The Blue Peril

by Maurice Renard

  One may conclude that all the sarvants resemble one another, and that they go naked.

  A little while ago, the Englishman, my neighbor, had a fainting fit. He exhibited all the symptoms of being placed under the bell-jar of some pneumatic machine; then he gradually recovered consciousness. But the walls of his cell weren’t coated in frost; in consequence, the pressure must have weakened without the temperature being lowered.

  Was it an experiment? I don’t like it. I’ve said ‘cell;’ I should have said ‘padded cell.’ My neighbor is mad—and others too!

  O joy! O joy! I definitely seem to have glimpsed, in the far distance, a certain grey dress…and not far away, I recognized Henri Monbardeau, although with difficulty. How thin he is!

  July 7. It’s always at night that they bring us food, without our being able to see anything. It’s also by night that our cabins are cleaned. Found, on awakening, my ration of carrots and my ration of water.

  By searching the aerium with my binoculars, I’ve discovered the provision-store on the ground floor—a heap of vegetables stolen from Earthly kitchen-gardens—and the cistern of pure water, perhaps from a spring on the Colombier or extracted, one drop at a time, from the atmospheric sea.

  What a horrible penned herd we make! A thousand filthy details…a house of glass in which no one has any privacy…and then, the mortal terror of modesty…

  About eleven o’clock, through the gaps in the humus, perceived something like a little pill, which soon disappeared. It could only be a balloon.

  Having taken out my revolver to examine it, what imploring gazes I saw directed towards me! Some pointed to their foreheads, like targets, one opened his shirt to show me the place where his heart was. Do they even know whether my Browning’s bullets could reach them?

  The sarvants: what can they be? Haunted by that question.

  At half past three, again saw a balloon moving down below. Dirigible. It must be extremely high, for I could see it quite clearly with my binoculars. What does that signify? Has the spot been seen, and are people trying to get close to it?

  These hours of idleness, lulled by the sound of the valves, are desperately long. I’m raking my brains with regard to the sarvants…

  These beings, living in the void where the presence of a liquid is impossible, can’t have any blood! These people are invisible and dry. They must be more different from human beings than the inhabitants of a planet that is unimaginably distant from the Earth, but which is endowed with a similar atmosphere. The substance of this invisible world must have nothing in common with that of our central world. The sarvants have souls united with bodies that are not made of the old traditional matter. They are forms of ether, or electricity, or of God knows what, which is doubtless concentrated…

  Why not? We humans always think of ourselves as paragons! We always imagine that there is nothing beyond us in the scale of living beings! And we think we know everything, can foresee everything, can imagine everything! If a creature were made of water, would we be able to see it in the water? Well then, if a creature were made of air, could we see it in the air? Creatures the color of water, or the color of air…but in fact, that’s simply a phenomenon of mimicry! Besides, since it’s possible, and even probable, that invisible planets exist, this world even becomes, by virtue of that fact, perfectly natural.

  But how are the sarvants conformed? What contours would they present to our eyes in becoming visible?—they and their vegetables, their animals, and this entire universe over which they seem to reign? I’ve looked hard at the humus in the nursery, searching it for their footprints, but I haven’t seen any. Oh, how much progress we poor humans will have to make in order to get up here, to live here, to observe here!

  It’s still necessary that I inform humankind, that I reveal the existence of the superaerian world…and that, I still don’t know to do.

  The grey dress is no longer visible. Time drags so slowly. Are we all going to die here? Was my sacrifice futile?

  July 8. Yesterday and today, the invisible fishers only brought animals.

  Yet more balloons. ‘A balloon is a buoy,’ Nadar said.44 Never has that seemed more true to me. They can only make very tiny leaps toward us! But doesn’t that prove that the aerium has been sighted?

  Midday. Certain animals, now, are paired up; the sarvants are undertaking experiments in breeding. They’ve differentiated the sexes, but they’re still mistaken with regard to species. Thus they’ve put a fox in with a wolf, which made haste to devour it. The unfortunate carnivores are on a vegetarian diet, and the wolf wasn’t displeased with the little snack. That must have astonished the invisible biologists!

  2 p.m. Saw Floflo, Madame Arquedouve’s pet dog. He seems to be in good health.

  3 p.m. Revolting! The invisibles are treating us like animals. There are now cells inhabited by human couples, which they have paired up. The prisoners thus united are chatting to one another sadly, but one can see that being able to talk about their distress has reduced its bitterness. Unfortunately, there are mad people, and the sarvants seem to be incapable of understanding madness and the dangers that one might run in being brought into its presence…

  These singular marriages are multiplying. It’s obviously dresses and trousers that serve as a basis for the learned experimenters to determine femininity and masculinity; have they not coupled Maxime with a venerable curé in a soutane? Maxime and the priest are conversing in a very animated fashion.

  4:20 p.m. The sarvants have installed Madame Fabienne Monbardeau with her old admirer, Raflin! An unexpected coincidence! The unfortunate Raflin has lost his dressing-gown—otherwise, I think, they would have taken him for a woman. He’s in his underpants and makes a dismal sight, so gloomy and skeletal. He’s taking no notice of his companion except for trying to steal her ration of beetroot. Henri Monbardeau, who is sharing the cell of a peasant-girl, looks at them like a man intoxicated…

  Myself I’m still alone in my invisible cabin. O little grey dress I glimpsed the other day…! Yes, but I’m the only one who remains a bachelor in the sarvant mode…except for—terror! There are still the mad! And—oh my God!—there’s the great ape!

  6 p.m. I’ve just this second perceived the face of Mademoiselle Suzanne Monbardeau. When I recognized her, and the very back of the groups, I searched for the grey dress.

  July 9. Seen many more balloons again, minuscule particles of ash. So what?

  3:15 p.m. One of my cell’s valve-flaps has slowed down. Is it about to stop? An experiment? That’s a dire possibility. Multitude of scraping sounds on the wall and in the corridor…

  [From this point until the end of the red notebook, Robert Collin’s handwriting becomes unsteady, undulating and jerky, each page becoming increasingly laborious and irregular. The next page is covered with illegible arabesques.]

  July 10. It was an experiment in rarefaction. It left me with a general numbness akin to paralysis. I can’t stand up, and I’ve been trying to write, without success, for several hours. Just as long as I have the strength to do what I have to do!

  The wolf that killed the fox is dead—also, killed, I believe. Retribution? Justice? Don’t know where its corpse has been discarded.

  Spent ten hours writing these few lines.

  July 11. The sarvants have been coming up from the Earth all night. The ground floor of the square is getting bigger.

  July 12. Have not been calm since that semi-paralysis. Dirty, lonely, anguished, impotent. Egoism, save for Marie-Thérèse. Tedium, tedium. Enervation. And yet, I’m the one who’s brought useful objects: toilet-bag, binoculars and this blessed notebook! The others have nothing! They envy me when they see me combing my hair, writing, observing the Earth. Oh, the good old Earth!

  July 13. Made inspection of the walls of my cell—in the insupportable anguish of being seen by some invisible guard. Impossible to scratch anything whatsoever with a knife; nothing pulverizes it; like glass. Located the valve-flaps quite easily. At the base of the
wall, two orifices of pipes, and one above them, making a triangle, one to let out the vitiated air, the others to let in pure air; one can feel the currents. I don’t understand the mechanism. The flaps are quite far back in the pipes; can scarcely touch them with fingertips.

  July 14. Veritable eruption of aerostats today. A spherical one came up very high; I diverted myself by following it through the gap at the nadir, which permits me to see Bugey.

  Nightfall interrupted my observation. I’m writing by starlight, because I can see incomprehensible glimmers beneath us. Ah—fireworks! July 14! National holiday! We’re here, in the sarvants’ realm, and our fellow citizens are holding pyrotechnic displays!

  July 15. We have new comrades: four men wrapped up in furs. Near the Anglefort statue—the Watteau gardener—the gondola of a balloon, rigging, a flaccid and torn envelope on which I can see letters, a name half-hidden by a crease in the rubber-lined silk: LE SYL…probably Le Sylph.

  I no longer experience any surprise in seeing people suspended in mid-air, nor things that move by themselves. The ink-black sky and its excessive stars, the degraded crown of the aerial sea…I’m indifferent to it all; the fate of my co-detainees is irrelevant to me. And yet, what a nightmarish horror, this exposition of my peers! I understand now why I’ve always found wax museums repugnant—it’s because they evoke the idea of a human museum.

  July 17. Among other things, last night enriched the aerium with an acacia branch. Now, that branch hasn’t stopped moving. An invisible pocket-knife cuts into it, splits it; the bark and pith are carefully scrutinized.

  July 18. No more balloons. Henri Monbardeau has quit the peasant-woman’s cell for another, which I can’t see. Bad luck has ensured that throughout these exchanges Mademoiselle Marie-Thérèse has remained behind the mass of individuals. Thought of the treatment to which she might be subjected makes me more anxious than ever.

  I’ve seen her, I think. That blonde hair with its silvery iridescence can only be hers.

  By virtue of the empty spaces between the internees, one can quite easily imagine the architecture of the aerium, its corridors. Quite symmetrical. I search in vain to explain the purpose of the large gap in the middle of the façade, next to my cabin. Are there cabinets left vacant on every floor? If so, why? Is it a cavity in the building? Again, if so, what purpose does it serve? Is it a great hall whose floor is on the ground floor and whose ceiling is on the top floor? A conference hall?

  The sarvants are growing crops. The square of humus they added the other day is a field of carrots—for our use, presumably.

  The sarvants have been disabused with regard to our clothes. This is how: a madwoman took her clothes off. A few minutes later, others were stripped. Oh, the poor folk—what distraught faces! They were allowed to get dressed again. In the final analysis, though, by whom? In consequence of this, that ape has been taken down to the animal floor; I even saw them trying to take off his fur. Oof! I can breathe again…

  This is better still: the four aeronauts from the Syl…, who haven’t taken off their furs, have also been taken down a level. The sarvants didn’t even take the trouble to see whether their goatskins and sealskins were immovable! They assumed without further ado that they were monkeys.

  July 20. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to write. This notebook! Which needs to be so complete! In the final analysis, the essential thing is that it’s sent.

  [Nothing for July 21, 22, 23 or 24. Several pages filled with calculations, unskillful and awkward drawings. The word Marie-Thérèse written everywhere, in all directions, sometimes crossed out. Then a drawing that is surely an attempted portrait of the young woman.]

  July 25. I know the purpose of the empty halls.

  July 26. Yesterday, I was still shaking too much to write. It’s frightful, what I’ve seen. I saw, there, right next to me, a naked man, lying down at my height. I saw, imprinted in his pale and shivering flesh, the red tracks of invisible bonds immobilizing him. They want to know how we’re constructed! Oh! Sudden gashes! Abrupt injuries! The appearance of wounds that open without the instruments of torture being perceptible! And that screaming mouth! And all the blood! All the blood! I couldn’t watch any longer; I turned away…

  Then I saw the others who were watching that, fascinated, their eyes wide with horror—but in that petrified crowd, something black was moving. It was Maxime’s old priest, making large signs of the cross. He was moving his arms in benediction. The crowd of prisoners knelt down in front of him. Our eyes no longer left his lips, which moved with a suggestion of eloquence, pronouncing words—words that Maxime alone could hear...

  The old priest kept his arms extended in the form of a living cross, and he began to turn round and round, so that all of us could contemplate the crucifix, instead of the hideous spectacle that was shedding blood beside me.

  Maxime was livid, at the old curé’s feet. I saw him once again, in his laboratory at Mirastel, covered in blood: covered in the blood of animals, the construction of which he wanted to know! Alas, what do we do to animals? Cain, what hast thou done with thy brother?

  They butchered that man alive…alive, and therefore in breathable air…so they have diving-suits of some sort in order to vivisect fish in their aquatic element…

  I no longer look in that direction.

  The sarvants cannot be creatures larger than us. The dimensions of the corridors, the height of the floors, proves it.

  July 27. The unfortunates! The unfortunates! The frightful torture! It has continued. It is continuing…

  On the lower floor, the pig has been transported into the empty chamber beneath the tortured man. It has begun to suffer those unparalleled agonies that will augment the science and the importance of the sarvants.

  Scraping sounds swarm about my cell; the crowd is jostling to get a better view of the operation…

  July 28. They’re little cuts…little cuts made by little blades…careful, scrupulous work…

  Down below, a large snake is in the process of suffering…and after that, which animal next? And after the man, who? Which woman? Oh, my God, which woman? It’s enough to drive one mad!

  Blood—the blood they don’t possess, that vital liquid forbidden to their anatomy—seems to intrigue the sarvants. They gather all the different kinds of shed blood together in a single invisible jar, and, curiously enough, have already found a means that prevents them from coagulating.

  A white heifer is next to pay her debt to the science of the Invisibles. The column of blood mounts within the jar. The man is still alive.

  It’s not possible that the sarvants understand how much suffering humans undergo.

  The serpent is in pieces. Thus, in their classification, the serpent is at the very bottom and the bird at the very top. They have given the first rank to those that are able to approach them most closely and most easily. Come on! They aren’t much more intelligent than we are! (Haven’t I said that already?)

  July 30. The man isn’t dead; the white heifer is in agony. In the operating-room on the bird floor, a bat is dying. A bat with the birds!

  July 31. I no longer sleep; I dread too many things. I always keep my hand on my revolver.

  Last night, beneath the Moon, which made the ring of the atmospheric sea shine from afar, I witnessed the removal of the remains of the heifer. They were taken to the aerian port, and thrown down from there.

  The jar of blood is like the shaft of a column made of rubies. From time to time, invisible things plunge into it. For an hour, the mixture has been continually agitated by a stirrer; while I’ve been writing, bottles have been filled and taken away—to be studied. I can see red liquid in various forms being taken away in every direction.

  Thus, for the Invisibles, we’re crustaceans. They catch us and study us as we catch and study them—but does the parallel stop at that resemblance? We eat crustaceans…and when I think about an American lobster…

  August 1. Today. For 16 days—since the arrival of the Syl…—t
he sarvants haven’t captured any humans. It’s quite plausible, on the one hand, that the Bugists no longer go out at all, and that, on the other, the sarvants have completely risking themselves beyond the depths of their sea.

  The man is dead. Whose turn is it next? Whose turn?

  August 2. They’re continuing the dissection of the poor wretch’s limbs. That might last for some time yet.

  August 3. They threw him away this morning, in broad daylight. They’ve thrown his remains into the sea. And they’ve also thrown away all the blood, under the influence of God knows what inexplicable idea, perhaps superstitious…

  August 4. I’ve been here a month, impotent, seeing this world bathed in light, a prisoner of a world like a strange night without darkness, as if in dazzling shadow.

  I, who so wanted to see Marie-Thérèse at closer range, now dread nothing more than that—seeing her at close range!

  It’s a madness: they’re cutting everything up, butchering everything. Branches quiver and lose their leaves one by one, then break and are divided into a thousand cuttings. Stones split, with an apparent spontaneity. Birds, mammals and fish are covered with gashes. But the operating theater for humans is empty, for the moment.

  It isn’t any longer. If there’s a Providence, I need to give thanks; it’s not Marie-Thérèse—but I can no longer look in that direction.