by Theo Varlet
Once, I wanted to listen to a conversation, in which Styal served as interpreter between my wife and the great metaphysician. I came out of it with such a violent headache that I refrained from repeating the experience.
As for Zilgor himself, he inspired a kind of terror in me, and it was very rare for me to venture into his presence.
Seeing that I was not fond of mixing with the people, Aurore tried to interest me in the scientific curiosities of Khalifur. It seemed to me that I had seen almost everything within my range during the visit to the factories, but she persisted; there was the Observatory, and the Palace museums, of great interest.
“I’ll take you there tomorrow of you like.”
I answered: “And Styal will be there, as always, under the pretext of guiding you, but in reality to stop you examining certain things too closely. You’ve remarked on that yourself. That constraint irritates me, and that inequality of treatment—for in the meantime, our two fiancés are strolling at complete liberty from dawn till dusk. They could, if the whim took them, debauch the bowwows and incite them to rebellion against their masters.”
“A slave revolt is deemed utterly impossible by the Lacertians...and rightly so, I believe. They know, anyway, that neither Oscar nor Ida is trying to penetrate the secrets of Ektrol science. It’s different for me. Zilgor has told me that he doesn’t want to be able to take back to Earth any mechanical applications capable of becoming scourges if humans misused them—always the same old question of the science that has to remain secret in the hands of an assembly of initiates, who will distribute it in measured doses for the authentic and real good of peoples...”
I interrupted, ironically. “A system that’s marvelously successful, indeed—as is evident on Eros!”
My wife continued, however: “And I’m almost of the same opinion as Zilgor. Out of personal curiosity, I’d like to know more—but from the viewpoint of the superior interests of humankind, I’m content to be ignorant.”
I could not show myself to be more demanding than Aurore. Since she accepted the closure, like the locked poisons cupboard of a pharmacy, of all the display cases in the museum containing dangerous explanations…I went along with her.
The right wing of the Palace perpetuated the past civilization of Ektrol in its immense galleries. Styal obligingly resuscitated it before our eyes with the aid of documentary films. There were also mechanical models designed theoretically designed to function, as in the South Kensington Museum in London or the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. There, however, Styal refused to supply the necessary current, which he declared, with a sarcastic attitude of rancor against the outdated technology, had all broken down, and no longer worked. As for the ultra-X mirrors, he allowed Aurore to meditate at her leisure, sure that she could not penetrate the mystery, which resided uniquely in the special alloy with which they were made, impenetrable to those radiations.
He permitted us to look through a hyper-microscope, which drew a cry of admiration from my wife, for the extraordinary instrument unveils the very constitution of atoms. He let us put our eyes to the great telescope and the observatory, for which a mirror situated in the void furnished almost infinite magnifications, whereas with us, the fluctuation of the layers of the atmosphere limit amplification even at Mount Wilson, at an altitude of fifteen thousand or two thousand meters. There, one could see the Earth brought to within a few hundred kilometers, with Paris clearly visible and the sinuous thread of the Seine. Oh, what a fit of nostalgia that occasioned!
Science is not within my range, however, and I shall not persist further with these memories, I served science according to my promise and within the scope of my means, by participating in the expedition of the Ad Astra I, and subsequently ensured the success of the return voyage. I have to limit myself to a few episodic indications. All that I could write, in any case, would be duplicated in the volume on The Science of Ektrol that my wife is in the process of writing.
Before closing this chapter, however, I shall summarize briefly what we were able to learn, and which the film had not told us, about the fate of the refugees of Eros.
Before the initial catastrophe on the aerial bombardment, Khalifur had had millions of inhabitants. Afterwards only a hundred thousand remained who had been able to avid the gases. During the explosion of the planet, 99% of the survivors perished, surprised by the suddenness of the ardent cloud. The others, a thousand Lacertians and a few hundred hominine slaves, had time to take refuge in the airtight habitations of the armored district, where the distribution of air, organized in anticipation of countering gases and furnished by powerful reserves, supplied them through the transitional period—for after the tide of fire there was a rapid disappearance of the atmosphere. The block detached from the planet Ektrol and constituting the asteroid Eros no longer had a mass powerful enough for its gravitational field to retain the scrap of atmosphere that it had carried away and prevent it from dissipating into space. Surface water similarly evaporated in a matter of days, and all organic life, animal or vegetable, disappeared from the surface of Eros.
The few survivors who had been able to take refuge in factories or the cellars of neighboring small towns perished, without exception. Only in Khalifur did those who escaped succeed, before the reserves of air were exhausted, is starting oxygen production in the factory.
The mirrors capturing ultra-X radiation, which had survived, furnished the energy necessary for electrolysis of water drawn from underground. It was then necessary to form an artificial atmospheric barrier above the city and its suburb. It was necessary to palliate the exhaustion of food supplies. Synthetic nourishment in the form of pills was attempted, but did not give good results, and chemists developed the meat waffles for the hominines and the artificial lianas and crystallized fruits ripening in the sunlight of the park for the lacertians.
Another point that Aurore succeeded in clarifying was the date of the catastrophe. It was about 700 B.C. when Ektrol, the Earth’s sister planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, perished. The event was, in consequence, not very ancient—slightly more than 2,600 years. The people of Earth had witnessed it, but for their vision, deprived of telescopes, it had been reduced to the abrupt flash of a star as bright as Mars and its extinction—for the fragments of Ektrol, the minor planets, are not visible to the naked eye.
Thanks to her erudition, my wife had no need to await her return to Earth and to consult libraries to know that the annals of humankind have conserved the memory of that disappearance. Thus far, historians of astronomy have explained as best they could mention of a supplementary planet found in ancient Babylonian documents, which are no longer found in cuneiform inscriptions posterior to the seventh century B.C. To take account of that silence, it was claimed that the ancient observers of Borsippa34 had doubled Venus and seen it as two distinct bodies, according to whether it as the “morning star” or the “evening star.” We now know that it was a matter of Ektrol.
And what a singular and disturbing coincidence it is that the very name of the planet is so closely related in Greek etymology to Ekhtho, or Hatred.
XXIV. The Evangelist
If I have scarcely made any allusion in the preceding chapter to Oscar and Ida, that is because the former only ever went out with Aurore and me once every two or three days, and we only saw the other in the evenings for ten minutes or a quarter of a hour and at the unique morning meal. Although we still only had one room at our disposal for the four of us, the inexhaustible storehouse of the ruins had supplied us with the materials necessary to partitions it into three sections in: two bed-alcoves and a dining-room, where we ate communally in the mornings and met up again in the evenings. After which, most of the time it was everyone for themselves, in their own space.
Oscar, as I’ve already said, had allowed himself to be enrolled by Ida in what I called her work of evangelization, and accompanied her to the savages’ dwellings under pylons almost every day, with the objective of learning their language.
Young Frémiet was no more inclined to mysticism than philanthropy, and gladly accepted the title of “impartial witness”, but the woman had him wrapped around her little finger to the extent that he listened to her as to an oracle, and she persuaded him that it would be the best means of not finding the months that we still had to remain on Eros too tedious. That consideration, I think, more than the proselytizing aspect of the matter had ended up convincing him. For her part, she took care not to keep him on a short leash, giving him free days frequently, and even encouraging him, when she found him morose, to come with us in order to glean notes for his reportage.
It certainly did not disturb Aurore and me to know that the Russian was occupied in that work, which at least had the advantage of ridding us of her not-very-attractive presence. It was all the better that she could do that, it seemed, in order not cause us the displeasure we feared.
So far as our “nephew” was concerned, however, it was another story. His mother had not entrusted him to us formally, In view of the conditions in which the departure from Uraniville had taken place, but we nevertheless had some responsibility for him, and we suffered in seeing the poor boy, so spontaneously and thoroughly good, become the victim of a schemer in that fashion.
On several occasions, my wife had attempted to take advantage of the sincere respect and admiration that our nephew had for her in order to address a few benign remonstrations to him on the subject of his infatuation, and to make him see that he, Oscar Frémiet, could not associate himself with the mischief of a Soviet spy, much less marry her—but these arguments had had no effect on him.
“If you understood Ida better, Aunt Rette, you wouldn’t talk like that. She has a noble soul, I assure you.”
The poor fool! Passion must have blinded him. He could not see the infernal character with which the woman was endowed, and what a harsh serfdom she would impose upon him later. The boy, so independent of character, could not even see the embargo on his liberty that the Russian had already established.
To a further attempt to warn him, he replied: “I believe you’re jealous of her, Aunt.” And he said that with an expression that gave me a strong desire to slap his face, and by which Aurore was no less offended.
In my turn, I made a rescue attempt. Once when a few days had gone by without him going out with us, I took him into the city on my own and I said to him straight out: “Come on, Scar, this won’t do. You’re neglecting your reportage on Khalifur and its inhabitants.”
He jibbed, and with a slight movement of the head that was a familiar gesture of the Russian’s, he said: “I have better things to do: the regeneration of an oppressed people.”
The words were pure Ida.
Without getting annoyed, I told him that one did not prevent the other; I reminded him that a great future was reserved for him in the career of journalism, in which he had made such a brilliant debut with his article on the Verem, and in which, when he returned from Eros, he would be classed among the aces.
He allowed himself to be swayed by my affectionate solicitude and confided to me: “That’s possible, Tonton, but what do you expect? At present, working alone no longer appeals to me. I can’t achieve anything, and I don’t have any appetite for work, unless Ida is by my side…unless I marry her. You had your marvelous encounter too, with Aunt Rette. It’s been a whole new life for you. Well, understand that it’s the same with me and Ida…even better, in fact…”
Young imbecile! Daring to compare that ugly, narrow-minded and hysterical sectarian with my Aurore, so kind, so intelligent, so brilliant!
I gave up on him; he was just too stupid. One can’t rescue people against their will.
Meanwhile, the days went by, and I was obliged to seek new distractions. Claimed every other day by Zilgor’s interrogations, my wife continued her personal scientific investigations the rest of the time, but I accompanied her less and less frequently. I had tried hard to share her interest, but good will as insufficient; I lacked the solid foundation on which scientific and philosophical instruction is based, and could not improvise. She saw that I was sometimes so unhappy in trying to follow her among the lacertians, that she begged me to go my own way. But how could I pass the time? I suffered from its emptiness. I felt deplorably useless.
I resumed painting. Photographic documents are all very well, and Oscar had taken enough snapshots in the early days, but it seemed to me to be useful to complete them by means of exact notation of colors. I tried to render the sinister reflections of the streets, of the metallic facades upon one another; the tints of the bizarre undergrowth and the pylons laden with their fruits in crystalline forms, of alabaster, jasper and porphyry; the hominines occupied in the harvest under the surveillance of a wrestler with a backcloth of the desert of red sand, the sky criss-crossed by the metallic network…scenes in which the most primitive savagery was juxtaposed with the most extravagant industrialism...
That gave me the opportunity to see the Russian at work.
How far had she got with her civilizing apostolate? What progress had she accomplished in six months? Her replies, when I happened on one occasion, by chance, to ask her for news, were determinedly vague; she had not forgiven me for my refusal to cooperate with her work and always suspected me of irony. Oscar, schooled by her, invariably affirmed: “Yes, we’re making progress. We’re beginning to master the vocabulary. It’s not a very complicated language, Bowwow: scarcely three hundred words.”
One day, therefore, I was advancing, with my folding chair, my paint-box and my easel under my arm, into the forest of pylons toward the southern sector, in search of a point of view, when a chorus of barking voices rose up behind the hangars reserved for the savages’ cooking, trying to sing in unison. I had never heard anything like it. The words, in Bowwow, were incomprehensible, but curiously enough, the rhythm of the barbaric chant recalled that of the Internationale. Then, as the cacophony redoubled, an order stopped the singers, and the same voice, which I recognized immediately, added, as an aside, the exclamation: “Oh, what a load of numbskulls!”
It was Oscar.
Rounding the corner of the hangar, I perceived him, busy in the midst of a crowd of fifty or sixty indigenes, distributing advice and objurgations. They kept their pink eyes ecstatically fixed on Ida, who was beating time, dominating them.
In the most natural tone in the world, I said: “There’s a class of pupils who seem very willing, and who adore their teacher. Isn’t that so, Ida?”
A trifle flattered, she replied: “They’re slow to catch on, but that’s only natural, after centuries of absolute serfdom. The awakening will come. They’re already remembering the traditions they’d almost lost. The melody they’re learning to sing again is the most beautiful of their legends…the Golden Age, which they once knew in the primitive forest...”
“And they know that a woman come from the sky will lead them back to that Golden Age,” Oscar thought he ought to add, darting a conspiratorial glance at his fiancée.
Frowning, however, she hastened to add. “It’s a long-range project, this regeneration, I make no bones about it. But you’re here to paint, Gaston. Have no fear, set your things up—no one will disturb you.
On the few previous occasions when I had painted in bowwow territory I had only been able to obtain tranquility thanks to repeated intervention by the police. This time, even when the savages dispersed at the end of the lesson, it only required a word from Ida to keep them at a distance from my easel. In default of harmonious results, the choir-mistress had at least obtained a remarkable obedience from her pupils.
Several times thereafter I accompanied the two evangelists into the zone of camps. I witnessed veritable sermons, in which an entire tribe of two hundred individuals drank in the Russian’s words; I saw her leaning over sick children, scolding mothers, teaching them to care for their young...
But I was able to observe that, in all the domains in which the regenerative apostolate was striving, progress was very slow
, consciousness only illuminating weakly, a flickering gleam in the skulls of the poor slaves, who showed a submission even more abject than before to the police. Nothing had changed in the bestiality of their mores; cannibalism was still rife...
On the other hand, I saw Ida profoundly convinced of the bounty of her work, to which she was devoting herself body and soul. I had to admit the sincerity of her devotion, and was not tempted to smile when Oscar said to me: “It doesn’t amuse me much, this business, and I only do it because she asks me to. I can’t help finding her admirable. She’s a saint, Ida—a true saint.”
Although one could doubt the redemption of the savages, Ida herself had been subject to a fortunate transformation. No more inflamed tirades against tyranny, no more bravado against the Lacertians. It seemed that she feared attracting the attention of the masters to her preaching. In consequence, her character became less shrewish. At times she had a mild expression, as if she were seeking forgiveness for her past intemperance.
But why the devil was she teaching the bowwows that song, which sounded so reminiscent of the Internationale?
XXV. Wireless
Long months have gone by monotonously, further laminated to quadruple length by the multiplication of Erotian days: three hours of daylight, three hours of darkness, four times over in a terrestrial day...in the space of twenty-four hours demanded by the chronometers to jump to the next day.
The days, weeks and months passed. Our existence continued. The little planet, following its eccentric orbit, moved further away from the sun, whose disk appeared sensibly smaller. The warmth of the days diminished; we no longer took off our aviation suits. The nights became very cold and the radiators functioned at full power. Ida had taken possession of a stock of blankets to dress her dear bowwows, who had never thought of that. I compared her on that occasion to protestant missionaries in the South Seas, whose first concern is to dress the savages…and got a sharp rejoinder.