The Council lasted a fortnight, and the queen with the golden hair left content, having not been useless, followed by the affection of all.
When the nights began, the mistress of the Great Observatory came to Nyverel from the lands of silence, and she told Queen Nevea that her orders had been carried out. A unique sun had been found in the constellation of the Golden Bird, among the closest stars; it corresponded to the queen’s indications in color, spectrum and the number of its satellites. It would be visible that very evening. For the optical progress of Drymea had been prodigious, since the day when certain minds had applied themselves to it, initially guided by our science.
When the golden sun set, Hertha, Mynia and Nyve were in the observatory. In the black sky the stars stood out. Then, one of them was slowly magnified as the immense apparatus increased its power—and Hertha recognized her own sun. Another dawn was breaking out there! How many trillion leagues away? Without leaving her position, she asked the question. The response was clear, as her companions gazed at the star where Nevea had been born.
“How far away from us it shines!” said Nyve. “And yet, it seems less strange to me because of you. It is rising in your eyes, Nevea!”
“How the centuries must have embellished your world, Mother,” said Mynia, smiling. “But you seem pensive.”
Hertha was thoughtful. The route that she had taken from Earth to Drymea she could retrace. On her orders, her three realms could launch a projectile at stellar velocity toward the distant sun. The days and the years would pass over her sleeping body, in the care of vigilant machines. In the outskirts of our system, her thoughts would become lucid again, in order that she might steer toward the Earth. Then she would reappear on the old planet, returned from another world. She was still in the prime of life. The most marvelous of dreams.
But centuries had gone by! That Earth revisited would no longer be her Earth. The races would have changed, and the lands too. Everything gone: languages, cities, memories. Who would reign there now? A stranger, she would find an Earth a thousand times less fraternal than great Drymea. Then again, it would be necessary to tell the story of her voyage. Men with avid hands would try to lead their race to the harmonious world of the two suns. The first arrivals could do no harm, but their sons? They would look at the Drymeans and think about their beauty. Desire might kill them. Would the women of Earth have pity on them? And what effect would that pity have?
Hertha knew the history of her race, and saw an ominous prophecy in the past. No fusion would be possible between the two races. One day, Drymea would rise up as one, with the force of its masses united, body and soul. They had the science of murder in their hands—a few sages, at least, Nyve and Mynia, would have bequeathed it to their descendants. And Drymea would sacrifice, in an infernal war, ten, 20 or 30 million of its inhabitants, in order to be victorious. Now, that might happen, if Hertha returned to Earth—solely because of her, and her egotism. Duty and affection bound her to the world of virgins.
You must stay, her thought commanded. There are no limits upon souls. You will recover those for whom you weep—beyond the gates!
She gazed at the attentive Nyve and Mynia. For once, she concealed her thoughts from them, in order not to sadden them.
“I was thinking about my voyage,” she said. “It was not in vain, since I found you two at the end of my journey. I have served Drymea. Look at the sun that as mine at your leisure. It is no longer mine now. I am like you, my beloved, a daughter of the two suns. One single heart is worth more than a distant star!”
Three years passed thus. Herttha saw Drythea’s daughter beside her, an ardent little creature, red and sometimes so ender that the tall blonde queen could not help smiling. Terrestrial force was in the hands of a better race.
On the morning of a calm night, Hertha felt a sharp pain in her heart, and knew that she was dying. She had suspected it for days. Azrael does not arrive late. She could not deceive death.
As was customary, she brought together the Sages. The auditors informed Queen Nyve—for she had been wearing the crown for several months—and Drythea. Looking back on her life, Hertha knew that the most frightful thing is to have lived in vain, to have left empty a vast frame that one might have filled with thought and action. She bequeathed an achievement to justify her power. Her existence seemed full of enormous happiness. On Earth, her limits would soon have become manifest; on Drymea, things were different. Her duty had been to accept her destiny, for she had acted as the instrument of a higher wisdom.
She did not have to write her last will and testament. Her power had put her thoughts into action. Mynia knew the rest.
The next day, she felt weaker, and pain gnawed at her like a sly beast. She had wanted to die on her feet, but the middle of the day lay her down in her bed, pallid, and the Drymeans understood. They displayed the stars in her high window.
Then Nyve of Nirvanir arrived.
“Thus I would like to die,” said Hertha, “before the distant suns. Don’t grieve too much. A little time, and we shall see one another again.”
In the shadows, she seemed to see the faces of yesteryear mingling with those that surrounded her. The latter could no longer understand her, for in the hour of her death she reverted to the old language of Earth to say: “I have had my destiny. Have I done my duty? An act of God, by my hand….”
Then she regained consciousness, and smiled at Nyve and Mynia, taking hold of their hands.
“When Drythea comes, tell her always to be good. Nacrysa has preceded me. Embrace me for the departure, Nyve—you remember! My beloved…”
As they leaned over the Queen, they saw her eyes become troubled in gazing at the star that they call the Eye of the Gazelle and we call Sirius. Her hands became heavy in theirs.
Thus died, on the 15th day of the Month of Breezes in the Drymean year 5397, Nevea the Helmeted Queen, who had been, on Earth, Hertha Helgar.
Conclusion.
The Final Farewell
Three months later, the High Priestess of Nyverel presented herself to Queen Nyve, bowed, and said: “Queen, my seers have seen Queen Nevea, and she desires your presence.”
A few hours later, the enormous temple closed its door on them. The darkness was profound. The priestesses ignited golden vases from which an odorous, flameless smoke rose up. Motionless and silent, Nyve, the Queen with the soft eyes, felt her head spin.
The priestesses were speaking ritual words a thousand years old. Confused images whirled before Nyve’s eyes. Long minutes went by. Then a white cloud appeared; it became clearer and its forms became precise enough for Nyve to see Nevea’s face beyond a luminous veil—and her smile was full of serenity.
Then a voice became audible in the shadows. The apparition spoke, through a mouth of flesh.
“My Nyve with the soft eyes, my merits and faults have been weighed by infallible Justice. Entry to the eternal Realms has been granted to me. I shall quit Drymea forever—but my prayers have obtained one great favor. Revested in the veil of flesh, I shall live again on Oriah, your second satellite.
“Its inhabitants are voluptuous and harsh, enslaved by their passions. The shadow of their thought would terrify your virgins. Some of them, however, might become better. Through years of struggle, poverty and persecution, I will try to bring light, for I have been permitted to undergo a proof, there, where anything is possible!
“I see your thought, Nyve. We know the secrets of Heaven, and I would be able to prevent Nevea’s suffering, up there—but you do not know that the daughters of Nirvanir, under pain of being subject to every outrage, might reign by terror over a corrupt people. I have bequeathed terrible weapons to you and Mynia. A virgin of 16, within the immense war machine that you could build, could scythe down ten million heavily-muscled living individuals in a minute. But blood calls to blood. The contagion of evil poisons the souls of those who reign on Oriah. My destinies must be completed.
“By virtue of a spiritual law unknown on Drymea, I hav
e undertaken in my proof the weight of your sins, for your entire life. They are not very heavy, my Nyve with the soft eyes.
“You are now thinking: why is Nevea forgetting her beloved daughter? Mynia has no need of it. She is already worthy of endless recompense, and my burden had been limited.
“When the inevitable hour comes for you, Queen of Nirvanir, the hour when no human will be able to help you, I will have preceded you into death once more, and you will find me welcoming you at the threshold of its gates.
“Then, we shall depart toward a new sun. Mynia will be able to join us there, soon for us but later for her, for time is not the same for spirits as for those living in flesh. The veiled Goddess, the Being with the welcoming arms, will allow me to recover those for whom I weep.
“Do not grieve for my destiny on Oriah. You are hearing me here for the last time; I must depart for my proof. It will be lighter for me because of you, for your soft eyes will console me on Drymea, which is better than the Earth, for love is better here.”
Silence fell again, and Nevea vanished into the shadows.
Notes
1 Han Ryner’s The Superhumans (ISBN 9781935558774) and six volumes of the works of J.-H. Rosny Aîné are available in Black Coat Press editions.
2 Several Arsène Lupin stories pitting the gentleman-burglar against Sherlock Holmes and Countess Cagliostro are available from Black Coat Press.
3 I am assuming that André Mas was a man, although the person behind the pseudonym has never been identified.
4 The German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803), who considered that his vocation was to be “the Christian Homer,” spent 25 years writing and publishing his epic Messias (1748-1773; tr. as The Messiah); he produced other Biblical epics thereafter, but they never attained a similar prestige.
5 Frederick William Herschel (1738-1822) published his discovery of Saturn’s period of rotation in 1790, which seems inconsistent with the date in the following note—and neither sits well with the date of 1803 given at the beginning of the story—so Berthoud is evidently employing a certain poetic license here.
6 Adrien Thilorier (1790-1844) first produced “dry ice” (accidentally) in 1834. Berthoud knew Thilorier personally and wrote a eulogy after his death, categorizing him as a “martyr” because he was a casualty of one of his own experiments.
7 Berthoud was probably inspired to write this story by the fact that Charles Green and Spencer Rush had set a new altitude record of 7.9 kilometers in 1839, which was to remain unsurpassed until 1862. The description of Ludwig’s experiences is presumably based on those reported by Green and Rush. The previous altitude record of 7.28 kilometers had been set in 1803, which might help to explain the date cited in the story’s opening.
8 The Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1779-1844).
9 Centaurium erythraea, a herb of the gentian family.
10 What Berthoud has in mind is a carbon arc lamp, although his description is faulty, partly because his theory of solar light-production is mistaken. The principle of the carbon arc lamp had been demonstrated by Humphry Davy in the first decade of the century, but all attempts to produce a viable version of any sustained electrical light-source had been frustrated before Berthoud wrote this story. It was not until the 1870s that the first viable carbon arc lamp—the so-called “Yablochkov candle”—was developed, and not until 1878 that Joseph Swan patented the first electric light-bulb with a carbon filament.
11 Hans Christian Oersted (177-1851) discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields in 1820. This does not seem entirely consistent with the internal chronology of the story; the old man is narrating his tale in Spa 15 years before the story’s publication—i.e., no later than 1847—and seems to be referring to events that took place at least 30 years previously, probably more.
12 The reference is to Antoine César Becquerel (1788-1878), the grandfather of the more famous Henri. Initially a mineralogist, his investigation of the application of electricity to chemical analysis and synthesis, following in the footsteps of Humphry Davy, allowed him to produce tiny precious stones in 1823.
13 Moritz von Jacobi (1801-1874) invented electrotyping, or “galvanoplastic sculpture,” in 1838; the technique was rapidly adapted for relief printing, which remains its primary application.
14 Johann Joseph Prechtel (1778-1854) made numerous contributions to electrical physics and technology in the 1820s and 1830s, but the idea of making balloons from copper sheets had first been proposed before the end of the 18th century and several experimental models were constructed in France in the 1840s, although none proved practicable.
15 John Ker, the third Duke of Roxburghe, became an avid book collector after finding a copy of the legendary first edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron in Italy; he paid 100 guineas for it, but it fetched a much higher price when his collection was sold after his death in 1804 by the book-dealer George Nicol.
16 A bibliotaph is a man who locks his book collection away, as if entombing it.
17 Pont-Jest gives the first few words of the title in French—they translate into English as “The Art of Dying”—but the book is obviously printed in Latin so I have given the actual title. The text in question was not published (and certainly not written) by Jean Sporer, but the reference to Sporer as a “map-painter” strongly suggests that Pont-Jest cobbled this list of exotica together with the aid of the Bulletin du Bibliophile, a mid-century Parisian periodical, where that reference appears in an 1843 issue.
18 The Great Bible of Mainz is famous as a manuscript version contemporary with the first printed ones, so this reference is odd—but the Mainz Psalter, cited a few lines further on, was indeed one of the first books produced by the new technology.
19 Pont-Jest gives this title in French as Collques d’Erasme; as it has obviously been printed in France, it is possible that it is a French translation, but editions produced during the early days of printing would have retained the original Latin. It was one of the key texts of humanism, produced by the great pioneer of that philosophical stance, Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536).
20 Pont-Jest gives this name as “Smith,” but says explicitly, on several occasions, that the servant in question is German. I have therefore substituted the German form of the surname, just as I have substituted “Frankfurt” for his “Francfort,” “Mainz” for his “Mayence,” “von Heberghem” for his “d’Heberghem” and so on, in the interests of fidelity to local usage.
21 The Spanish painter Francisco Zurbaran (1598-1664) specialized in monks, nuns and martyrs.
22 I have translated the French title that Pont-Jest gives to this work into English, although the Latin original, presumed to be by Notker the Stammerer, a monk at the Abbey of St Gall was titled De Carolo Magno; it is a collection of anecdotes about Charlemagne.
23 Pont-Jest gives this title in French, with no indication as to whether it is the original Faustbuch or one of its many derivatives—perhaps Goethe’s; again, it seemed best to render it in English, with a similar vagueness.
24 Yet again, I have substituted the title of the English translation for Pont-Jest’s French version although the book on the shelves must surely be the original, Das Alte Buch: Oder Reise ins Blaue Hunein (1834)
25 Anthony Askew (1699-1774)
26 The so-called Marcomanni runic alphabet is actually an academic fiction cooked up by Carolingian scholars attempting to establish an equivalence between the runic and Latin alphabets. It has nothing to do with the Marcomanni, a tribe that once lived in the Main valley but migrated to Bohemia during the days of the Roman Empire.
27 Newton’s Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733) was published some years after his death, prejudicing his reputation in the eyes of some scientists.
28 Richard Bright (1789-1858), who gave his name to a disease of the kidneys, actually died of heart disease.
29 Literary moons, unlike the real one, occasionally rise in the west.
3
0 The line (Rien de vrai là-dessous que le squelette humain) is from “La Nuit d’août” by Alfred de Musset.
31 Moritz Traube (1826-1894), Stéphane Leduc (1853-1939) & Raphael Dubois (1849-1929). If anyone doubts the force and scope of the scientific “orthodoxy” that set out to crush and annihilate the theory of spontaneous generation, they only have to consult the on-line biographies of these scientists and observe how their championship of the notion has either been expunged from the record of their careers or radically downplayed. We now know for sure, of course, that the theory is false, but in their day, the evidence was still weak enough to permit controversy, and there was no shame in their espousal. Modern readers of this story may find it advantageous to reassume an open mind temporarily, in spite of the certainty of hindsight.
32 The French chemist Henri Moissan (1852-1907) attempted to use an electric arc furnace to synthesize diamonds from the common form of carbon, but did not succeed.
33 The author adds a footnote: “These strange systems of several associated suns are not exceptions in the sky. Our astronomers know of hundreds of them, associating red with white, orange with blue, yellow with azure, white with violet, according to the stars that comprise them. Sometimes the two stars are of the same hue: blue, pink, golden…”
34 A noted in the introduction, there is an evident problem in describing the young women of Drymea as “virgins,” because the term carries implicit sexual connotations that will soon be revealed to be unwarranted here. There is, however, no easily-available alternative translation for the text’s vierges, and I have therefore retained it.
35 The author adds a footnote: “For millions of years, on our Earth, creatures were ignorant of sex and reproduced by budding or the division of their bodies. Presently, still, various insects manifest several parthenogenetic generations between sexualized ones. An evolution of the Drymean sort has nothing absurd of impossible about it. It is rational, and everything that is rational is real, here or elsewhere. Our readers are familiar with the classic works of Delage on experimental parthenogenesis.”
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