Suspended in the middle of the empty space, Arnold crawled, slid and slithered through the invisible layout of the cabins. Having painted the body of the aeroscaph, he joined his assistants and continued his magical work.
The pincer-secaturs and their basket disappeared into a saffron tower that resembled the chimney of a steamboat. The audience shivered; its members had recognized the cylinder in which so many captives had been abandoned to so much terror…
But the air was partitioned by walls, ceilings and floors; cells accumulated around the machinery and the equipment. The aeroscaph was reminiscent of a vessel that had been constructed in reverse order to others, commencing where one would normally finish; the hull was still lacking. To coat it, Arnold and his assistants, mounted on ladders, spread arnoldine around in broad strokes. Piece by piece, the entrails of the subaerian were hidden behind the rigid and bulbous sulfur curtain that they deployed in a magical fashion.
Finally, the layer of arnoldine being complete, a long canary-yellow cigar stood within the scaffolding. Faced with a resemblance that the citrus tint further accentuated, everyone was violently astonished.
Arnold went back into the subaerian to daub the bottom of the hull, and when he re-emerged through one of the hatches—to the strains of the Swedish national anthem—in order to stand alone in the middle of the arena on the back of the aeroscaph that he seemed to have defeated, it seemed to be his apotheosis.
Color! Color! Principle of visibility without which our eyes would be useless marvels! Color, which justifies in itself the existence of the sense of sight! He had given color to the clandestine matter, and now the whole world could see the invisible!
Arnold bowed. The stains on his smock bathed his gesture in sunlight, and drops of gold fell superbly from his arnoldine-soaked brush.
The crowd withdrew, regretfully. By the time the last spectator had quit the Grand Palais, the paint was dry and a moonless and starless night had fallen, so black that one might have thought that the aeroscaph was still invisible, lost in the darkness that abolishes color and nullifies our eyes.
At the heart of that shadow, while a 15-cent-a-head banquet was alimenting the congress of scientists and celebrating the victory of humans over the invisible, an obscure, inexorable endeavor was being accomplished—an incomprehensible endeavor of unknown, infinitesimal forces; a labor of atoms and corpuscles at work, perhaps in conflict…
It happened in darkness and silence. No one knows how it happened.
Belloir, who came at the crack of dawn to dismantle the scaffolding, found the subaerian no longer there, but merely, in its place, a carpet of canary yellow dust—a very thin carpet of dust refined to the ultimate degree.
They ran in every direction, groping in the air and beating the empty space with long poles. The aeroscaph no longer existed. The Swedish paint, corroding the invisible surface, had consumed it in a matter of hours. The chemist’s glory foundered in ruin and ridicule. He tore out his hair; he did not understand how the aeroscaph had been pulverized, when the specimen, excised from the vessel itself, which he had used in his experiments, had resisted the attack.
Finally, the truth dawned in Arnold’s mind. Among all the treatments to which he had subjected the specimen before succeeding, one bath had undoubtedly possessed the virtue of immunizing it against the harmful action of arnoldine—whereas the aeroscaph itself had not benefited from any such preliminary operation.
One bath—yes, but which one? He had tried so many! Then again, what good would it do to identify it, now that the aeroscaph was no more?
In the meantime, Arnold tried to manufacture the invisible matter, to synthesize that bizarrerie, the analysis of which cost him a thousand torments—only to remain incomplete, the compound producing extravagant reactions with acids. He only succeeded in dissolving several specimens in a demoniac mixture enfevered by alternating currents, and so effective that he destroyed all of the inestimable metal that still remained on the surface by that means.
The unfortunate inventor lost his mind in consequence. His fatherland hospitalized him. He is still in Gothenburg. Sometimes he wants to set off to paint the superaerian continents, in order to reduce them to dust—and sometimes, believing that he has found the antidote to arnoldine, the madman talks about vanishing that transparent vault in order that night should extent forever over ingratitude and irony.
It was in that fashion that the invisible appeared and—hey presto!—disappeared again.
XIX. Tiburce Abandoned
In her white and pink bedroom, very bright in that morning sunlight which makes young ladies’ bedrooms more “young ladies’ bedrooms” than ever, Mademoiselle d’Agnès had just finished dressing. Her maidservant was tidying up a confusion of baubles.
Mademoiselle Jeanne d’Agnès looked at her face in the depths of a mirror, and addressed a little sad grimace to herself, because it was none too beautiful. Then she drew a perpetual calendar closer to her, and pressed the switch that set the day. The calendar marked WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16—and the English carriage-clock chimed 10 a.m.
Almost simultaneously, Mademoiselle Jeanne thought that it was past time for the postman to come, and that for a whole month, Tiburce the fool, Tiburce the madman, Tiburce the reckless had not sent her any news…and that she was 20 years old today.
With her forehead pressed to the window-pane, she watched the chestnut-trees in the Avenue Montaigne shedding their leaves.
Three discreet raps on the door disturbed her reverie.
“Who is it?” she said.
A man’s voice replied, muffled and obsequious. “It’s Monsieur le Duc, Mademoiselle, asking whether Mademoiselle would care to come down to his study for a moment.”
“…?...!” Without saying a word, utterly icy, with her breast quivering, Mademoiselle d’Agnès went to see her brother.
He was standing up, waiting for her; although the light was behind him, she made out his red eyes and his defeated expression. He said to her, point blank, in an extraordinarily gentle and affectionate tone: “Listen, Jeannette…first, listen: you’re still in love with Tiburce, aren’t you? You’re all a-tremble, poor thing! Don’t think…”
“Yes…I love Tiburce…”
“Well, my Jeanneton, you shall marry him. Yes, my little one, you shall marry him anyway. Before, you know, I was silly to oppose your marriage; and afterwards, making it conditional on Tiburce’s success—making your happiness dependent on mine—that was unspeakable egotism. You shall marry him, my child.”
“I thank you with all my heart, François.” She took his hands in hers and spoke timidly. “He…has not succeeded, then? You say that I shall marry him anyway? And you’re weeping!” She embraced him. “He hasn’t succeeded?”
“Damn it!” said the Duc, tremulously. “It’s quite certain that he’ll come unstuck. I don’t know how I was idiot enough to latch on to that hypothesis—but the other, that of the sarvants, was so frightful! I’ve seen another two engineers this morning, and my correspondence…there’s nothing but engineers’ replies. All of them despairing! We’ll never get up there—never, never, never!”
“Do you have a letter from Tiburce?” asked Mademoiselle d’Agnès, softly.
“Yes—here it is. I asked for you in order to let you read it, and to reassure you at the same time.”
She unfolded the letter.
(Item 934)
Ankara, Turkey, 11 October 1912
My dear, oh, very dear friend, forgive me!
Forgive my stupidity! The people I have been pursuing around the world were not those for whom I was searching!
I can see clearly now. Pain has washed my eyes with so many tears!
I was tricked several times into following various travelers, driven by my obsession, less guided by circumstances than by a delusion that I extended myself before my own steps!
Oh, these last weeks! That feverish journey, on horseback, from Basra to here, that gallop through Mesopotamia, along the Ti
gris, in which I gained ground every day on the Yeniserlis and the Rotapouloses. They were not in any hurry themselves, visiting ruins, dallying over landscapes, making a detour via Babylon, returning to Baghdad, exploring the rubble of Nineveh after dropping in on Mosul. They had a fortnight’s start…
I caught up with them between Diyarbakir and Ankara…and I established that they were not Hatkins, Mademoiselle Le Tellier and the Monbardeaus, but two actual young Greek couples, authentic Yeniserils and true Rotapouloses—nice people, in sum, to whom I confided my disillusion and who did their best to console me.
We arrived here together. Ankara is the terminal point of the railway to Constantinople. One day’s journey separates me from the Turkish capital, but I’m worn out by fatigue and annoyance and I intend to stay here—for how long? I don’t know—to rest amid the flowers and the sunlight, thinking of my stupidity as some illness from which I am convalescing. To make a novel of reality! To become Sherlock Holmes! Poor sick fool that I was, alas!
But now, François, I beg you—don’t leave me in despair with regard to Mademoiselle Jeanne. Promise me that perhaps…in time…
Forgive me; I shall finish.
When I think of that, my vision clouds over.
Adieu!
Tiburce
Mademoiselle d’Agnès looked at her brother. “I too, François, am in need of forgiveness. I knew perfectly well that Tiburce would not find Marie-Thérèse, and if I let him go, it’s because I counted on his determination to weaken your resolution. But now that my plan has finally come to fruition, it seems to me that the machination was not very honest…”
“Oh, my love, it’s your diplomacy that has defeated my prejudice! Anyway, calm down—Tiburce would have gone even if you had forbidden it; he was so convinced!”
“That’s possible, and I feel strangely relived in knowing that he’s disabused. Such a fine fellow in such error! But I wonder, François, how you, knowing the truth, let yourself fall prey to his nonsense?”
“Since I learned what the aerium is and what the sarvants are, and that Marie-Thérèse is the sarvants’ prey, in the aerium…that’s what my mind could not support, not mad ideas and encouraging follies!”
“Courage, brother. I love you too. Courage.”
“I shall have it. I have had it. But I’m exhausted…I’ll try to get some sleep. Leave me, my child, will you?”
When his sister had withdrawn, the Duc d’Agnès felt an isolation more absolute than he had desired. Would he not be as alone everywhere, henceforth, as he was in this room? How could one not be alone in the eternal absence of Marie-Thérèse?
He extended toward the sarvants’ sky the threat and the vanity of his fists—and was suddenly overcome by a bitter intoxication, an irresistible desire to suffer and to sob. Ah! Fate considers me a spoiled child. It wants me to be unhappy, does it? Well then, I’ll be unhappy! More unhappy than it wants! Thus humans always pretend to have reasoned with their destiny.
To make his frightful solitude even more mournful, therefore, the Duc thought of enveloping himself in the black shroud of darkness—but such was his aberration that he had forgotten the time. He flipped the electric switch, intending to put out the sun, which he took for a lamp. A ceiling-light came on, yellow and strange in the daylight, like an owl’s eye. Monsieur d’Agnès got a grip on himself again.
“My compliments!” he said, aloud. “That’s how spoiled you’ve become. Oh, no—none of that, my lad! Even if it’s only to see her one last time, dead and disfigured—to carry her amid flowers and put her in the grave—you must live! And live wholly, body and soul! Come on! Have some guts!”
XX. The Disappearance of the Visible
Tiburce’s letter, which had upset François d’Agnès so profoundly, did not have any effect on Monsieur Le Tellier when he received it at Mirastel, by courtesy of the young Duc. The astronomer and his entourage had known the truth of the matter for a long time, and all of them—Maxime, finally cured; Madame Le Tellier, white-haired and blonde at the same time but scarcely thinking about elegance; Madame Arquedouve, somewhat shriveled up, and so very thin; and the poor Monbardeaus, old and at a loss—were only thinking about two things: examining the base of the aerium through the telescope, with the tiny movements produced in the void by the agitation of the prisoners; and identifying the cadavers as they fell into the abyss, one by one.
It was always by night that they fell. As Robert had hypothesized, the sarvants were obviously more active and more at ease in darkness; and no night passed without the whistling sound, no morning without a peasant coming to the château to tell them that a corpse had fallen in his vineyard. The country folk were finally reassured; from dawn to dusk they worked the land fattened by human flesh. Sometimes, when they arrived, they found animals that had fallen by night, sometimes men and women. In response to their summons, Maxime, his brother and his uncle would come running. Now, the cadavers no longer bore the traces of anatomical investigation—no more vivisection or dissection, no more torture. They were complete, honorable, but exceedingly thin. Autopsies showed that diseases had ravaged them without the sarvants having been able to do anything about it. The captives were only dying for lack of care, of treatment, of fresh air and nourishment.
But they were dying, in increasing numbers.
A record of the missing persons had been made, and the cadavers were checked against it. By October 10 or thereabouts, Monsieur Le Tellier was certain that no more than 25 unfortunates remained up there, among whom were Marie-Thérèse, Henri, Fabienne and Suzanne.
It was a terrible discovery. At the rate things were going, it would all be over in twenty days. The four exiles would be dead. Mirastel resounded with lamentations.
The next night, two whistling sounds pierced their hearts…but it was only the fall of a billy-goat and a jenny-ass.
Those who were awaited did not fall in the following days.
At the zenith, the dark patch did not move and did not change, save that the animation of the slots diminished, becoming rarer and slower. By October 18, nine humans and a dozen animals had fallen since October 10; there were still 16 condemned individuals in the aerium.
Sleep deserted the château. At night, by virtue of the strain of listening, everyone suffered strange auricular disturbances. At 2 a.m. on October 19, the darkness resonated with a peculiar sound that was not the usual whistle. One might have thought that a discharge of particles of lead was peppering the nocturnal peace. The noise was repeated several times in succession. Monsieur Le Tellier and the members of his family went out on to the terrace. The Moon had just set; its light was still visible in the west as a diffuse clarity. There was a slight fresh breeze.
The noise began again, while a sort of dark cloud, hissing like lead shot, crashed into the marsh in the direction of Ceyzérieu. A second followed immediately, then a third and a fourth. They landed heavily, one after another, in the same place, slapping the damp ground. They counted as many as 32. The 33rd fall made a quite different sound, rattling like pieces of scrap-iron, and not having the appearance of a cloud. All of it manifestly came from some invisible harbor, only falling to the south by virtue of the slight breeze.
What were these consignments from the upper world? Neither men nor animals, certainly; their manner of announcing themselves was too familiar. What were the sarvants up to now?
They waited for the sun with anxious impatience. It arrived, revealing a number of very obvious mounds in the middle of the marsh—but it was necessary to renounce any thought of approaching them, in the center of that unstable and dangerous plain. Nothing seemed to be moving there.
The astronomer decided to study them with his best telescope. They went with him to the observatory in the tower. The optical tube was there, mounted in the terrestrial bracket, having been aimed at the square patch for weeks.
Monsieur Le Tellier put his eye to the ocular lens. “Hey!” he said. “Who’s touched my telescope? I can’t see the aerium anymore.”
He examined the apparatus. “But no, nothing has been disturbed…and yet the aerium is no longer in the visual field. It’s disappeared!”
“My God!” said Madame Monbardeau. “What now?”
“Disappeared? Could they have moved that immense exhibition-hall?” Maxime suggested.
“A catastrophe?” the doctor put in. “A superaerian earthquake?”
“We’d still be able to see something…there’s nothing left!” affirmed the astronomer. “Nothing! At the exact point where I saw it yesterday evening above the air…ah! Wait a moment!”
He lowered the little telescope and aimed it at the mounds in the center of the marsh. The magnification showed them in detail. On the olive-colored expanse there were heaps of brown earth, and in that earth, three-quarters buried, there were many disparate objects: dry foliage; grey branches; a shapeless mass of various colors, in which one could make out the gilded silhouette of a cock…
“The aerium’s there!” said Monsieur Le Tellier, straightening up. “Or rather, the things that rendered it visible. It was clumps of earth that were falling last night. The sarvants have jettisoned it, one wagon-load at a time. They’ve dismantled their oceanographic museum!”
White faces surrounded him.
“What about the…the living beings?” demanded Madame Arquedouve. “The 16 prisoners?”
“Henri?”
The Blue Peril Page 31
