Ever Smaller

by Albert Bleunard

  “My dear doctor,” said Camaret, “if this is the means by which you intend to travel 1200 leagues in two hours. I fear that we won’t have arrived in several centuries.”

  Paradou made no reply. He was anxious, and on the point of despair. He folded his arms across his chest and set but thinking hard. When he finally raised his head, it was evident by the joyful expression on his face that he had found a solution.

  “Follow me, my friends!” he cried. “I’ll lead you to a place where it will be easy to penetrate the root.”

  “Where?” asked the optician.

  “At the tip of the rootlet,” the doctor replied. “We’ll follow it to the end. There, we ought to find young, very tender cells, which we can easily work with blows of the axe.”

  They set off. Through a thousand obstacles, they followed the rootlet, whose dimensions diminished rapidly. Five hundred meters further on, it was no more than a cylinder, as thick as a cathedral’s spire.

  “Are we at the end?” asked the dentist.

  “A little patience,” Soleihas replied. “We’ll get there.”

  Suddenly, they saw the rootlet plunge into the ground and disappear. There was general consternation.

  What should they do? The stopped to confer.

  “We’re not having any luck,” said the doctor. “Everything’s combining against us, to prevent us from succeeding.”

  “It’s a warning from heaven,” Camaret added. “Something bad will happen to us if we go into the rose-bush.”

  “We have to succeed!” cried Paradou, angrily, stamping his foot on the ground.

  “Or die,” added the dentist, who could not remain serious even on the gravest occasions.

  “If you continue with your jokes,” said the doctor, annoyed and fatigued, “We’ll leave you here on your own. Come on—let’s continue following the rootlet.”

  “Underground?” the optician objected.

  “Why not?” the doctor replied. “Switch on the lamps, and let’s go underground.”

  Paradou’s proposal that they should continue to follow the rootlet underground was not as impractical as one might initially be tempted to suppose. Thanks to their excessive smallness, the homunculi could move with extraordinary facility among the particles making up the soil of the garden. Every particle was an enormous block to them, and these blocks, piled on top of one another pell-mell, left gaps between them through which they could easily pass. Then again, it is also necessary to recall the singular ability that our voyagers had discovered during their first excursion in the lawn—that of climbing over obstacles in the manner of insects. In becoming even smaller, that incredible lightness was further enhanced, and now they were bounding from rock to rock like fantastic chamois leaping from one summit to another in the Alps.

  The descent into the bowels of the earth began, crazy and vertiginous. The blocks, heaped on top of one another in frightful chaos, were negotiated by means of gigantic leaps. In the light of their electric lamps, the translucent quartz of the sand sparkled with all the colors of the rainbow. Lower down, the abysm hollowed out even more. Dazed, and gripped by vertigo, they leapt into the depths of precipices, where their poor bodies would have been reduced to pulp had they still been mere humans.

  Presently, they were in the middle of a cavity of gigantic dimensions, for which no earthly grotto could offer a comparable example. Is dome was entirely formed of a strange substance from which hung millions of filaments curled into spirals.

  It resembled a descent into Hell. The most exalted imagination could not conceive of anything more extraordinary. How wrong one is to be scornful of tiny creatures! Their life is deemed miserable because it is measured on a false scale—but the tiniest insect dragging itself through a clod of earth contemplates a spectacle as sublime as that of our most beautiful mountains; for the insect, that puddle and stream are immense oceans.

  And what should we think of the microscopic creatures that live in a drop of water? If microbes were intelligent, they would have no reason to envy human beings, for nature offers them the most sublime spectacles within their limited space. In sum, human beings themselves are only microbes on the Earth, and the Earth itself is only a microbe in the infinity of the Heavens.

  “Halt!” cried Paradou. “We’ve arrived at our goal.”

  The rootlet, whose surface they had been following in that implausible descent, had suddenly disappeared. In reality, because it had been broken when Al-Harik had exposed some of the roots of the rose-bush, the voyagers had actually found the location of the rupture.

  “There’s the end of our rootlet,” said the doctor, pointing at the vault. “Do you see those caverns penetrating the mass?”

  “Yes,” replied the dentist.

  “They’re cells that have been broken and laid bare,” Paradou said. “Be alert, my friends—we’re finally going into the interior of the root.”

  They scaled a steeply-inclined wall, where the chaotically heaped-up blocks formed a kind of natural ladder—albeit a ladder constructed by giants. One bound at a time, climbing back up to the summit of the abyss, they finally reached the upper wall and we able to penetrate the interior of one of the sheared cells. From that height, the terrified gaze plunged into the dark abysms they had just quit.

  They did not have time to spare, however, for the contemplation of that sublimity. The doctor, followed by his two companions, launched himself into the depths of the cell, shouting: “To work! To work! Let’s demolish this partition to get into the next cell.”

  This time, Camaret gave no further thought to the possibility of Paradou’s insanity. Electrified by the infernal descent into the bowels of the earth, and wonderstruck by the sublime spectacles that he had just been contemplating, the dentist no longer harbored any suspicions and had faith. Of course the doctor was about to conduct them to the summit of the rose-bush in less than two hours! He was the one who struck the first blow of the pickaxe against the cell-wall.

  “It sounds hollow!” he exclaimed.

  At the third blow of the pickaxe, the wall was already cleaved through. A viscous liquid escaped through the opening thus made.

  “It’s necessary to start our apparatus working,” said the doctor, “and go inside.”

  Five minutes later, the preparations were concluded. The communication-tubes were screwed on to the helmets of the diving-suits and the air-bags were functioning.

  The liquid filling the cell was denser and more viscous than pure water, so movement within it was more difficult. The three friends headed for the part of the wall directly opposite to the place where they had entered. The doctor stopped in front of a sort of rounded window.

  “Let’s make a further breach,” he said. “This wall isn’t as thick as the last.”

  With two blows of the axe, the breach as made, and they penetrated into the next cell.”

  “Don’t move,” Paradou instructed. “Don’t make a sound.”

  They all held their breath. The doctor, cocking an ear, inclined his large copper-and-glass helmet in all directions.

  “Nothing yet!” he cried, impatiently, after a few seconds.

  “What do you expect to hear?” asked the dentist. “And how do you expect to hear anything at all in a diving-suit?”

  “Patience,” replied the doctor. “You’ll soon understand why I’m listening so attentively. As for your remark about the diving-suit, it’s false. Solids and liquids conduct sounds much better than air, and the conditions are, in fact, excellent for perceiving the slightest sound. Let’s make a tour of this cell together, carefully applying our heads to the walls. If you hear anything, tell me.”

  They made a tour of the cell, but no one heard anything.

  “Let’s go into another cell,” said the doctor.

  They repeated the same procedure in the fourth cell as in the previous one, but with no more success; it was impossible to perceive the slightest sound.

  “To another!” cried Paradou, stamping his foot
in rage.

  It was not until they were in the ninth cell that Soleihas heard something. The optician called the doctor, who came to apply his head to the place indicated o him.

  “Finally!” he cried, joyfully. And, with a violent blow of the pickaxe, he tore through the envelope. In the next cell, they listened more attentively. This time, there was no doubt about it; they could distinctly hear something like the distant sound of a waterfall. But where was the noise coming from? What was producing it?

  They made a further breach and went into the next cell. There, the noise became more intense. Evidently, they were getting closer to its source. In the following cell, the racket was such that they were obliged to shout at the top of their voices to make themselves heard.

  Camaret finally had the explanation that he had not dared to demand from the doctor or the optician: it was the sound of a furious torrent passing the other side of the cell. The walls were trembling forcefully, and the entire cell was shaking like a ship on a stormy day. At the same time, the dentist understood what the doctor’s objective was, and by what means they were going to travel to the upper parts of the rose-bush. He was gripped by panic and thought that he was about to faint. To retreat was impossible; he was obliged to accompany his two companions until the end. They were not men to retreat.

  Paradou had launched himself toward the part of the wall where the sound of the torrent was loudest, and was already raising his pickaxe to tear through the frail envelope of the cell.

  “Stop!” cried the optician. “You’re forgetting that we have to rope ourselves together.”

  “That’s true—I’m letting myself get carried away by enthusiasm,” the doctor replied.

  It was, indeed, necessary to take a few indispensable precautions for the voyage that they were now about to undertake. The rubber tubes had to be rolled up so as not to float in a disorderly manner, or they might break. It was necessary for them to tie themselves together with the rope that Soleihas had taken care to bring, wound around his waist.

  All the preparations having been concluded, Paradou struck the wall with his pickaxe, and broke through. At the same moment, drawn by an irresistible force of suction, the three friends were dragged away by the current.

  What happened from that moment on? It is impossible to say, so much did that insane voyage through the rose-bush resemble a frightful nightmare.

  Travelers in balloons recount that, when dragged by the most furious storm wind, they might think that they are floating in calm air, only able to perceive the velocity with which they are being borne through space by the apparent flight of the earth beneath them. Human beings, drawn with the terrestrial globe around the Sun, think themselves motionless and imagine that they are seeing the stars rotate.

  Something similar happened to the three voyagers. Animated with the same velocity s the torrent, they were moving at more than 100 kilometers a minute without having the slightest awareness of it. Tightly bound to one another, mute with terror, their ears deafened by the tumult of the torrent, they remained still, as if petrified, for the entire duration of that fantastic voyage.

  After half an hour, the noise of the torrent became less intense and it seemed that their speed was diminishing. This was the sign by which they recognized this change. Illuminated by the glare of the electric lamps, a few points of the tunnel through which the liquid was circulating reflected the light and radiated the obscurity with long streaks of fire. Now, a few minutes before, Soleihas had noticed the disappearance of these streaks. He had alerted the doctor, who thought he was able to conclude therefrom that they must be arriving at the top of the rose-bush and would soon come to a halt.

  “We’re arriving, my friends,” he said to his companions. “We must be in one of the rose-bush’s leaves.”

  Indeed, a few minutes later, they gradually came to a halt against the walls of a broad tunnel. Thy untied themselves, unrolled the rubber tubes, and they all recovered a relative freedom of action.

  “What are we going to do now?” asked Camaret.

  “We’re going to go outside,” the doctor replied. “It seems to me, in any case, that our provision of air is beginning to run out, for respiration is becoming difficult. It’s necessary to hurry, then. Come on, to work! Let’s get out of his tunnel and penetrate into the cells in order to take the shortest route to the surface of the leaf.”

  They made a large breach and went into a cell.

  “Let’s rest for a moment,” said the optician. “That hectic voyage has worn me out. What do you say?”

  “All right,” Paradou and Camaret replied.

  They lay down on the rounded floor of the cell, and chatted momentarily. The dentist asked by what miracle they had been able to climb so rapidly from the root to the top of the rose-bush, transported by a torrent. Fundamentally, the worthy Camaret had not understood any of the events that had just unfolded in such a short time.

  “It’s quite simple, though,” the doctor replied. “We’ve taken advantage of a perfectly natural phenomenon familiar to everyone: the ascent of sap in plants. When you water a thirsty plant, what do you see?”

  “The roots extract water from the earth and the leaves, which were hanging disconsolately on the stems, raise themselves up and become rigid.”

  “Very good. How long does it take for the water to rise from the root to the leaves?”

  “An hour…half an hour…how do I know?” said the dentist. “It depends on the height of the tree.” He slapped himself on the forehead. “Ah! Yes, now I understand: we were in one of the tubes through which the sap circulates, and we’ve been dragged along by the liquid rising from the roots to the leaves.”

  “That’s it,” the doctor was content to reply.

  “I think it’s time to go,” said the optician. “My respiration is becoming difficult and we’ll soon be out of air.”

  “We’re on our way,” Paradou replied. “But first, before leaving this cell, I want to know whether we’re really in a leaf.”

  “How will you be able to tell?” asked Camaret.

  “Leaf-cells have a very particular composition,” the optician replied. “The doctor will see whether his cell encloses grains of chlorophyll and starch.”

  “Exactly,” Paradou added, “for leaves have the specific function of decomposing carbon dioxide from the air….”

  “Into oxygen and carbon,” the dentist continued, who had some knowledge of chemistry.

  “Yes,” the doctor went on. “Now, to accomplish that decomposition, the leaf makes use of little green particles that we call chlorophyll.”

  “And the starch?”

  “Oh, as for the grains of starch, they’re the result of the combination of carbon with the water that comes from the roots.”

  They moved around inside the cell, searching for parcels of chlorophyll and starch. The parcels were not difficult to discover, for there were large numbers of them, and every one of them was at least the size of a large pumpkin. One cannot imagine the joy with which the doctor and the optician prepared to study these important organs. What discoveries they were going to make! What learned reports they were going to write and send to the Académie des Sciences!

  Alas, just as they were getting ready to begin this study, they were interrupted by an incident: Soleihas’s lamp went out.

  “What does that signify?” exclaimed the doctor, disturbed by the sudden extinction. Perhaps the carbon filament has broken. Let’s see.”

  The doctor stood in front of the optician, in such a manner as to illuminate the other’s lamp with his own.

  “That’s strange,” he said. “My lamp’s scarcely producing any light. Our provision of electricity is running out as well as out provision of air. Let’s not lose another minute and get out of the interior of the leaf immediately. Let’s go as fast as we can. I wanted to go through the cells but…”

  “No,” Soleihas interjected. “I think the shortest route is to go back to our vessel and go straight ahead.”<
br />
  “Yes, I agree,” said the doctor.

  They went back to the tunnel, therefore, through the rip in the cell wall and started walking as rapidly as possible. It was reminiscent of a stroll through the Paris sewers. To the right and left they saw other tunnels branching from the one they were following. They had only covered 100 meters when the door’s lamp abruptly went out in its turn. Fortunately, Camaret’s was still shining with its full glare. The situation was becoming increasingly critical.

  Their progress became slower. It was necessary to keep as close as possible to Camaret in order to take advantage of his lamp’s brightness. The worthy fellow was proud of that.

  “There!” he said. “It’s now me who has the honor of being your guide.”

  Heaven doubtless wished to punish him for that excess of pride. He had scarcely finished pronouncing the words than his lamp suddenly went out too.

  This time, the darkness was complete.

  “Let’s keep going forward,” said the doctor. “We must be close to the end of the tunnel.”

  Indeed, the channel was becoming very narrow and it was necessary to march in Indian file, for they could not advance two abreast.

  “Here’s the end!” the cried the dentist, suddenly, still being at the head of the column. “I can’t go any further.”

  He was unable to say any more. Camaret, as he encountered the end of the vessel, had stopped so suddenly that Soleihas, who was immediately behind him, had shoved him forward with all his weight. The doctor, stumbling into the optician in his turn, increased the pressure further, to such an extent that the dentist, incapable of resisting the double shock, was thrown violently against the end of the tunnel. His head and arms were in advance, and they pierced the wall.

  All this had happened in less time than it takes to write it. The three friends, not knowing what new catastrophe had just overtaken them in the total darkness, uttered cries of terror.

  Eventually, they calmed down, and took account of what had just happened. The doctor took a few steps back; then the optician and Camaret were finally able to free themselves.