Three Science Fiction Novellas: From Prehistory to the End of Mankind

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  Beyond all the paradoxes of time displacement, there is always a single, irreducible fact—that of biological time. Time displacements may challenge the universality of time. But there is no denying, and the quantified universe of tachyons is no exception, that for any localized time line there is always an end. In Benford’s novel, that locality remains Markham’s 1999, set on its inexorable path, experiencing its own unique form of ecodisaster, thus called on to make its own challenge to the transhuman barrier. Even in this relativized timescape, the passing of any world remains poignant, if not tragic in Rosny’s sense of the total end of a vast plurality of living species. Thus Benford’s novel ends on a muted tone, with Markham’s partner John Renfrew 1999’s Last Man. As with Targ’s final, futile search for water, Renfrew attempts one last time to break out of his time frame, to make tachyon contact with some other space-time location. The message he receives, however, is not from Bernstein’s world but from what Renfrew believes to be the year 2349, a location ever so close yet separated by an unfathomable gulf of “noise.” He realizes that he stands, in his dying world, at some tachyon junction, a cosmic way station with messages coming from all space-time directions: “He shook his head. All form and structure was eroded by the overlapping of many voices, a chorus. Everyone was talking at once, and no one could hear” (392). We are far from the serene vision of Benford’s cosmic artist. From Renfrew’s point of view, his world is an impossibly insignificant speck, lost in a vast canvas of worlds. Once again, Renfrew’s situation is that of Pascal’s human condition. For as the babble of voices changes into terrifying cosmic silence, he remains suspended between infinities. All the generators shut down in Renfrew’s laboratory, all the buildings and streets fall suddenly empty. Suddenly he, too, like Targ, knows in his physical body that however complex this “stream” of worlds he envisions, time’s river still flows for him: “Causality’s leaden hand would win out.”

  Even so, as is not the case for Rosny’s death of the Earth, Renfrew still takes comfort in knowing his world is one among an infinite number of time lines. He senses a vast multidimensional array of worlds that, unlike Rosny’s “other world,” have absolutely no contact with each other. This is comforting in a sense, for if there is no single interpenetrating ecology that gathers all these individual time lines, then each world is, as Renfrew puts it, at least “safe” from the others: “The soothing human world of flowing time would go on, a sphinx yielding none of her secrets. An infinite series of grandfathers would live out their lives safe from Renfrew” (393). Once again, the final possibility for Renfrew is Pascal’s wager. If he sees himself forever lost in the world of tachyons and its infinite timescape, at the same time, it is by openly accepting that he is lost that he paradoxically feels “elated, free” (393). In his limited world, Renfrew, like Targ, must go to his end. But while Targ and Érê are doomed to live out the terrible collapse of their hopeless Edenic dream, Renfrew finds his arcadia just down the road in his tangible temporal present. His family still awaits him, as well as the famous preserves on the shelf, which can keep all of them alive for a long time. With Rosny we move in a straight line, living through increasingly painful failures to survive, until the family circle itself is decimated. Benford’s tour de force, in contrast, ends with a whimper. In this novel all about messages and communication, the final human voice is that of domesticity. But it is still a message; as such, it defies the messageless void of res extensa. Benford’s Last Man can console himself in his misery. For Renfrew, hearing a myriad of possible messages in the swirl of tachyon data, knows he is not alone. Stories are being told, even though he cannot understand them. What is more, he can retire to his survivalist bunker where, as in Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold, things may keep going on after all. Some serendipitous twist in space-time may save his family yet.

  To paraphrase Robert Forward, humans don’t count, intelligence does. For Rosny, however, humans do count, but the interconnectedness and continuity of life counts even more. We see, then, why the logic of Rosny’s narratives is transhuman rather than simply posthuman. At Targ’s transhuman moment, the logic of verb tense and syntax connects to the larger logic of a broad ecology of matter—living and inert—in transformation. Life and world form a vast system that must evolve. In the evolution of hard SF, however, Forward’s vision appears today to overshadow Rosny’s. Increasingly, the scientist-writer seems to lean toward a vision that favors the conversion of matter into mind. For example, in the lead story of his 1994 anthology Matter’s End, “Mozart on Morphine,” Benford’s scientist-protagonist, a string theorist, not only makes the classic case for mind-matter duality but moves in the direction of Spinoza’s vision of matter as mind.29 This is a story about accidents and illness, the frailty of thinking reeds: “We seem so small. Yet we have a common, perhaps arrogant impression that we matter, somehow” (21). There is still an echo of Rosny’s evolutionism in the pun of the title. For is not the end of matter the end of mind and life as well? But Benford’s protagonist reverses this proposition: might not the end of matter instead mark the beginning of mind? With string theory we have the possibility, only suggested by the tachyon universe, that matter and mind are in fact one and the same, with mind becoming an entity like Spinoza’s rationalist God, deus sive natura. Benford’s protagonist goes on to speculate that humans indeed might matter, if the physical universe were revealed by science to be mind: “Still, there emerges now evidence of mental processes at work on many levels of physical reality. We may be part of some larger act. For example, perhaps we contribute remotely to the universe’s thinking about itself” (220). The turn is elegant. But the result is the sort of imagined recapture that Rosny ultimately refused, where mind seeks impossible parity between itself and the extended world.

  The quotation from Goethe (Mephisto tempting Faust) that Benford offers as an epigraph to “Mozart on Morphine” can serve as an apt description of the difference between the vision of his fictional physicist and that of Rosny: “All theory, my friend, is gray / But the golden tree of life springs green.” Rosny chronicles the growth of the tree of life from green to ferromagnetic rust and hopefully beyond. His work remains essential today, for it not only articulates a key crux of SF extrapolation—the transhuman possibility—but offers, in working out Targ’s evolutionary destiny, a viable speculative alternative to the resurgent Cartesianism of much hard SF. Rosny’s ecological pluralism strives to reach beyond the anthropocentric barrier of human culture. It reaches beyond that faith in reason that serves Bakhoun so well yet confounds Targ. Rosny’s broad sense of the evolution of life is a powerful antidote to the humanocentric sentimentality of many SF works, even those that claim to be most “scientific.” It offers as well a sobering alternative to much of the “ecological” rhetoric we endure today.

  One final comment. Some might conclude from our comparisons of Rosny’s work to that of both Verne and Wells that Verne and Wells ultimately set story above science, while Rosny stuck to the text of science, perhaps to the detriment of the art of storytelling. It is true that both Verne and Wells were master storytellers who found novel ways of integrating new or at least novel scientific concepts into conventional narrative forms, especially the historical and travel narrative. Rosny, however, with his sparse prose and plausible analytical descriptions of places, times, and beings that are otherwise products of extrapolative imagination, has created a mode of storytelling that remains unique in its objectivity and honesty. Rosny proves that when science does write the fiction, the writing does not have to be bad. It is true that Rosny’s style is often crabbed, lacking in articulation. We have tried to render this faithfully in translation, sometimes to the detriment of the English prose. But there are moments of high poetry. And there are powerful narrative moments. Who can forget Bakhoun’s lament at the Darwinian annihilation of the Xipéhuz? Who is not moved when Dr. Van den Heuvel, faced with a being his world would invariably reject as mutant or madman, decides to use his new form of vision to a
dvance knowledge of the unknown? Who does not thrill at the thought that some modest parcel of dying humanity might shoot the gulf, become a creative element in the evolution of the “next” form of life? These moments are proof of the unique literary power of Rosny’s blend of fact and vision.

  The Xipéhuz1

  To Léon Hennique, his friend and admirer2

  —J.-H. Rosny aîné3

  FIRST BOOK

  I. The Forms

  The time was a thousand years before that great gathering of peoples that later gave rise to the civilizations of Nineveh, Babylon, Ecbatane.4 The nomad tribe of Pjehou, with its donkeys, its horses and cattle, was crossing the hostile forest of Kzour,5 toward sunset, into the sheet of slanting rays. The song of waning day swelled, hovered in the air, wafted down from harmonious flocks. All were extremely tired, they refrained from speaking, seeking a lovely clearing where the tribe could light the sacred fire, prepare the evening meal, sleep protected from marauding beasts, behind a double row of burning coals.

  The clouds turned iridescent, illusory landscapes flickered on the four horizons, the night gods exhaled the song that rocks to sleep, and the tribe continued to walk on. A scout reappeared, came galloping up, heralding the clearing and water, a pure spring.

  The tribesmen uttered three long cries; all went faster. Childish laughter broke out; the horses and donkeys themselves, accustomed to recognizing the halt was near, seeing the return of the messengers and hearing the cheers of the nomads, tossed their manes proudly.

  The clearing appeared. The charming spring forced its way between the moss and bushes. The nomads were confronted with a phantasmagorical sight.

  There was first of all a large circle of bluish, translucent cones, with their pointed ends upright, each one with a volume of about half a man. A few clear stripes, a few dark circumvolutions, were scattered over their surface; each had near its base a dazzling star.

  Farther away, something just as strange, “strata,” strata-like forms, positioned themselves vertically, looking somewhat like birch bark and whorled with versicolored, elliptical markings.6 There were also, here and there, Forms that were nearly cylindrical, varied in fact, some slender and tall, others short and squat, all of bronze color, dotted with green, all having, like the strata, the same characteristic point of light.

  The tribe looked on, awestruck. A superstitious fear paralyzed the bravest among them. It grew even more as the Forms began to undulate in the grayish shadows of the clearing. And suddenly, their stars pulsating and vibrating, the cones became elongated, the cylinders and the strata made a rustling noise like water thrown on flame, all coming toward the nomads with accelerating speed.

  The tribe, spellbound by this spectacle, moved not at all, continued to look on. The Forms hit them. The shock was tremendous. Whole clusters of warriors, women, children collapsed to the floor of the forest, mysteriously struck down as if by the sword of lightning. Then, to the survivors, this dark terror gave back their strength, the wings of agile flight. And the Forms, at first massed in formation, organized in ranks, spread out around the tribe, pitilessly clinging to those in flight. The dreadful attack, however, was not totally effective: it killed some, stunned others, but never wounded. A few reddish drops issued from the nose, the eyes, the ears of the dying, but the others, intact, soon got up, resumed their fantastic rout, into the paling dusk.

  Whatever was the nature of these Forms, they acted in the manner of sentient beings,7 not like elemental things, having like living beings inconstancy, and diversity of appearances, clearly choosing their victims, never mistaking the nomads for plants or even for animals.

  Soon the fastest tribesmen realized they were no longer being pursued. Exhausted, torn asunder, they did not dare to turn back toward this wondrous thing. Far away, among the tree trunks steeped in shadow, the radiant pursuit went on. And the Forms, by preference, were hunting down, massacring, the warriors, but often turning in disdain from the weak, the women, the children.8

  Thus at a distance, in the night now fallen, the spectacle seemed more supernatural, more overwhelming to the barbarian mind. The warriors were about to resume their flight. One crucial observation stopped them: this was that, no matter who the fugitives were, the Forms abandoned their pursuit beyond fixed limits. And, no matter how tired, how weak the victim might be, even if the victim had fainted, as soon as this ideal boundary was breached, all danger immediately ceased.

  This very reassuring observation, soon confirmed by fifty examples, calmed the frayed nerves of those in flight. They dared to wait for their companions, their wives, and their poor little children who escaped the slaughter. One of them even, their Hero, at first stunned, terrified by the superhuman nature of the happening, recovered the strength of his noble soul, lit the communal hearth, sounded the buffalo horn to guide his scattered people.

  Then, one by one, the miserable survivors arrived. Many, crippled, dragged themselves along with their hands. Mothers, with the indomitable strength of maternity, had kept, gathered, carried the issue of their womb through the wild fray. And many donkeys, horses, cattle reappeared, less terrified than the humans.9

  It was a dismal night, spent in silence and sleeplessness, during which the warriors felt themselves continuously shaken to the bone. But dawn came, its paleness passing stealthily through the dense foliage, then the fanfare of dawn, with colors, resounding with the sound of birds, called upon them to live, to cast off the terrors of Darkness.

  The Hero, their natural leader, gathering the tribe into groups, began to call roll. Half the warriors—two hundred—were missing. The losses were much less among the women, and almost no children had been killed.

  Once roll call ended, and they had gathered the beasts of burden (few were missing, thanks to the superiority of instinct over reason during such a rout), the Hero organized the tribe according to the habitual manner, then, ordering all to wait for him, went alone, pale, toward the fatal clearing. None, even at a distance, dared follow him.

  He went toward the spot where the trees were sparsely placed, adventured a little way beyond the invisible barrier that was noticed the night before. He observed.

  In the distance, in the clear transparency of morning, the pretty stream was flowing; on its banks, all together, the fantastic troop of Forms stood gleaming. Their color had changed. The Cones were more compact, their turquoise color having shaded toward the green; the Cylinders vaporized toward the violet, the Strata looked like copper ore.10 In all of them, however, the star shot forth rays of light that, even in broad daylight, dazzled the eye.

  The metamorphosis spread out to the contours of these phantasmagorical entities: cones tended to stretch into cylinders; cylinders were expanding their sides, while the strata changed partially into curves.

  But, like the night before, all at once the Forms began to undulate, their stars to pulsate; the Hero, slowly, crossed back over the boundary of Salvation.

  II. The Priestly Expedition

  The Pjehou tribe halted at the door of the great nomad tabernacle, where alone the chiefs entered. At the far end of the room, against a backdrop of stars, beneath the male image of the Sun, the three High Priests were standing. Below them, on rows of golden steps, were the twelve lesser Sacrificers.

  The Hero came forward, recounted in great detail the terrible crossing of the forest of Kzour, to which the priests listened in grave astonishment, feeling their power weaken in the face of this inconceivable adventure.

  The Supreme High Priest ordered the tribe to sacrifice twelve bulls, seven onagers, three stallions to the Sun. He attributed to these Forms divine powers, and resolved that, after the sacrifice, a priestly mission would be undertaken.

  All the priests, all the leaders of the Zahelal nation, were to be present. And messengers scoured the mountains and plains, for hundreds of miles around the place where later Ecbatane of the Wise Ones was erected. Everywhere this somber tale caused men’s hair to stand on end, everywhere the chiefs rushed
to obey the sacerdotal call.

  One autumn morning, the Male God burst through the clouds, flooded the tabernacle, reached the altar where the bloody heart of a bull lay steaming. The High Priests, the Sacrificers, fifty tribal chiefs raised the cry of triumph. A hundred thousand nomads, outside, treading on the wet grass, echoed the clamor, turning their sun-weathered faces toward the prodigious forest of Kzour, scarcely trembling. The augury was favorable.

  So, with the priests at their head, an entire people marched off through the woods. In the afternoon, about three o’clock, the Hero of the Pjehou called the multitude to a halt. The great clearing, rusty with colors of autumn, a sea of dead leaves hiding its mosses, stretched before them majestically; on the banks of the stream, the priests saw the things they had come to worship and propitiate—the Forms. These were gentle to the eye, in the shade of the trees, with their shimmering play of colors, the pure flame of their stars, their peaceful activity along the banks of the stream.

  “Here,” said the High Priest, “we must offer up the sacrifice: let them know that we submit to their power.”

  All the ancient ones bowed. One voice spoke out, however. It was Yushik, of the tribe of Nim, a young reckoner of stars, a pale Watcher of prophesies, of growing fame, who audaciously demanded to approach closer to the Forms.

  But the ancient ones, grown old in the art of wise words, overruled him: the altar was built, the victim brought forward—a dazzling stallion, superb servant of mankind. Then, amid the silence, the prostration of a whole people, the bronze blade found the noble heart of the animal. A great wailing arose. And the High Priest spoke: