The Aerial Valley

by Brian Stableford

  “I preached the morality of Jesus. I read them the Gospel. I showed them in their misery the God of the whole earth, who recompenses resignation and virtue. They looked upon me as their own pastor, and would inevitably have ended up as a flock of the Roman Church, but the fear of the dragoons destroyed all those hopes. It was necessary for me to flee with my good Calvinists, for whose minister you mistook me. I cannot make myself any reproach; I have forgiven the crimes of France, and I would have submitted to her spiritual authority the most zealous support of her glory and prosperity.”31

  X

  We heard cannon fire down below this morning and numerous rifle shots. We immediately went up on to the rampart, and from there we saw war, with its horrible cortege. France and Spain are shedding blood at the limits of their empire. Two troops of combatants are already at grips; the path is heaped with the dead, the wounded and the dying. They can only continue murdering one another by climbing over that funereal barrier. Snipers of bodes parties have scaled the slopes of the mountains; they are burning cottages, killing the elderly and raping weeping daughters on the bosom of their dying mothers.

  Whence came the spark that has produced such a conflagration? What is the motive for a war that will engulf a million men, and might perhaps set fire to all Europe, extending to all parts of the New World? In appearance, public good; in reality, doubtless, the ambition of a minister, the intrigue of a courtier, or some other equally important subject. Cruel individuals, is that how you play with human lives? You sacrifice an entire generation to the conservation of your power or your pleasures!

  How many seeds of discord and hatred sown all over the world will render even more precious the sweet peace that we enjoy in our Valley? It is the only place on earth that human wickedness cannot penetrate. In vain, long chains of mountains rise up to the heavens; in vain, profound seas separate the continents; nothing stops frenetic ambition. We alone, in the midst of the servitude and the destruction, withstand the fury of the genius of conflict. Ours is the true empire of the ground over which we soar; we could be avengers, and in the excess of our indignation we were violently tempted to roll the boulders that we had to hand down the slope and crush the French and Spanish troops, victors and vanquished, alike.

  “We could have carried out that act of justice with impunity, which would indeed have been thought to be an act of celestial justice. Already, rocks weighing more than three quintals were on the edge of the abyss; already they were lifted up, ready to fall upon the heads of the tigers which were disputing the prize of ferocity at the foot of our mountain.32 We were only waiting for a signal from the governor—but instead of giving it, he made us party to a reflection that disarmed us immediately.

  “You know,” he said, “that the peoples of Europe are the slaves of their sovereigns; those soldiers have been removed from their plows and their métiers. They have come here to fight for a quarrel that is unknown to them. Are we going to bring down on the innocent the punishment of the guilty? No; heaven alone has the power to distinguish the crime; heaven alone has the right to punish it. For ourselves, let us be content to separate the combatants and suspend the carnage; if only for the rest of the day we can obtain a great advantage, and the only one that is at the disposal of humans, for it is beyond our power to do good, and fortunate is he who can only prevent evil.

  “A stratagem that seems infallible to me for that purpose is to convince both parties that they are cut off and surrounded by a superior force. Now nothing is easier; it is only necessary to advance all together on to the rampart, uttering loud cries and firing a few rifle shots; we shall not have to repeat that intimidating game twice for our triumph to be complete.”

  The governor’s hopes were fully confirmed. At the noise we made, all eyes turned toward us immediately, with the greatest surprise; a few signals of recognition were made on both sides, but on seeing that we did not respond, each party imagined that the reinforcements that had arrived we for its adversary, and when we had ceased to show ourselves, each of them took flight, doubtless convinced that we were coming down the mountain to envelop them. We thus succeeded, with the aid of innocent artifice, in stopping the effusion of human blood for a brief interval.

  We foresaw that the interval would not be of long duration, and that as soon as the two parties had realized that their anxieties were unfounded, they would return to the assault with more fury than ever, but the noise of firearms that recommenced the following day did not draw us on to the rampart again. Although we were placed out of danger, those bloody combats did not provide for us, as those in the Circus did for the Romans, an object of curiosity and amusement; we were not tempted to witness them a second time.

  On hearing those voices of terror and death, we bemoaned the sad result of the progress of the human mind, which, for want of direction, has produced over time a host of evils and so little good.

  Meanwhile, the solemn day was approaching for us that presides over the rebirth of spring. Garlands of flowers were suspended from the cabin doors first thing in the morning. Soon, groups of young men and women, clad in their best clothes, began dancing to the sounds of flutes and oboes. The council of elders gathered with other elderly people. Finally, the governor appeared, and was welcomed by all the testimony of respect and love. Then we set forth to make a circuit of the Valley, acceding to custom, while singing the praises of the Eternal, who renews the flowers and fruits of the earth every year, and provides for our needs as well as our pleasures.

  The strong and sonorous voices of the men, and the silvery tones of their companions, supported by the harmony of the instruments, formed a celestial concert. When we had arrived on the rampart that overlooks Spain, we perceived a troop of Spanish soldiers at the foot of a little fort recently built on the mountain that overlooks the path of transport or passage in that part of the Pyrenees.

  Those unfortunates, fanaticized by the false ministers of the simplest of religions, imagined on seeing us that we were divine messengers sent by the Supreme Being. They dropped to their knees and begged us to accord them our mediation.

  “Celestial angels,” the cried, “pure and sublime spirits, deign to speak for us to the sovereign arbiter of combats; we are defending His cause; may He enable it to triumph over his superb enemies.”

  Scarcely had they finished when French troops, having scaled their mountains, fell upon them like eagles on feeble doves. Immediately, the language changed as fortune shifted, and the vanquished heaped imprecations upon us.

  “Perfidious creatures,” they cried. “You came to seduce us, to dazzle our eyes with a deceptive glare, in order that we might fall under our enemies’ swords. Angels of darkness, quit your false light; return to the abyss into which you were precipitated. And be forever cursed by us as you are by God.”

  Thus led astray by superstition, which judges everything by the appearances that are contrary to reality, they adored us as angels and cursed us as demons on the same day.

  For more than a year, the noise of war and combats made themselves heard incessantly, almost every day. The same mountain passed alternately from one adversary to the other and back, but the conquest was accompanied by so much pillage that it ended up being devoid of value. The victors no longer dared graze their flocks there; the pasturage, the objective of the quarrel, covered the ground in utter futility, and was not harvested by either competitor.

  The heart of our old soldiers was reanimated by the noise; they talked about their old wars, and sometimes still yearned to figure in the new one, but it was only a simple bodily habit; the slightest return to the present effaced the memory of it. If they had had their country to defend, they would have returned to their former estate with pride.

  There are no idlers in our society, no drones to devour the honey of the bees. Everyone works, but although the products of labor are common, not all labor is similar. The foremost is, beyond a doubt, agriculture, but along with agricultural workers one needs millers to grind their wheat, black
smiths to fashion their implements, and weaves for their clothes. An accident has just given birth to a new class of workers.

  One of thatched cottages in the village caught fire, and one of our brothers who had gone up to the roof to extinguish it fell with the covering and broke a leg. From the bosom of the crowd that surrounded him and lavished him with sterile expressions of sympathy, a man suddenly emerged who, after examining the fracture, guaranteed its cure. The man was known for his useful and adroit treatment of the sick. A treatise on anatomy that he had found in the library had fortunately revealed his inclination and aptitude for that science and everything related to it. He had often applied it successfully to animals; several had been cured by his care of ulcers, dislocations and fractures.

  In general, surgery is the most certain of all the branches of the science relative to the cure of human maladies, and perhaps the only one that is reliable. It only operates on visible ills and by similarly evident methods: no conjectures or palpations, no diversity of opinions and theories, as in medicine. If a man has a broken arm there is only one way of repairing the fractured bone; in consequence, there is no contestation, unless between the zeal and skill of the surgeons summoned.

  But it is not the same for a man attacked by an internal malady. What is the malady? What causes it? What is the invalid’s temperature? And so on: so many questions to resolve. Then come as many different curative systems. Each physician has his opinion, founded on experience; all the opinions differ, but all are nevertheless right, because temperaments are not the same and the remedy that cures one patient might kill another. How can one discern, among such a great variety of temperaments, the remedies appropriate to seemingly similar maladies that are really as viable as the subject?

  It is that uncertainty which, in all times, has spread clouds over the utility of medicine. Good minds have regarded it as a conjectural science, as often deadly as salutary. Thus, all things considered, it is at least dubious that our ignorance in that matter was a misfortune—but we had all the more reason to cultivate surgery, which, independently of the cures of external evils that are particular to it, is often more familiar with, and cures more reliably than medicine, those born of internal disorders. It has therefore appeared to us to be necessary to form a school for that useful art. Young Laurent, whom hazard has presented to us in such a favorable manner, has been appointed its professor.

  A few pupils, chosen from among the young people who show most disposition for it, will be attached to that establishment. The nourishment and sustenance of those disciples of Aesculapius is a further burden on our agricultural workers, of which they are far from complaining, since it will only be an indemnity of essential services which might be necessary to them at any moment. Thus, in our society, all individuals are useful to one another, and all work contributes to the common prosperity.

  Until now we had only known the advantages of our isolation from the rest of the world; this year, we have experienced its inconveniences, Our wheat-fields, partly frozen by heavy frosts that occurred at the beginning of spring and partly drowned by deluges of rain that fell as it was about to be harvested, have only yielded a quarter of their accustomed produce. In all the parts of the civilized world, such a difficulty could be easily repaired through the channels of commerce. Constrained here to obtain all our resources internally, instead of seeking to augment our provisions in conformity with our needs, we have been forced to regulate our needs in accordance with the quantity of our provisions.

  It is in that terrible necessity that the philanthropy has developed that renders to every individual the misfortune of his brothers. Weakness and malady have rights that are nowhere more sacred than among us; pregnant women, nursing mothers, children and convalescents have not experienced any dearth. All those to whom nature has given strength and courage have competed for the honor of supporting a part of their lot in the general distress.

  Struck by that sad event, our Englishman, Monsieur Odgermont, keenly regretted the potato, long naturalized in his homeland, which was absent from our valley. He has often told us about the great advantages of that root. The rain that caused our wheat to perish would have been very favorable to its growth, and the same cause would have produced the ill and its remedy. The root was unknown in our mountains when our fathers left them in order to settle here. Perhaps it is there now, but how and my what route could we procure it? It would be a hazard bordering on prodigy.33

  XI

  For some time now, a violent desire to have news of our fathers’ fatherland has been widespread in the colony. It is nearly fifty years34 since they left it to come and settle in the valley; death has harvested almost all of them since that time, and there bones are resting honorably in the abode of eternal pace. Only four individuals of that generation are still alive.

  Those four elders had opposed the stir of curiosity for a number of reasons. “You can only satisfy it,” they say, “by sending one of our brothers to our former homeland. Even admitting that an exit from the valley and a return might be practicable, who would be our traveler’s guide in an unknown world? Might the evil men that chased us away not have been reproduced in their race? What would become of our worthy brother in the midst of those devouring wolves? If he escapes their ferocity, would he not have to dread the poison of their equally murderous voices? Do you want to expose yourselves to the pestilential contagion that the innocent victim might bring back among you?”

  These various objections were easily demolished. We would only make use of the rope manufactured to let our brother down to the ground after having tested it with a considerable weight. Our brother would have for a guide the least aged of the four survivors from the old world, who has already asked to accompany him. If the two voyagers perceive the slightest appearance of trouble they will immediately retrace their steps. With regard to the vices of the society that they will be obliged to frequent, it is impossible that they would ever seduce the people of the Aerial Valley.

  One motive more powerful than curiosity encourages the voyage. The population of the Valley has increased considerably since its establishment, and we anticipate, albeit in the distant future, a moment when the number of inhabitants will exceed the extent of the terrain. It will be as well, before emerging from our Ark, to send forth an exploratory dove; it will come back swiftly, sad and fugitive, without having seen anywhere to rest its feet, or it will bring us in its beak a green branch, and we shall learn in that manner whether the earth is habitable, or if water still covers its entire surface.

  While we were occupied with that important objective, a weary falcon came to land near one of our cabins. It was easily caught. It was wearing a collar around its neck on which these words were engraved:

  I belong to the king of France, year of grace 1729, epoch of general peace throughout Europe.35

  That news seemed to have been sent to us from Heaven. The words “general peace” clearly announced not merely an end to political quarrels but also that of the war of religion that had obliged our ancestors to abandon their fatherland. Thus, France, tranquil internally as well as externally, was now enjoying all the favors of her rich soil and her beautiful sky, and the motherland, repenting its persecution of our fathers, would open her bosom and extend her arms to her fugitive children.

  Our elders were not the last to adopt that opinion; all views were in accord; it was merely a question of determining who among us would be confided with that great mission.

  The suffrage fell almost unanimously upon our governor. He was a man of middle age who had received from nature a decided taste for the study of government and the religion and mores of different peoples. The books of history, as many ancient as modern, that our fathers had brought with them had guided him in that research. He theory was profound; he ardently desired to verify it with facts. In any case, being the son of Monsieur de Montalègre,36 a counselor of the parliament of Toulouse, one of the founders of our colony, it would be easier for him than for anyone else to
instruct himself as to the present politics of France.

  He was replaced during his absence by the deputy governor. He was accompanied by one of the four old men born on that earth. The latter was still capable of supporting the fatigues of the journey, and had not forgotten the patois in usage in the mountains of the Pyrenees.

  While the Council was occupied in drafting instructions for the voyagers, another party of our brothers worked on their Aerial vehicle. This is what it comprised:

  Among several trees that shadowed the circular rampart of the valley, growing on the side facing France, was a gnarled and robust beech. That tree had grown at a slant, projecting outwards, but was attached to the rock by vast and profound roots. It was capable of supporting the heaviest burdens all the way to the top. Several of our brothers had tested it be advancing far enough along the trunk to plunged their gazes all the way to the foot of the rampart. That tree was cut half way along its length; the bushy crown detached by the ax fell with an enormous noise. The extremity of the trunk was then opened by two saw-cuts to form a mortise; a wheel and pulley were introduced into it, fixed there by an iron axle.

  The hempen rope that had been woven was passed through the pulley, and one of the ends of the rope was attached to a stone weighing between three and four hundred pounds, which was lowered to the foot of the mountain and hauled back up again without the slightest accident.