Even in that candid search by his former comrades, François savored the sympathy and the assent. He savored them again in the gaze, suddenly shining with curiosity, that women now darted at him when he was introduced in a drawing room. He savored them at the mere thought that his name was henceforth inserted in all memories, present in all minds, that he this occupied a small place of his own in all those lives.
One evening, he confessed to Marianne, while laughing, the great need for approval that he satisfied in the vogue. And he said to her: “That must be a vice, for no virtue has ever marked a character so profoundly.”
He congratulated himself most of all on seeing that the accident and the lecture, the one driving the other, had launched and spread his ideas. They had penetrated as far as the crowd. The voyage of the Earth through infinite space, from solar system to solar system, seemed finally to have made an impact on minds. Caricatures made allusion to it, even in the popular press. Evidently, the artists who drew them and the editors who accepted them both assumed that they would be understood by the great public.
One represented a pale sun shedding tears, and it was saying to the fickle Earth, which was running away toward a new destiny: “Coward...”
In another, two old men were sitting on a bench, shivering under the same cooled sun, and one was saying to the other: “Ah! Long live Sirius or Aldebaran.”
One of those caricatures indicated that only the inferior races were unworthy of taking an interest in these audacious anticipations. It represented two black men in a desert. One was saying: “The Earth will never die, you now.” And the other was replying, with a bleak, indifferent expression: “Oh...”
There was more. In a well-patronized Music Hall revue, a new scene was inspired by the Earth’s voyage among the suns that are the stars. Groups of actresses represented the principal constellations, recognizable by the emblems with which the pretty girls were ornamented: the Lyre, the Swan, the Chariot and so on. The Earth, the prima ballerina, danced amid all these stars. Solicited by each of them, she hesitated, and swayed. She did not know to which she ought to entrust her fate, which one to rotate around.
The most certain sign of the vogue, however, was the assault of the journalists. In the expansive days of June, Bellevue became a place of pilgrimage. They no longer wanted cold and brief technical interviews with François, as they had when his discovery had been made. They interrogated him about everything. He was asked, in the name of publicity, to name his favorite perfume, his preferred tobacco, his brilliantine and his razor. In that era, such questions represented the decisive sign of notoriety, the supreme consecration.
In reality, the majority of reporters consulted him about the possibility of prolonging the life of the Earth and human progress. Some of them felt obliged to affect a bantering, or even ironic tone, as if to emphasize that they did not take such reveries seriously, but what did it matter? Even the mockers proved by their questions that they had deemed the problem interesting, if not to them, at least to their readers.
Usually, objections were raised at first. That did not surprise him. In fact, as soon as a new idea is presented to us, our minds initially seek to oppose it, to discover its weak point. That is what François called, “the directorial spirit.” He claimed that a theater director, when an author reads him a script, has only one thing on his mind: the grounds for turning it down.
Delighted that people were interested in his ideas, François refuted every objection with smiling patience. One journalist even had the idea of reproducing that conversation in the form of a dialogue between the inventor and himself. The reader witnessed an inoffensive duel in which ideas were crosses instead of swords.
“To launch the Earth out of its trajectory it would be necessary to have a point of support, as in the case of the rocket, the autopropulsive projectile. Then the terrestrial crust, which is as thin as a rind, would be dislocated.”
“No one knows the thickness of the terrestrial crust. No one even knows whether there is a central fire. Then again, it will not necessarily require a propulsive force. One might have recourse to an attractive force, akin to terrestrial magnetism or universal gravitation. Since it’s a matter of an attempt to be undertaken in millions of years, what’s the point of determining today a launch project on which our descendants will certainly improve? I’ve only envisaged the principle of the enterprise, the possibility of successive escapes, indefinitely renewed—in brief, an assurance against the death of the Earth.”
“The atmosphere enveloping the planet would be ripped, torn away, in such a voyage.”
“Why? The Earth is traveling around the sun at more than twenty kilometers a second, and yet the atmosphere remains stable.”
“What collisions the Earth would risk in such a voyage!”
“Even now, one could calculate its trajectory in such a way as not to collide with any heavenly body in its course. What will be the case after thousands of years of progress in astronomy? The problem is of the same order as that of establishing the timetable of a special train among the regular traffic of a network.”
“But what if the new sun is too bright, and renders life on Earth impossible?”
“Astronomy is still in its infancy. Three centuries ago, its laws were still unknown. In millions of years, when human attempt the adventure, they will be much more familiar with the heavens and their worlds. They will choose their star carefully.”
“All right. But the year won’t be the same in duration. Life will suffer no less perturbation than the Earth.”
“It won’t be the first time. Didn’t glaciers once cover regions that are temperate today? Humans have incredible faculties of adaptation. They will make a new home. That will be less serious than freezing to death for lack of solar heat.”
“But if solar ardor weakens, your Starter will no longer work, since it depends on it—but humans will need it in order to escape.”
“They’ll utilize different radiations, emitted by other suns. Even now extraordinary penetrating radiations coming to us from the regions of Andromeda and Hercules are been studied, which can go through lead walls five meters thick.”
“In one way or another, isn’t the human species bound to disappear? Even if such an attempt were crowned with success, it wouldn’t save it?
“Why should the human species disappear? Other species, animal and vegetable, are defenseless in the face of natural law. They’re passive. By contrast, the human species, that happy accident, has never ceased to struggle against nature. It has always tried to tame nature, whether by checking its variations or utilizing its forces. To avert the perils that threaten the species, it will combat them. It will not allow itself to die.”
“One last objection. If humans will have limitless energy at their disposal when the sun weakens, why not employ it directly to create the heat and light that they lack, rather than launching themselves into a reckless enterprise?”
“That’s one view, in fact, that it’s not necessary to oppose. In the same spirit, one could envisage a temporary solution, which would consist of moving the Earth nearer to the sun, in order to delay the moment when it could no longer pour out life. But the interastral voyage remains the supreme means of salvation, the one that humans will employ as a last resort. It is, I repeat, an assurance against death for the planet and for the race, the prospect of eternal duration. It leaves the future open to infinity.”
The journalists who came to Bellevue did not only present objections to the inventor. They interrogated him about all aspects of the future of which he had become the prophet. They believed, or pretended to believe, that he had penetrated its secrets. He took great care to warn them, however, that it was a matter of long-range anticipations, and that it was necessary to have a sense of duration to comprehend them.
Thus, humans would end up adopting a morality founded on knowledge, in accord with the great laws of harmony, equilibrium and interdependence that regulate the universe. But all those notions,
which we owe primarily to astronomy, are still so recent that they have not yet penetrated minds. It would be necessary to wait. In the same way, from the politically viewpoint, the Earth would be gradually be organized in the image of the animal organism, in which all the cells are simultaneously free and integral. Humans would be the cells of the terrestrial organism. In order to elaborate the marvelous model of aggregation that an organism represents, however, nature has taken millions of years. Humans would require a similar time to imitate it. There too, it would be necessary to wait. And in order to obtain consciousness of duration, Francois advised the journalists, like the audience at the Franc-Parler, to “look at a cliff.”
He was often asked whether his discovery would permit the realization of the transmutation of metals. Would people be able to change lead into gold? Would they have the alchemists’ famous philosopher’s stone?
He replied that such a transformation would, indeed, become possible, but that it was of no great interest. The value of gold depended on its rarity. When it could be produced in abundance without any expense, it would not be worth any more than zinc or iron. The transmutation offered only one advantage: it would cause people to stop representing public wealth by means of ingots buried in a cellar—a barbaric custom unworthy of a modern state, a last reminiscence of our rude ancestors’ spoils of war.
François added, in the same order of ideas, that the formidable and gratuitous energy that would be available would permit the wholesale manufacture of precious stones identical to natural gems. They would be valueless, but at least all women would be able to enjoy the gleaming stream of beautiful adornment. That would be emblematic of the future, which would tend toward luxury for all, toward leveling by elevation.
One reporter asked François, as was able to read the future accurately: “Will people nourish themselves on chemical pills?”
He protested, raising his arms to the Heavens. Obviously, humankind devoted an enormous amount of time and effort to the production of food. How much labor the ensemble of cultivated field and plantations of the world represented! How many risks sea-fishermen ran! But that labor and those perils would diminish. Electrical cultivation would provide more abundant and more frequent harvests. As for long-distance fishing, it would gradually be substituted by pisciculture and the employment of giant tanks. For all animal-breeding, our descendants would enjoy an age of vast reserves and parks. But it would be sacrilege to deprive people of the table, of the honest, delicate and charming joys of the meals that remained the true communion between individuals seeking society and pleasure.
And when he was asked whether future humankind would abolish sleep, as some people would like to do, he protested just as vigorously. That would be another folly, to deprive creatures not only of a repose useful in itself but also the luxury of taking refuge there, of burying oneself and huddling up after a well-spent day.
With the same insistence, finally, he opposed the doctrine of necessary suffering. Get away! Is it necessary to be ill to appreciate health? Is it necessary to eat vile things to savor delicious food? It is claimed that we would weary of a sky that was always clear; that is false. The islands where a perpetual spring reigns are the fortunate isles. We do not weary of happiness, which is life’s reason for being. Should we not, at every opportunity, suppress pain? Is that not the primordial instinct of the most primitive creature? By what aberration can we still permit women to suffer in order to give life?
That life, it is necessary without cease to render gentler, more pleasant and richer. It is necessary to ornament it with new pleasures instead of taking them away. For, by dint of pruning it and stripping it, one arrives at the concept of the fakir, the living mummy. Why not the grave right away?
It was on the subject of that increase, that embellishment of life that the expanded most willingly before his visitors. None was dearer to him. He bore it within him; it communicated its own warmth to him—and he experienced a physical pleasure in liberating it, in proclaiming his infinite confidence in human possibility. Besides which, it summarized, in a sort of Credo, his faith in the future of humankind.
The day after the accident, the magazine Terra had pressed him to write an article for it. It was a polyglot magazine, the most influential in the world: a veritable symbol of the international spirit born in that epoch, with offices in New York, Paris, Buenos Aires and Berlin. François had chosen his favorite theme, “The Better Life,” and he smiled as he compared the opulent periodical that was about to spread his thought throughout the world with the cold technical journals that had accorded him their severe hospitality at the moment of his discovery.
Although he had gathered together there, as in a bouquet, all the reasons for his confidence in human destiny, he distributed fragments of the spray every day to those who came to consult him. Delighted to be heard, to be understood, he was radiant with hope. He surrendered himself, and blossomed. He felt at one with the world, in the beautiful surge of summer when the flowers burst forth and open their hearts.
It was in that intoxication of enthusiasm that he received a visit from Chérance.
The financier had returned from his trip to India. François had only caught a glimpse of him, two days earlier, when he descended from the airplane. Assailed by accolades and handshakes, Chérance had only managed to call to him, hoarsely: “Soon, no?”
Certainly, François was in a hurry to tell him about everything that had happened since his departure, to fill the absence, to recover his advice, so firm and so reliable, but he waited until the financier had settled before going to see him in Boulogne. “He needs time to think,” he said to Marianne.
But Chérance got in ahead of him, and came to surprise him at the laboratory at Bellevue, like a mere reporter.
“As you can see,” François told him, “the disaster has been repaired.”
Indeed, the damage caused by the Starter’s “thunderbolt” had vanished; the windows had been replaced, the ceiling replastered, the instruments set straight.
With regard to the accident, François explained the singular character of Lavolige, the man who, by virtue of affecting an air of distraction, overwork and confusion, like a fly in a bottle, had probable ended up contracting those ills, and retained a kind of good intention even in his villainy.
Chérance shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve seen many imbeciles in my life, but never one of that species.” As François offered him a seat, he added: “No, I’d rather walk a little.”
They walked back and forth on the terrace, as on the day when Chérance had witnessed the miracle of the rose-petal—but he did not seem as well-disposed as he had on that first visit. He did not have those warm and cordial impulses that had initially seduced François. He seemed preoccupied and constrained.
He seemed to shake off his malaise, however.
“The explosion isn’t important,” he declared. “There are accidents on the railways, on the roads, in aviation, but they’ve never prevented anyone from getting into a train, an automobile or an airplane. You said the same yourself in your lecture at the Franc-Parler, of which I’ve been shown extracts.”
He stopped, with a familiar gesture, he placed his hand on François’ sleeve. “Oh, my friend if only you had limited yourself to those arguments!”
François thought that he understood. He had infringed Chérance’s advice. He had revealed the “philosophical consequences” of his discovery in public. That explained the financier’s muted chagrin.
“Yes,” he continued, “you haven’t been understood. Do you remember what I said to you, one day when we went to visit the works at Fraicourt together—that people would rather doubt your lucidity than their own intelligence?”
François started, traversed by a sharp and precise anxiety. “What do you mean?” he exclaimed.
Chérance raised his head. He radiated such authority that, although François was considerably taller, he seemed to be talking to him from on high. At the same time, he resumed his war
m and cordial manner, a trifle brusquely.
“You know that I consider your mind to be the most magnificent, the most well-balanced and the sanest there is in the world. I place it as high as that of Pierre Contal—which, for me, is saying a great deal. But it’s not a matter of me. It’s a matter of our adversaries, of those with an interest in depreciating your discovery. Oh, they know full well that they’ll be beaten in the end—but they want to gain time, to hold back the moment of their defeat. Those men were lying in wait for you. They hoped to hurt your invention through you, throw suspicion on it and you at the same time. You’ve opened yourself up, exposed your flank. Oh, they haven’t hung around. They haven’t missed the opportunity. I’ve only been back for two days and I’ve already heard the imbecilic rumors that are circulating about you. They’re confided in whispers—it only requires a word. Less than that—a gesture.”
Chérance touched his forehead.
Mad! So, they wanted to pass you him as a lunatic. They wouldn’t succeed in making the monstrous accusation stick, in having it taken seriously. It was so excessive as to be unthinkable.
“Comical,” he murmured.
In reporting these rumors to him, was Chérance offering himself the paltry satisfaction of demonstrating that he had seen clearly, that François had been wrong not to follow his advice? No, no. He was not so petty. If he was speaking, it was doubtless because he thought it useful.
“You’re right,” he continued. “It’s comical. But at the same time, it’s troublesome. Very troublesome. These sorts of rumors are the sort of irritant that can’t be combated—for to do so immediately gives them importance. And note that the newspapers haven’t entertained them as yet. But the petty press, which lives on gossip, slander, scraps and leftovers—the rags—will certainly take it up. Oh, I preferred the conspiracy of silence or the cries of alarm after the accident.”
The Eternal Flame Page 7