“And afterwards?”
“Afterwards…afterwards… but there was nothing… nothing!”
“Most certainly!” cried the short brown-haired man. “There was nothing! And Lazarus, when he recounted his impressions of his voyage in the other world must have said the same thing: there was nothing. For, if he had seen anything else, he would have said so, and we would know about it.”
“Philosophy, however, offers us irrefutable proof of the survival of our personality, with the attributes that characterize it: self-consciousness and the memory of the past.”
“Then our subject wasn’t dead, and your spiritualists, believing that they had isolated his soul, had caught nothing in their receivers but the emanation of their own imagination!”
Taking advantage of the silence that followed this declaration, the physician had his patient carried triumphantly away to a hospital room, and the disappointed service personnel stole away silently, disappearing like bats into their holes. Only the chiefs remained, grouped around the director, all just as perplexed and frustrated.
“In my opinion,” the tall blond man repeated, “the experiment cannot have been other than a success.”
“Undoubtedly,” replied his adversary, “since it succeeded even though the subject wasn’t dead.”
“As to whether his death was apparent or real, one could argue for a long time, but give me another subject as healthy as that one, and you’ll see.”
“You’re saying that because you know, I can’t.”
“The repeated requests that I’ve made to the government to send us those condemned to death,” said Portius Barnett, “were refused indignantly.”
“Can we not come to an arrangement,” a young man suggested, “with a gentleman who wishes to commit suicide, and would be glad, in disposing of a futile life, to serve our experiments by means of his death.”
“Suicide is a crime, and we could be deemed his accomplices.”
“There are black men so miserable and backward that it really isn’t a crime, but a service rendered, to deprive them of their life.”
“Hang on,” said the tall blond fellow. “A creature presented himself this very evening so dirty and degraded that we took him for an idiot. He was a white man, but one of rare stupidity. Not knowing what to do with him, we sent him to the amphitheater to help the attendants. Well, I ask you, what crime would there be in experimenting on an individual like that?”
This little discussion had the effect of reminding me of the reality of the situation. While those gentlemen were asking one another, with an utterly philosophical serenity, whether they could dispatch me from life to death, I was there, a few paces away from them, alone, sitting on a chair. Thus far, they had not paid any attention to me, taking me for an orderly, but if they succeeded in perceiving that I was the fake black man, that the fake black man was the reporter from the Universal Informer, and that, furthermore, I had witnessed their failed experiment and heard all their discussions, would they not give me a hard time and might I not, whether I liked it or not, become the subject of a vengeful experiment? Would they not think that it would be even less of a crime to get rid of a dangerous reporter than a inoffensive imbecile?
These pioneers of the unknown, haunted by their obsession, seemed to me to have singularly lost sight of common morality. The sinister rumors circulating in their regard no longer seemed to me to be exaggerated; these men might already have more than one murder on their elastic conscience! Would it be it the first time, in any case, that scientific researchers had rendered themselves guilty of frightful crimes in order to discover a truth?
I saw myself lying on the low table, helmeted with apparatus and succumbing to the effluvia of chloroform or the like.
The gentlemen were, in fact, discussing at that very moment what kind of death it would be best to employ, and they were all rallying around a narcotic, in a dose calculated to lad to slow death, without cries, protests, pain or the patient even perceiving it.
One young man had a pious scruple: those condemned to death were notified, in order that they could put their conscience in order with respect to religion; should the unfortunate not be warned? Since they believed in immortality, in order to be reconciled with themselves, they ought to let the soul prepare itself.
To that, the philosopher replied that in war, one does not alert those who are about to fall, and that furthermore, given that thousands upon thousands of men were sacrificed for a piece of land, a crown, an unhealthy ambition, an insult or even a misunderstanding, he did not see why one should worry overmuch about sending a miserable human wreck ad patres.
That argument won the day. It was now no longer a matter of deciding when to operate. Some suggested waiting until a more scrupulous examination of the subject had been carried out; others contested its usefulness—and since all the instruments were ready, they wanted the experiment to take place right away. They supported this proposal with the argument that no one, or almost no one, had seen the man come in and no one would worry about his disappearance. Their comings and goings would not astonish the staff that night; after the shock they had had, it was only to be expected that the chiefs would need to exchange opinions and come to some agreement. Finally, once they were all reassembled, they would be able to operate tranquilly in the calm of the night, without the aid of the service staff, whose presence a little while ago had been something of a hindrance.
“Shh!” said one of them, nudging the speaker with his elbow and pointing at me, at the back of the room.
All gazes turned toward me.
“It’s only an amphitheater orderly,” said the short dark-haired man, deceived by my costume. “Those fellows don’t hang about with the others and are absolutely discreet. On the contrary, he might be useful to us.”
“Well, gentlemen,” concluded, “since we’re all in agreement to get it over with as quickly as possible and emerge from the doubt in which we’ve already been floundering for too long, all right!” Then, addressing me, he said: “Get a lantern and take us to the amphitheater through the underground tunnel.”
Without hesitation, I unhooked a lantern from the corridor and headed for the elevator, which I took down, once all the gentleman had gathered on the platform. Then, at their head, I advanced into the tunnel, wondering anxiously whether I needed to turn right or left. Frankly, the situation was becoming comical; I was serving as guide to the men who wanted to murder me! And I rejoiced, secretly, in thinking about the disagreeable surprise that awaited them when they found that I was no longer there, and that they could not apply the chloroform mask that one of the aides was carrying to my face.
Having arrived in the corridor, I was fortunate enough to find my way and recognize the door of my home, which I opened quietly, as I had been instructed to do.
There was a man lying on the bed!
I had a moment of strange folly. Troubled by all those ideas of evocation, isolating and duplication of the personality, I wondered where my true self was. If I was the person lying on the bed, who was holding the lantern? What if, while my primary self was asleep, another self had fled, had witnessed the resurrection of the electrician and brought the experimenters to the amphitheater?
Suddenly, the idea struck me that, as in many fantastic stories I had read, I was prey to a frightful nightmare—and without pausing to think about all the absurdities of that supposition, without seeing the illogicality of the action it suggested to me, I hurried to the bed to wake the sleeper, who had to be me. I gripped that second self by the arm so roughly that he sat up on the bed.
It was my black beggar, who, even though I had paid him a considerable sum, had wanted to obtain the benefits of his admission, and had slipped in behind me without being seen, with the cunning of a Redskin.
I believe that John Wilfrid Theobald Portius Barnett uttered a terrible oath. The assistants and aides turned toward me threateningly. But the attitudes of the tall blond man, the short dark-haired man and the man ho
lding the choloroform mask displayed such pitiful disappointment that, in spite of the horror of the situation, I started giggling; and that nervous giggle, after the apprehension I had just endured, was prolonged into uncontrollable crazy laughter.
“He’s lost his mind!” cried the philosopher.
“He’s a lunatic, escaped from the Experimental Psychology Department,” declared the physician. “I don’t recognize him as one of our amphitheater orderlies.”
“I recognize him,” said the short dark-haired man, looking up at me from under my nose. “It’s the filthy idiot that we admitted last night, and on whom we were thinking...”
“But in that case,” retorted the tall blond, “where did the chap who was lying here, and who’s now gesticulating like a man possessed, come from?”
“We’re the victims of abominable machination,” declared Portius Barnett, “and this man has been hired by our enemies!”
“No, no,” I hastened to say. “I’m simply a reporter from the Universal Informer. I what was happening in the mysterious establishments of your company. Thanks to this man’s ticket of admission, I was able to get this far—and now I know.”
This declaration, instead of calming things down, one provoked a rumble of fury that was followed by a violent explosion of wrath. I thought that they were about to fall upon me and that, in spite of everything, my final hour had well and truly arrived. Those men, however, who had decided only a short while before, to execute a poor defenseless idiot in cold blood, hesitated before attacking me, and I took advantage of that brief moment to shout that I was a French citizen, that the consul and my ambassador had been notified of my presence in the headquarters of the Immortality Co. Ltd., and that if they touched a single hair on my head it would be so much the worse for them, and for the Republic of the United States.
Portius Barnett stopped his collaborators with a gesture and turned toward me, quivering.
“I take exception in the strongest terms to your behavior. You have entered here like a malefactor to steal our secrets. Whether you’re French or Iroquois, no legislation can tolerate such a violation of a domicile, but that hardly matters. There is something much more serious for us: you have seen experiments whose true significance escapes you; you have heard things said that you have certainly misinterpreted; you must not, after leaving his house, bring discredit, scorn and shame upon our company. You must not! I won’t stand for it! Come with me.”
The philosopher dragged me into the corridor, holding me by the arm, and began to plead his case with a strange vehemence.
“We’re all men of science. The promised hundred million dollars are less tempting to us than the glory of being the first to penetrate the unknown of death. Our clinicians, the most famous in the Union, are making a special study of mental maladies, and when, alas, a death occurs, my anatomists search here for the relationships that might exist between thought and anomalies of the brain. They have already made considerable discoveries in that direction.”
As we came out of the main door and climbed back up to the esplanade, he went on: “But research into the substance of our organism only constitutes a tiny part of our program. Our physicists complete the work of our psychologists by studying the products of the reactions of life: fluids, radiations and waves corresponding to thought, will, the sentiments, the imagination, etc., etc.
“The results obtained with respect to that order of phenomena are surprising. From fluids, we have been led to occupy ourselves with spirits. What underlies magic and spiritualism? We have made appeals to the most authentic mages, the most renowned mediums and magnetizers, and I am forced to confess that they have achieved entirely convincing stabilizations of spirits, and isolations of souls. It only remains for us now to interpret scientifically the prodigies of their empiricism, to inaugurate the wireless telephone that will link our world to the other. We have the goal in sight; I might almost say that in my soul and consciousness, it has been attained!”
Portius Barnett stopped, as if in ecstasy, intoxicated by the emphatic speech he had just made. After a pause, I hazarded an observation timidly.
“The experiment that I was able to witness did not, it seemed to me, produce the result that you expected. Then again, I thought I remarked between your section heads a certain…I won’t say hostility, but rivalry, which makes it difficult for you to reconcile their different ways of seeing. Who can ever bring into agreement spritualists, radiationists and materialists, those who believe in immortality, limited survival or annihilation?”
“Me,” he replied in the tone of a man who has just made a strong resolution.
We then found ourselves near the buildings of the Physiological Department. Portius Barnett summoned his collaborators and told us to go into the experimental laboratory—the same one I which, scarcely an hour earlier, the electrician had been resuscitated. He switched all the lights on, went to the operating table, and, speaking this time with a solemn and impressive calm, said:
“Gentlemen and dear collaborators, like me you’re awaiting with tortuous anxiety the definitive experiment that will unite all our efforts in a bundle of proofs affirming a unique verity. Like you, I thought that tomorrow would not dawn without your having seen the coronation of your efforts; hazard had procured us an exceptional subject; providence did not want to abandon us. Drawn in pursuit of the truth with all the ardor of our convictions, we would not have hesitated to sacrifice a life that we thought futile and miserable, in order to endow humankind with the greatest gift that it would have received since the creation of the world. An event that I cannot qualify has reminded us that we did not have the right to dispose of that life.
“Tomorrow, the man that was about to be your subject will go abroad, proclaiming that we wanted to murder him, that the establishments of our company are a lair of murderers and torturers, that our invalids are our victims, that we carry out on them, as has already been insinuated, mortal vivisections. You know, however, that I have always opposed similar research, in spite of the keen desire we all had, knowing that it was the only means by which we could resolve the formidable problem. In any case, tomorrow, opinion aroused against us will put the entire apparatus of justice in motion; your sanctuary will be violated, your laboratories sacked, your instruments put under seal; you will be put in prison, and your work—our work—will be irredeemably lost!”
A shiver ran through the audience. Once again I began to tremble for my life. It was no longer a matter of death by surprise or vengeance, but death by necessity. My disappearance had become indispensable to the smooth functioning of the Immortality Co. Ltd., and obligatory for the security of the director and his aides.
I was wondering whether, in order to abridge my suffering. I should submit to the mercy of those gentlemen’s anesthetic, when the philosopher went on forcefully:
“Well, my dear collaborators, that shall not be; your hope will not be disappointed, your efforts will receive the coronation that they merit. The decisive experiment will be carried out; it will take place right now!”
A formidable cheer welcomed these words. I was surrounded. Seized by the arms, the torso and the legs, I felt myself lifted up like a feather and carried to the operating table.
With an abrupt movement, Portius Barnett had undressed and he was already lying down, holding the chloroform mask, ready to apply it to his face. I was dropped to the ground, in order that they might interrupt their master’s gesture—but he pushed away those who wanted to prevent him from committing suicide.
“Leave me be—soon I shall speak to you in the evocation chamber; go to the receivers.” And as they persisted, he added, very calmly: “Don’t deprive me of the joy of being the first to enter into communication with you.”
The disciples hesitated, and I saw that they were about to let him accomplish that act of sublime folly—but I, whose life the man had, after all, just saved twice over, leapt forward and tore the murderous mask from his hands.
“I can’t,” I
cried, involuntarily, “be the cause of your death. I believe in the honesty and the integrity of your research! I promise you that I will only speak of it eulogistically, to destroy to the extent that I can the absurd legends that are circulating with regard to your company. I hope that an opportunity will soon arise for you to confirm your audacious hypotheses by experiment; and on that day, it is necessary that you shall be in the midst of our collaborators to receive the felicitations and thanks of all humankind!”
The philosopher John Wilfrid Theobald Portius Barnett shook my hand, without saying a word, stood up and allowed his aides to put his clothes on again. Then he asked them to provide me with a snack, took amiability as far as to offer me an overcoat and hat, and only parted from me at the door.
“Say clearly,” he repeated, one last time, “that we have it: certainty!”
And the tall bond fellow added, in my right ear: “Immortality!”
While the short dark-haired men murmured to my left: “Oblivion!”
XII. Epilogue
In different parts of the Union, more discoveries were indicated to me, some more interesting than others—for instance, thinking automata, individuals provided with new senses, children obtained artificially, that of an astronomer who had succeeded in modifying universal gravity, etc., etc. Finding myself well-documented with regard to the world of the future, I thought it prudent to suspend my investigation. I therefore announced my return to the editor to the Universal Informer, and a few days later, I was in his office.
I experience a genuine embarrassment in reporting here the amiable words with which my boss greeted me. He wanted to thank me for my professional zeal and congratulate me on the conscientious fashion in which I had accomplished my mission. My colleagues in reportage, he affirmed, had only seen the United States superficially thus far; I had penetrated the utmost depths of the American soul, had discovered the New World for a second time, and he was on the brink of comparing me to Christopher Columbus.
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