Polarian-Denebian War 6: Prisoners of the Past

by Jimmy Guieu

  “Hey! Hey! Over there!”

  They turned around and saw a group of men, women and children running as fast as they could in their direction. Dressed in the normal clothes of 1961 they surrounded them, showing signs of great relief.

  “Well,” Yuln sighed, “I have the feeling that we weren’t the only ones caught in the Space-Time fold.”

  A man around 40 years old, who had taken the lead of the small group of 15 to 20 people of both sexes stepped forward and held out his hand to the anthropologist. “I’m Maurice Leconte, engineer. You’re Dr. Kariven, aren’t you? I recognize you from seeing all the photos in the papers, as well as Messieurs Dormoy and Angelvin.”

  The men, women and children who had followed Leconte were babbling and rambling.

  “I don’t think I’m wrong to assume that we’ve been caught in a space-time fold? I came to this conclusion when I remembered your statements to the press about Nagasaki.”

  “That’s right, Monsieur Leconte,” Kariven agreed. “We’re… prisoners of the Past. Probably in the last century.”

  At these words the crowd fell silent, but not for long because a chorus of protests and crying broke out.

  Raising his voice, the anthropologist spoke wisely, “Whining or wailing isn’t doing us any good, my friends. We need to come up with a plan of action to get together all the Parisians… from 1961, who were dragged back into this era like us. In groups or alone our contemporaries are going to start panicking and might commit desperate acts that we have to prevent at all costs. In the first place, does anyone know exactly what year we’re in?”

  The engineer took a newspaper out of his pocket and gave it to Kariven. “I found this paper in Champ de Mars—La Tribune of Raspail, dated August 29, 1843. It’s in perfect condition, so it must be either from yesterday or today.”

  “Good. So, it’s the end of August 1843 and we were carried 118 years into the past. Let’s see, in the reign of Louis-Philippe. I propose we split up in groups of three or four and go searching around Champ de Mars for our… partners in misfortune. When the groups find anyone from 1961 they can give them the same advice: bring our contemporaries together into a ‘clan’ so that we can make a decision about our… security in this past century.

  “We’ll all meet between 7 and 8 pm in Place Joffre… which in 1843 obviously had another name but you all know where it is—at the SSW end of Champ de Mars. Does everyone agree?”

  The plan was accepted unanimously.

  Kariven concluded, “You’ll obviously be meeting other people, soldiers and… the police in your search. In no case should you be hostile to them. You’ll probably be causing quite a stir, with your strange clothes in this time, wherever you go. If any of you are arrested, tell the authorities the time and place of your meeting point and stay respectful, courteous… and diplomatic. Do your best to explain our situation by pointing out how many people like you there are, which should naturally seem suspicious. As for my friends and I, we’re going to contact the police or some other authority to try to… sort things out.”

  Turning directly to the engineer, he added, “Monsieur Leconte, would you take charge of directing the ‘roundup’ operation while we go check out the Bigwigs of this epoch?”

  “Gladly. It’ll keep me from thinking too much about this damned pickle we’ve got ourselves into. Good luck!”

  The anthropologist took off in his Regence followed by Dormoy’s Versailles and the Angelvins’ DS 19. The three cars got onto Avenue de la Motte-Picquet, confusing the Parisians of 1843 who froze in astonishment on seeing them approach. Women and children ran away screaming, sometimes imitated by men.

  Carriages, stagecoaches and men on horseback hastily pulled over to the sidewalk although the horses neighed and stamped the ground furiously.

  “You can’t say we’re passing unnoticed,” Yuln remarked worriedly. “Where are we going, dear?”

  “To the Academy of Sciences before getting in contact with the authorities. If anyone can understand and accept our strange adventure, we’ll find them there and not among the police and politicians.”

  “On the condition that the scientists or authorities of this time have a more open mind than their colleagues in the future. Remember their ridiculous position, their determination to fight against the extraterrestrial origins of flying saucers… before our Polarian brothers came on board their spaceships to Earth? Neither a demonstration of my telepathic abilities nor the proof of my paroptic vision was enough to convince them before.”

  Leaving their cars in front of the austere building of the Academy of Sciences, the three young couples climbed the front steps—before the bewildered gaze of passers-by—and entered the lobby. A page in an old-fashioned uniform, with graying sideburns, mumbled something, staring at them like sideshow freaks.

  “Would the Permanent Secretary see us?” the anthropologist asked politely, ignoring the man’s troubled stare.

  The page loosened his collar and swallowed hard before stepping back and stammering, “The Permanent Secretary… is very busy. I… I’ll see if… Who should I say is calling?”

  Puzzled, the anthropologist thought for a moment and decided to give him his card. A few minutes later, still alarmed, the page asked the extravagant visitors to follow him.

  When they entered the big room with walls covered in books and in the middle of which stood a huge ministry desk, a man stood up. Dressed in a dark gray frock coat, his neck wound with a kind of white silk scarf-tie, his graying hair a mess, he looked around 50 years old. His piercing eyes were riveted on the newcomers and his energetic face showed both surprise and annoyance.

  François Arago,4 Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, Deputy of the East Pyrenees, a great scientist of the last century, specialist in optics with a passion for electromagnetism, furrowed his brow. “What’s this bad joke all about? This isn’t a masked ball! I’m surprised that you have the audacity to come here dressed up like this!”

  He glanced at the business card handed to him by the page, turned it over and played with it thoughtfully.

  Then he asked, “Which one of you is Dr. Jean Kariven?”

  The one in question bowed slightly and stepped forward. “I’m Jean Kariven, Monsieur Ar… Permanent Secretary. And before explaining the reason for our visit, allow me to introduce my companions.”

  Having thus respected the rules of decorum, he was about to continue when Arago, after once again examining the card, asked, “What is this… number 306-81-77 under your address?”

  “That’s my pho…”

  Kariven did not finish, not wanting for the moment to explain to the great scientist what a telephone was, an invention that would not see the light of day until 1876, long after the death of Arago, who was growing impatient and irritated.

  “If you won’t explain the meaning of this number, are you going to tell me object of your visit?”

  “I’m getting there, Monsieur Arago. First of all, and in order to clear your mind of any idea of fraud or pranks that you would be right to suspect, would you be willing to examine our… vehicles?”

  “Your… vehicles?” he looked sour. “Oh, well, that! Do you think I’m a carpenter?”

  “Certainly not!” Kariven was amused by his indignant response. “They’re nothing like the horse-drawn vehicles but rather… mechanically driven machines.”

  Argo looked exceedingly offended. “Enough of this, messieurs! Would you please leave me alone!”

  At this moment the office door opened and the page entered, followed by six municipal guards with their feathered caps and their hands on the hilts of their swords.

  “What is it?”

  Very embarrassed, the page bowed deeply and stammered, “Please excuse me, Permanent Secretary, but I thought I heard you call the guards. The strange… machines of these visitors inspires no confidence in me and I feared…”

  “What machines?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Arago opened the glas
s door, stepped out onto the balcony and leaned over to inspect the street. He gripped hard onto the cast iron railing, leaned over more, and turned around, astonished, to face his visitors. “What are those… metal machines?”

  Disturbed by the turn of events, Kariven responded with a proposition, “It would be preferable if we explain everything to you… confidentially.”

  After a brief hesitation Arago waved away the page and the guards who left but remained stationed in the corridor around the office door, ready to intervene at the first call of the deputy. Preoccupied and fascinated by what he had just seen from his balcony, he invited his guests to sit down. With his elbows on his desk, his fingertips touching each other before his lips, he waited.

  Kariven, after countless digressions, juggling his words so as not to alarm his illustrious host, begged him not to fight against the apparent enormity of his explanation as he struggled to tell him the course of their adventure. His friends jumped in from time to time to emphasize a detail or to present a different angle to a point of view that seemed obscure to their host.

  When he had finished speaking, the anthropologist wiped his forehead and to calm his nervous tension lit a Lucky cigarette after automatically offering one to the Deputy, who refused.

  Shaken up, François Arago stood up, paced a little in his office, stopped, ran his hand nervously through his hair and said, “It’s unthinkable! You seem sincere but… I’m afraid I can’t accept your statements as truth. It’s all so fantastic, so astonishing!”

  He thought for a long moment, bit his lower lip and declared, “Let’s go see your… automoving machines. That might convince me.”

  A big crowd was gathering on the opposite sidewalk. A line of guards was encircling the vehicles at a respectful distance, keeping a worried, watchful eye on the crazy machines whose chrome glistened in the sun. The guards separated to give way to Arago and his visitors from the future.

  Kariven lifted the hood of the Regence and invited the scientist to examine the engine as he explained how the gas worked in an internal combustion engine. François Arago was both troubled and deeply interested. For one hour he questioned his demonstrator, making him explain the nature and function of various parts of this mechanical marvel. He even accepted Kariven’s invitation to sit next to him and watch his automatic gestures to start it up.

  The crowd shrank in fear to the wall when the Regence took off, gained speed and honked its horn at the intersection. It made a tour of the neighborhood at 55 miles an hour before pulling up at the Academy of Sciences again.

  Full of contradictory emotions, Arago stepped out of the vehicle and leaned against the hood for a minute. His heart was racing. “This is the most extraordinary thing a human being could ever experience,” he confessed. “A vehicle moving silently by itself and at such incredible speed… it’s unbelievable!”

  “For us this is very natural,” Angelvin assured him, amused by his fascination. “In 1961 and for decades before, millions of people on Earth drive in cars that don’t surprise anyone anymore. Airplanes—flying machines—soar off from one continent to another at more than 600 mph. Rockets are shot hundreds of thousands of miles into space. Beings from another planet even landed on ours, coming in spaceships from a solar system around the Pole Star and since then, thanks to the progress they gave our civilization, all nations are united.”

  “But,” Dormoy explained, “before that the most dreadful wars pitted people against each other and destroyed continents. Bombs converting matter into energy, in part, razed cities and killed tens of thousands people in a split second. Big cities were utterly destroyed by these atomic bombs but also by traditional TNT bombs. Some…”

  “Be quiet!” the scientist groaned, closing his eyes. “Follow me.”

  Back in the Deputy’s office Kariven and his friends sat down without saying a word, intrigued by the sudden turnaround in their host’s attitude.

  Arago’s teeth were clenched as he stared hard at them with cold, almost hateful eyes. “And this is the civilization of the future? A civilization built on collective murder and founded on millions of corpses? What demented brain dared to invent a bomb that you tell me partly converts matter into energy? What authoritative monsters pushed their people to massacre other people like that? Are you proud of this horrible slaughter? Is this the painful price to pay for future generations to build a… civilized society? Flying? Mechanized? Is this really the civilization of your Time?”

  Uncomfortable now they could not help admitting to themselves the justice of this violent indictment.

  Arago took a deep breath and seeing their frowns added, “A strange accident that I don’t understand very well at all threw you and your vehicles… and your knowledge into our era. I cannot reasonably hold you responsible.”

  He paused, breathed heavily, flaring his nostrils, then slammed his fist down on his desk. “But at no price do I want your knowledge or your revelations to make the science of our times progress even one iota. No doubt some of your specialties could be used to our benefit, but in accepting to use them we would be starting on a dangerous slope. It might end up very treacherous to change evolution, whether by stopping or speeding it up.

  “What would happen, for example, if thanks to your information we built a bunch of these… automobile vehicles? First the ruin of carriages, stagecoaches, blacksmiths and a whole series of occupations that relies on, if I may call it thus… animal locomotion.

  “Then an economic upheaval would follow, probably preceded by a much more deadly war than in the past. There would always be enemy agents trying to steal the secrets of manufacturing these vehicles. In a few years we would have to confront the threat of invasion. Imagine a strong foreign power with an army of these vehicles moving at lightning speed? And equipping them with powerful cannons?

  “And not to mention the crazy sword of Damocles that this diabolical bomb of energy from matter represents for the people. By revealing to us your secrets, you would be committing the murder of…”

  “Rest assured, Monsieur Arago,” Kariven broke in, “even if we knew the principles of the atomic bomb, we wouldn’t be able to give you the secret of its fabrication.”

  Arago waved away the objection and continued, “It doesn’t matter! We have to leave Time to follow its normal course and civilization will follow without hindering it or hurrying it up. Your place is not here in this era… Mesdames and Messieurs. Your presence alone constitutes a danger to our country and even the world. Although your arrival astonished the Parisians, they don’t know where you came from or the exact nature of your knowledge. I’m the only one who knows your secret… and I will remain the only one to know it. Guards!” he boomed out.

  The six guards burst into the room, swords in hand.

  Kariven and his friends jumped up. Dormoy took a step forward pointing his Colt 11.25.

  “Don’t shoot, Michel!” the anthropologist shouted.

  The guards circled them, waiting for orders from the Deputy.

  “I advise you to throw down your weapon, Monsieur Dormoy,” Arago said. “Your friend has perfectly understood that all resistance is useless.”

  “Don’t fool yourself,” Kariven replied. “It’s not to surrender that I said that to Dormoy. We could very well fight back and probably without firing a shot get out of this predicament. But by fighting these men we would be disturbing the course of History and make changes with unforeseeable consequences in the present society. We don’t know, for example, if one of these men might not become the father of a scientist, a great thinker or a genius. By killing him to escape, we would be removing this future person from History and this we don’t want. That’s why I prefer to give in… and wait.”

  “But just coming into our era has already influenced History, since we can’t manage to completely suppress the event. You’ve made contact with me, with these guards, with people who saw you together, who saw your machines in the street. How do you think that these events can be erased fr
om our present time?”

  Arago’s pertinent objection troubled the mind of Kariven and his friends.

  The Deputy stared at them with pity. “I’m truly sorry for you because I’m forced to put you under house arrest… all the while knowing that you’ve committed no offense voluntarily.”

  “Under… house arrest?”

  “At least for the time being. I’ll think about this extraordinary adventure and decide your fate later. But rest assured, no harm will come to you. You’ll probably be exiled so no human being will be able to contact you. Goodbye… and I’m sorry for these extreme measures.”

  “But… That’s impossible! Wait!” Kariven was outraged. “We have to get back to Champ de Mars! That area is stuck in the Space-Time fold and will sooner or later be freed and go back to our era. If we don’t get back there, we’ll be stuck here forever and…”

  “Sorry but I can’t run the risk of letting you loose.”

  He bowed as a farewell and left them to the guards.

  A double row of guards were blocking the street to the right and left of the main entrance to the Academy of Sciences. Other men, under Arago’s orders, were covering the “automobile vehicles” with tarps to hide them. Then some horses were “hitched” to the vehicles and started huffing and puffing, trying to drag them away. With the brakes on, however, the tires screeched across the pavement.

  After a few hours of hard work the three cars were dragged into the courtyard of the Academy, safe from the prying eyes of the crowd that the guards dispersed with waving arms and threats.

  “Lieutenant, set up a permanent patrol around these machines,” the Deputy ordered. “And make sure your men don’t let anything slip out. There’re already enough people who saw the demonstration of how they work. I myself will make sure to deny any rumors that will certainly start running around about these… machines and their owners.