The World Above The World

by Brian Stableford

  I struggled, stuck between two giants whose resistant inertia ended up annoying me. “Let me pass, then!” I exclaimed, looking at each of them in turn.

  Two workmen, it seemed, properly clad in European dress—but they were bizarrely exotic. One had a short muzzle, slightly green-tinted skin and bovine eyes; the other a straw-colored complexion and the gaze of a tiger, which filtered between slitted eyelids, with a meat-porter’s fists at the ends of his arms. They stood side silently, letting me pass n front of them, but they continued to follow me, without taking their eyes off me.

  I succeeded in getting close to the hero of the celebration and the ministers. I arrived at the moment when Goldfeller was introducing Piérard to a white-haired old man bowed down by a frock-coat, as if he were unused to wearing one. The President of the Council shook his hand effusively.

  “Where have you been?” Luneau asked. “You’ve missed the introductions. Our host is bringing out his collaborators: chemists and physicists who have manufactured producers never seen before; if you believe them, they’re going to turn the world upside-down, and everything is being studied here that is necessary to ensure the happiness of humankind. The old man with the white hair is…what’s he called, Buridan?”

  The stout Buridan of the Express-Globe, who had gone around the world flat out several times, mopped his brow as he retorted: “Rassmuss.”

  “Rassmuss,” scoffed Luneau. “That’s fine name for a sorcerer, eh?”

  “Don’t mock,” Buridan interjected, with the nasal accent of an “old boy” of Battery Place. “Why are you always mocking, Luneau?”

  “But what is all this?” I said. “What’s it for?”

  Buridan advanced his shaven lip, circumspectly. “All I can tell you,” he affirmed, “is that Goldfeller’s a very powerful man.”

  “Do you know him well?”

  “I met him two years ago in Winnipeg, last year in Bombay, and I interview him in the company of the starvelings of India, for my articles on world poverty—remember? I saw him strew money around everywhere without counting it.”

  “And where does it comes from, his fortune?”

  “It’s said that he’s found out how to use Moissan’s electric furnace32 to good effect, and that he can manufacture precious stones as well as nature—that’s why they call him the gem king.”

  “Pooh! Is he the one who found it? How do you know that he’s not exploiting someone else’s idea? Old Rassmuss, for example. The bluff king, at the most.”

  I was speaking loudly enough for the comment to raise a laugh. Looking around with a satisfied expression, I met the staring eyes of the two giants of a little while before, standing behind me. They too were smiling as they looked at me.

  “What does it matter?” Buridan went on. “Here’s a man who can make an idea fruitful that another might have left unproductive, and who’s building a tower of iron, as the pharaohs rewarded themselves with the luxury of the pyramids and the sphinx; that makes work for the workman, raises the price of manpower and materials. Who’s complaining? For the moment, it’s resolved the social question.”

  “Hurrah for Goldfeller!”

  “That’s very true,” said the director of the forges of Ancion, in the middle of a group. “At the present moment, unemployment no longer exists in the iron industry from one end of Europe to the other. All the available workmen have been drawn here, and the other countries of the world are furnishing their contingents, as you can see.”

  “But is there no danger for the future?” I remarked. “Vast as they are, these construction-works must come to an end. What then?”

  What demon prompted me? What instinctive acrimony always drove me to search for possible flaws in an enterprise whose enormity alone was sufficient to win the enthusiastic unanimous consent of all the official visitors?

  Goldfeller seemed not to have seen or heard anything, entirely absorbed by the concern of furnishing the ministers with the explanations they were rather timidly soliciting. In his wake, the procession advanced around the circular boulevard that overlooked, on one side, the vast rural extent, and on the other, that vast metallic forest, which, under the impulse of that man, was driving the accumulated effort of his rancor toward the sky. In its endless valleys and at the tips of its prodigious bristles swarmed a host of workers, in obstinate masses and audacious clusters, whose activity seemed eternal. Except that, as we passed by, through the construction-sites, the men arranged themselves into compact ranks, shouldering their tools; in response to an overseer’s whistle behind us, the work resumed.

  At intervals, a brief pause immobilized the entire crowd. The dry voice of the “Gem King” was heard, replying to a few questions in curt sentences, discouraging replies and persistence.

  “The level of this circular boulevard indicates the general plane of the work; within two months, these metallic valleys will be flattened under a uniform ground.”

  “How high do you intend to go?” asked Scordel.

  “1900 meters—a round number.”

  II. Lost in the Tower

  A great silence welcomed this declaration, made by Goldfeller without hesitation. People looked at him, and kept silent. I shrugged my shoulders again and said to Luneau: “It’s madness—pure madness.”

  Goldfeller’s grey eyes turned in my direction; his gaze brushed me. As I turned round to follow the direction of that imperious glance, I found myself face to face with my two gigantic neighbors of a little while before. They were following me everywhere, smiling, with placid expressions on their savage faces. Was there any reason to take umbrage, in that crowd in which everyone was scrambling avidly after the official personages?

  In any case, an abrupt surge—a sort of crush—suddenly separated me from those strange companions. Everyone moved sideways and huddled against the balustrade bordering the boulevard above the void, because an obstacle was barring the route, forcing the procession to break ranks.

  I heard Piérard asking: “What’s that?”

  Dryly, without stopping, in a slightly discontented tone, Goldfeller replied: “It’s our future lighting system.”

  As they passed alongside the obstacle, people paused to examine it and took advantage of the pause to exchange reflections. Like everyone else, I lingered to take a look at the remarkable apparatus, extended like a beached cetacean for a length of a hundred meters.

  Imagine a sort of monstrous iron seahorse, with its long tail and belly ringed and creased like an accordion, its head curved back, with its mouth wide open and excrescences of eyes in which one could imagine the future location of two immense lenses designed to spread afar the electric light channeled through that gigantic candelabra, all of whose rings seemed extensible, thanks to two sets of intersecting piston-rods. As it was, the entire apparatus was strange and disquieting in the inert sprawl, like a maleficent, supernatural, slumbering beast.

  “Bizarre!”

  “Curious!”

  “That’s new!”

  “Yes—not banal, at any rate.”

  Everyone said his bit.

  “Is that really a lantern?” I said, in my turn.

  “But what do you think it is?” demanded the stout Buridan, laughing.

  “How do I know? Admit that it’s more reminiscent of an engine of war than a peaceful lighting apparatus.”

  Luneau started laughing. “What an imagination you have! Deep down, you’ve got something against Goldfeller.”

  “Me? What? To construct this beast with an iron carcass, with neither rhyme nor reason…unless it’s to serve some maleficent purpose that none of us suspects.”

  “Oh!”

  “You’re insane, Bayoud.”

  “Remember that it’s Piérard himself…”

  “Eh? Exactly! What does that prove?”

  Two years before Piérard, as Minister of Public Works, had signed the documents authorizing the works envisaged by M. Goldfeller, who threw millions into it recklessly. With money, one can buy anything o
ne wants.

  “Oh, if you’re talking politics…”

  Everyone laughed. They were mocking me. Generally, enthusiasm was stifling criticism. One person praised the audacity of the work that Goldfeller would leave to France after his death, under certain undetermined conditions. Others, determined to find some utility in it, ended up discovering some: the military governor of Paris would make it a work of national defense, a station for our dirigibles and aviators, and the director of the Observatoire talked about transporting his telescopes there.

  They all went on, hurrying to rejoin the scattered procession. I ended up standing on my own next to the strange monster extended at my feet. Leaning forward, I examined the metallic carcass curiously.

  The noise of a car rolling on rails made me lift my head. I saw before me one of those small wagons whose incessant comings and goings are utilized throughout construction-yards for transporting personnel and materials. This one, slowing down as it passed in front of me, seemed to be inviting me to depart on a voyage of discovery through the exotic works. A sudden and deplorable idea crossed my mind; jumping into the little wagon, I let myself be drawn away into the unknown.

  Was it waiting for me fatal decision? One would have been tempted to think so, in view of the vertiginous speed with which it set about taking me away. The diabolical vehicle’s track used the gullies of the thousand iron workplaces open before it, following the intricacies of the roller-coaster system. I had got aboard at the summit of a curve and was immediately precipitated at top speed into a gulf, lost in the metallic web, where the song of hammers resonated terribly. In a few minutes, I had lost the official procession, on which I turned my back and, bounding from summit to summit to plunge back into abysses, after one descent steeper than the others, I ended up coming smoothly to rest on a sort of concrete platform at the foot of a granite wall.

  Around the wall, the foliage of that metal forest billowed to infinity. Turning my head, I was seized by vertigo on observing that the platform on which I had landed was an interrupted section of the boulevard around the top of the tower. Below me was the countryside, and 1900 meters of empty space.

  Mastering my terror and making a half-turn, my hands extended along the wall against which I had run aground, I moved away as rapidly as possible in the direction of the center of the tower. I marched thus for more than a quarter of an hour and eventually understood that the foot of the wall next to which I was advancing, far from limiting the upper platform of the tower, turned back on itself in the direction of the circular boulevard, whose curve it interrupted. I risked raising my eyes; above me I perceived, to my surprise, tall trees still denuded of foliage, which were leaning over the wall against which I was supporting myself.

  A garden! At that height, and unique in the entire extent of that metal immensity! What did the garden signify? It must be very large, to judge by the extent of its boundary wall. Disorientated and confused, I scanned my surroundings with my surprised gaze. Some new perfidy of fate dictated that, exactly at that moment of uncertainty and surprise, I perceived a ladder thrown by a hazard of the works on to the boulevard—a ladder forgotten there by some workman, the mere sight of which suddenly brought my disorientated thoughts into focus. In a matter of seconds, I seized it, stood it up, and, leaping from rung to rung, reached to top of the wall, from which I could look into the garden at my ease.

  Through the leafless branches I perceived a vast lawn, a pond and, in the distance, beyond further spinneys of trees, a residential house—whose style and size I did not have time to appreciate, because the sound of oars striking water immediately attracted my attention to the pond, where a boat appeared between clumps of reds. The bowed was propelled by a vigorous woman of mixed race, whose arms plied the oars with the skill and strength of a professional mariner. A young woman was sitting at the tiller.

  Sitting on cushions that elevated her as if she were on a throne, wrapped in a light white fur, the apparition passed so rapidly before my eyes that I could scarcely make out the gold of her hair, the pallor and the smile on her face, and the graceful gesture of the pretty creature, who must have seen me and pointed me out to the woman. The boat disappeared behind a stand of willows. I heard the fading sound of a voice that seemed to me to be as precise as a musical instrument.

  I did not have time to see or hear any more, however; a violent shock caught me by surprise, my ladder trembled under an unexpected weight, and I felt powerful hands grabbing me and covering my eyes. I was knocked down, dragged away I know knot where or how, and suddenly felt the ground shake beneath me. I began to descend at a vertiginous speed, into depths that seemed to me to be limitless. I could see nothing in the darkness into which I had been plunged, but I knew that I was not alone, for the Herculean hands that had grabbed me a little while before continued to hold me by the arms, in an irresistible grip.

  After a minute or so, the platform slowed down and came smoothly to a stop. A door opened behind me; the light that sprang forth from it illuminated two terrible faces—the faces of the two giants who had followed me in the course of that stroll interrupted by a savage aggression. They shoved me again, forcing me to go into a rather large room, a sort of windowless waiting-room with grey wall-hangings, brightly lit by electric bulbs. The door closed again behind us.

  Immediately, I ran forward, searching for a way out. Not finding any, I turned toward my two strange companions. A little while ago they had been laughing; now they were terrifyingly silent and ferociously serious.

  “What’s the meaning of this atrocious attack?” I demanded, violently. “I assume that you’re acting on behalf of M. Goldfeller? What does he want with me? Is he thinking of taking me prisoner?”

  I started laughing scornfully. The two colossi remained mute. That exasperated me. “I demand an answer. Remember that you’re accomplices of this crime—I shall refer it to the law.”

  A kind of smile leveled the lips of the giant with the yellow face and uncovered his companion’s gums, but neither of them said anything. I stamped my foot.

  “Are you dumb?” I shouted, beside myself.

  Their only response, both having consulted one another with their eyes, was to open their mouths and, with identical gestures, indicate the shapeless stumps of severed tongues. Under orders or incapacitated, the singular beings could not answer me. Ceasing my questions, I decided to wait, and went to sit down in a corner.

  I affected a perfect tranquility. Deep down, the strangeness of the adventure and the eccentric character of the person who had ordered it, were beginning to make me vaguely anxious. Who was this Goldfeller? One of those semi-madmen unhinged by an unexpected fortune, capable of anything in their unbridled vanity? What could be expected of a man to whom the hazards of worldly existence had given control of slaves of the sort who had brought me here?

  That anxiety lasted three hours.

  Finally, the door opened. Goldfeller appeared. He favored my gaolers with a satisfied glance and sent them away with a gesture. Immediately, I advanced toward him, speaking loudly in a threatening manner.

  “Monsieur,” I said, forcefully, “All this is both odious and extravagant. Your conduct in my regard is criminal…”

  He darted a cold sideways glance at me and set his silk hat on a table, while I continued talking, threatening him with reprisals, talking about making a complaint to the public prosecutor. With his eyes lowered, drumming on the tabletop with his fingertips, he let me vent my anger without seeming to pay any heed to it.

  When I shut up, somewhat out of breath, he said, without any preamble: “You said something a little while ago that I didn’t like. Afterwards, you committed an indiscretion in my home that might cost you dear.”

  “I don’t have to account to anyone for my opinions,” I affirmed. “As for my actions…”

  The billionaire made a casual gesture. “I’m not asking you to account for them. I don’t have time to waste. I simply forbid you to continue.”

  “You forbi
d me…?”

  “Yes.”

  It was so clearly articulated, with such assurance, that I could find no response sat first. There was a pause of several seconds while I wondered whether the man of prodigious energy standing in front of me might simply be mad.

  “Monsieur,” I eventually said, “I don’t suppose you intend keeping me prisoner here. Remember that I’ll be leaving…”

  A kind of smile stretched Goldfeller’s tight lips. He shook his head, seemed to reflect momentarily, and, moving toward a corner of the room, opened a door hidden behind the wall-hangings. At the same time, he gestured to me to go on ahead of him.

  I went up two steps, and the door of the reception-room closed behind us. The darkness was complete, but almost immediately, a light came on above my head and I saw that we were in a sort of car with several seats, which began to move smoothly over rails, with a resonant sound.

  Beyond the windows, the closely-set walls of the corridor along which we were gliding fled behind us without it being possible to distinguish anything. I sat down opposite Goldfeller, who, with his legs crossed and his face impassive, had lit a cigar and was drawing light perfumed puffs therefrom.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked, in a slightly softer tone..

  With a gesture, he bade me wait—and after that, we remained silent.

  III. Prisoner

  While observing Goldfeller, I realized that he was guiding the progress of the car himself, reducing and increasing its speed with the aid of a commutator whose handle he was operating. Having rolled for about five minutes along that dark corridor of sorts, the horizon abruptly broadened out and lit up brightly. At the same time, the vehicle came to a halt.

  I got to my feet in order to get out, but my companion gestured to me to sit down again.

  We were in the middle of an immense open space, in the form of a rotunda, which reminded me of the Place de l’Opéra, with its electric candelabras, its bustling crowds, its glamorous shops and the perspective of wide streets radiating from it. A large population was circulating on the sidewalks, waiting on traffic-islands, hastening across the plaza and scattering into the adjacent streets; trolley-cars full of passengers were passing by, amid the abrupt sounds of bells and buzzers. At the junction of two streets, the tall façade of a theater advertized that evening’s performance in luminous letters.