacle as sublime, when a sea of vapor undulates in the breeze and the fantastic domes and peaks rise up to immeasurable heights in the sky. Here, the play of green light gave nothing away to the dazzling coloration of clouds.

  Aphids were swarming around the stem. Their size was comparable to that of a dog. It was impossible to see anything uglier, with their six feet, their two long horns folded back along their back and their head, equipped with a trunk, which gave them a false elephantine appearance. The ants, exceedingly busy, were running from one aphid to another, collecting the sugary liquid that oozed from the extremity of each animal’s body in their mouths. The aphids allowed it willingly, without trying to flee. The doctor remarked to his companions on the close analogy existing between cows and aphids.