Investigations of the Future

by Brian Stableford

  “Delighted, my dear sir,” he said to me, like an old acquaintance. “I was expecting your visit.”

  Slightly surprised, I looked at him. Blue eyes softened a slightly ruddy face, at the base of which a carefully groomed blond beard fanned out; the lips were smiling with genuine affability. After all, there was nothing astonishing about a prophet anticipating my visit; and without asking anything more, I shook the hand that he offered me. He assured me that he was most honored to receive the representative of the Universal Informer, the only French newspaper that was worth the trouble of being consulted, and that he was entirely at my service.

  I hesitated to reply. Should I address him as Master, Professor, Doctor, Reverend or simply Sir? Hierophas did not seem to be hostile to advertisement, and I concluded that he ought not to be insensitive to flattery, and gratified him with the Biblical title of Prophet. It seemed to me that he found it quite natural.

  “Prophet,” I said, “it would be childish to try to conceal the object of my visit from you. You have foreseen it, so you know as well as I do what I expect from you.” He nodded his head in agreement. “I am, therefore, ready to consign to my notebook the oracles that condescend to escape from your august mouth.”

  He immediately burst out laughing, with frank amusement, put his hand on my arm in a familiar manner, and said: “My dear chap, don’t be so pompous.” He was definitely a straight-talking prophet. Instead of going up to his throne, he sat on the corner of the table at which I had installed myself in order to take notes, and said, cheerfully: “Write. I’ll dictate.”

  He commenced thus:

  “My visit to the prophet Hierophas was a bitter disappointment to me. I thought I would find myself in the presence of a pontiff and I found myself confronted by a charlatan, or at least a hoaxer.”

  I stopped writing and protested strongly.

  “Don’t deny it,” he said, amiably. “I can read you like a book with large print. Yes, I live in a palace that astonishes you; I have a black porter in gaudy livery, who makes you smile, and this room looks like a stage set to you; yes, I dress ostentatiously and make sibylline pronouncements with a distant expression—because, if I behaved otherwise, no one would want to believe my predictions and I wouldn’t have a single client. You see, my dear chap, the great inferiority of science is in forsaking stage-setting and presenting its truths naked.”

  I was no longer smiling, and I looked in amazement at the man who had evidently read my thoughts.

  “For you,” he continued, “who have sent to me by the Universal Informer and I divine to be sufficiently well versed in scientific matters, I don’t have to surround myself with all that phantasmagoria. I received you immediately, because I had nothing to prepare, quite simply, because I have nothing to hide, and I introduce myself to you, not as the prophet Hierophas but as who I am: William Smithson, mathematician.”

  I was still stunned by that unexpected declaration when a girl opened the door. “Papa,” she said, “are you coming to lunch?”

  “I’m coming,” Mr. Smithson replied. He turned to me. “Will you stay for an informal lunch?”

  I excused myself, invoking some pressing engagement.

  “Don’t disguise your refusal with a polite pretext,” he replied, smiling. “Accept, or I’ll think that I’ve annoyed you be telling you the truth. Then again, we haven’t had time to chat. I want to explain my method in detail, in order that the Universal Informer can defend it before the world, as I shall defend to scientific sincerity of my predictions before you.”

  Conquered by the strange perspicacity and the captivating frankness of my interlocutor, I allowed myself to be drawn into a conservatory, in the middle of which the lunch table had been set. The prophet introduced me to Mrs. Smithson, who was supervising three young children as they ate. She smiled at the compliment I addressed to her, invited me to sit down next to her, and immediately started a conversation about France, its mores, its art and its literature.

  Mrs. Smithson was a tall woman, with a slim but full figure, as gracefully abrupt in her movements a thoroughbred mare. Brown-haired, with a rose-tinted pale complexion and bright lips, she had enigmatic eyes: very beautiful, clear and innocent eyes, but impenetrable, which were not the windows of the soul but mirrors reflecting a sun. Her sarcastic smile, characterized by an advancement of the lower jaw, revealed solid teeth that were a trifle long, but dazzling. She represented a certain type of American beauty She also had a fine mind, very cultivated, not lacking in irony or mischief.

  She told me that French novels seemed to her to be detestable. Were their readers only interested in vile adultery? Was it usual, in France, for women to deceive their husbands? Did they always find someone with whom to deceive them? Shocking! In America, the respect due to women was differently conceived—but she let it be understood that perhaps French manners did not displease her overmuch.

  While we were discussing that subject in the fashion of Marivaux, the children disappeared, taken away by a governess, and the prophet left us to give an audience. I remained alone with the charming woman, and the conversation immediately took a more gallant tone. She stared into my eyes with a challenging expression, leaned closer to my ear in order to say things that she thought daring, and then leaned back with the stifled giggles of a provocative flirt. The most naïve and the most foppish would not have scorned the opportunity, and although I am not one of those lady-killers who imagines that he can conquer a woman at first sight, I was obliged to recognize that the lovely Mrs. Smithson was making advances to me.

  It would have been necessary to have neither eyes not ears to be insensible to the attractions of her vital beauty, to have neither warmth in the heart nor blood in the veins not to be seduced by the envelopment of that siren in the inept gaucherie of an honest woman. One idea, however, held me back. If I became smitten with his wife, Hierophas, who read me like a book, would certainly perceive it—and then what would happen?

  The more I restricted myself to respectful banalities, the bolder she became, and the more she developed her supple and undulating grace, playing the tease. I thought, however, that Smithson, in his quality as a diviner, had doubtless foreseen the welcome his wife would give me, and knew in advance the little scene that was being played out a few yards away from him. What kind of man was he, then? What role was he making me play? I was only twenty years old, and such adventures cannot help being disturbing, when one is abroad—especially in America, where one can so easily encounter the barrel of a revolver.

  I advanced, meanwhile, to the ultimate limits of admissible gallantry, but quickly understood that I could not remain there without seeming absolutely ridiculous. Too bad—I launched myself into a crazy declaration, which she received point-blank, her eyes half-closed, with an extreme joy. I was about to become more pressing when the prophet came back in.

  Absorbed in the oracle he had just rendered, he appeared not to notice anything, and talked to us about the pleasure that he experienced when he was able to offer his clients fortunate predictions.

  “You’re a prophet of good omen,” I said to him, smiling.

  “A prophet, no, my dear sir,” he replied, with slight impatience. “Once again, strictly speaking, I’m not. I don’t claim, like many of my colleagues in whom the Magi of the Old Testament live again, to be inspired by God—nor by the Devil. I have nothing in common with astrologers, diviners, sorcerers, necromancers and other charlatans. I possess neither the unhealthy gift of foresight of the ancient pythonesses and convulsives, nor the second sight of somnambulists and hysterics. I practice prescience.”

  Now, I thought, it’s getting interesting. And I had a strong desire to take out my notebook in order to take notes. A scruple restrained me. I looked at Mrs. Smithson. She was leaning backward on the cushions, eyes closed, lips smiling, as if still under the spell of the confessions she had heard. I was ashamed of doing my professional duty in front of her, and did not want her to be able to suppose, for an instant
, that I attached more importance to her husband’s words than hers. It was certainly very agreeable to see her thus, bit I could not entirely forget the objective of my visit; and although not very well of, I would have given a considerable sum for some household obligation to have summoned her into the next room and permit me to become the reporter glad to take notes about prescience. Unfortunately, it is only in the theater that characters exit when desired.

  I could not, however, remain silent. By way of compromise, I declared that prescience seemed extremely interesting, but that it was impossible for me to deny the delightful attraction of the unexpected. Our lives would be rather dull if we knew the day before exactly what we would be doing the following day, and were unable to abandon ourselves insouciantly to the sweet joy of living.

  “Ha ha!” said Smithson, smiling. “I see that you’ve been getting along well with Laura!”

  “Why do say that?” I asked, a trifle anxious, while the lady’s large eyes settled gently upon me.

  “Because my wife doesn’t believe in science, and remains attached to superstition.”

  “That is to say,” she put in, “that I don’t believe in your predictions.”

  “A French proverb declares that no one is a prophet in his own country—all the more reason why he should not be one in his own house,” I hastened to remark.

  “Note that I affirm nothing; affirmation is only for the ignorant; science always doubts. Although I talk about the future, I don’t claim certainty; I merely calculate probabilities to the nearest ten thousandth—and human life is no more than probabilities!”

  Apparently, I was not concealing the interest I was taking in her husband’s declarations well enough. Mrs. Smithson got up abruptly. “So you think Monsieur will be amused by all your stories!”

  “I don’t doubt, my love, that your conversation would be infinitely more agreeable to him than mine—except that Monsieur has come here with certain preconceived ideas, of which I want to disabuse him completely. Let’s go into my study.”

  “I hope that you won’t steal Monsieur for too long, in order that we can resume the conversation that you interrupted untowardly?”

  “Yes, yes—that’s understood.”

  I followed Smithson into his study like a man who, sensing that he is a victim of circumstances, no longer seeks to resist them. It was a large, well-lit room, simply furnished with tables like those architects use, and tall stools. The entire back wall was taken up by a blackboard, on which was displayed a scaffolding of formulas and symbols alternating with cascades of numbers. There were statistical tables, innumerable filing cabinets, enormous ledgers and calculating instruments such as one sees in physics laboratories or observatories, and bundles of electrical wires were branching out in all directions. He was certainly a modern prophet.

  “My method,” he began, “is exceedingly simple. It closely resembles the one that meteorologists employ to anticipate the weather. Those scientists study the situation of the heavenly bodies, the state of the atmosphere, calculate the direction and speed of currents, the action of multiple influences, and finally refer them to statistical analysis.”

  “Which doesn’t prevent them, as we say back home, from often sticking a finger in their eye.”

  “Once again, Monsieur, absolute certainty does not exist. For my research, I have completed the studies carried out on the physical word by analogous studies of the intellectual and moral worlds, that’s all.”

  He took me to a window, showed me a building that resembled a factory, and told me that there, every day, five hundred employees recorded the ideas and facts that came to their attention, and classified them into categories and tables reproducing the approximate movement of universal life. Others drew up diagrams of currents of opinion and various influences, so accurately that when a case was submitted to him, Hierophas was able very rapidly to identify similar cases, and, given the present direction, calculate the probabilities. He added that an extensive training had rendered him very sensitive to the kind of radiation emanating from facts that is known as “ideas in the air,” and that with his profound knowledge of men and things, he sometimes arrived instantaneously at the solution to a problem. But that was only a conjuring trick; his method was entirely founded on observation.

  “Then you’ll be able to tell me what the situation of humankind will be one or several centuries hence?”

  “Indeed I can. But you don’t expect me to reply to you immediately? Then you’d have the right to take me for a trickster! The question is one of the most colossal that can be asked. To resolve it will require considerable research and innumerable calculations; I don’t know how many years it would take me to make them, but the problem doesn’t frighten me, and it’s very possible that I’ll study it.”

  Then he started talking to me gaily about the ridiculous questions he was asked every day. As he was telling me about the misadventures of a farmer’s wife, who had wanted to know, at any cost, how many eggs her chickens would lay, an electric bell vibrated precipitately, several times over.

  “That’s my wife getting impatient,” he said, “and thinking that our discussion in lasting too long; let’s go find her.”

  Those words, bring me back to the reality of a situation that I had gradually forgotten, caused me to shiver. Now that I had learned what I wanted to know, however, I was determined not to take my flirtation with Madame any further. I would offer her my compliments—I could hardly do otherwise—and I would take my leave.

  “There’s one curious detail,” said Smithson, linking arms with me in a familiar fashion in order to take me to the drawing room. “Just now, my wife declared that she didn’t believe in my predictions. Well, she’s not entirely wrong. Can you imagine that, with respect to all the people closest to me—my wife and children, for example—my vision, so clear with respect to others, become almost completely obscure. Sentiment disturbs it, as a magnet confuses a compass needle.”

  “The ancients were right, then, to put a blindfold over the eyes of love.”

  “Yes, it’s always blind!”

  The tone in which he had produced the last phrase might equally well have indicated an intimate dolor, pity for his wife, a threat to me, or perhaps all three. With that devil of a man, who saw through all games, how could one tell which one he was playing?

  In the drawing room, sparkling with light, I could see nothing but Mrs. Smithson. She was in evening dress, her shoulders bare, her perfectly contoured neck emerging from a bodice of flowery satin, molded over rounded forms. Again I met her large, bottomless eyes, her ironic smile and her dark hair, artistically decorated with orchids.

  Smithson rapidly made himself scarce, in order to receive the daily reports of his secretaries.

  Alone again with that half-naked woman, on whose forehead our artists would have put a crescent, so symbolic was she of nervous pride—not the banal Diana but a Diana of the north with snow white flesh—I forgot my resolutions and did not defend myself against rapture. A flood of enthusiastic acclamations rose to my lips, and as, fortunately, English is as familiar to me as my mother tongue, I multiplied the susurration of admiring words, mingled with exclamations of languid finality that enveloped her like a caress: perfectly lovely! She received my compliments with the satisfaction of a sovereign who knows what is due to her, but who was nevertheless slightly surprised by the exaltation of my emotion.

  Then, she turned her head, and said, with a delicate flick of her fan: “Oh, you Frenchmen!”

  Her smile was more sarcastic, her eyes went in search of some unfathomable ceiling, and I could not make out whether the reminder of my nationality signified that she was tormented by my words or my gallantry.

  Smithson came back, very correct in a florid smoking-jacket. My decision was made; I thanked him for his cordial reception, and the kindness with which he had informed me; I bowed to Madame and made as if to leave.

  “Oh, no, no!” cried the gentleman prophet. “You’re our guest, you
’re staying with us! We rarely have the opportunity to welcome a Frenchman here, and you wouldn’t want to deprive us of that great pleasure. I have, in any case, more information to give you about prescience, and my wife won’t be displeased to find out a little more about French mores.”

  Mrs. Smithson nodded, and, very embarrassed, I replied that I would like nothing better, but that it would be very difficult for me.

  “Come on, my dear chap—no one, so far as I know, is expecting you? It’s getting pitch dark, we live some way from the town, and I was so convinced that you’d stay with us that I permitted myself to send your carriage away.”

  I remarked politely that it was not very honest, in order to justify his predictions, to make it impossible for people to carry out their plans, but that, having said that, I greatly appreciated the honor that Hierophas was doing me in receiving me beneath his roof. He had to know that, deep down, I was not excessively annoyed. I was seduced by the prospect of resuming the flirtation, of seeing that honest wife ignite, like a grey ember stirred by a gust of wind, in the breath of passion, and of finally deciphering the enigma of her eyes.

  Supper, in the midst of flowers, was very cheerful. Smithson, as a philosopher who knew the vanity of life and was not harassed by the pursuit of a ideal, seemed to be joyfully practicing the principle of carpe diem. His wife laughed at my merest remarks, and I must say that I deployed a firework-display of pleasantries by which I was dazzled myself. That prolixity, which greatly amused my hosts, came, I now understand, from the need I felt to daze myself and no longer to analyze my impressions.

  I slightly cloud passed over when I was served, under the label of Champagne, an alcoholic tisane from California, which I declared inferior to our national product. Mrs. Smithson saved the situation by saying, with a slightly malicious intent, while her nose was in her glass: “Wasn’t it one of your poets who said: ‘what does the bottle matter, so long as one gets drunk?’”51