Journey to the Isles of Atlantis and Other Fanciful Excursions

by Brian Stableford

  Suddenly, a great cry went up from both banks. The completely sealed boat moved on its own, sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly, and no one seemed to be steering it. When it was in front of the stand, a small hatch placed on top opened, and Vatenlair was seen to emerge and salute the king. Then the enthusiasm reached its peak; people did not know how to express their admiration; the entire audience was carried away. After a few moments, Vatenlair bowed again and went back into his boat, sealing the opening again.

  Suddenly, Princess Betinette uttered a loud scream. “Look! Look!” she cried. “The boat is sinking! Help! Save him!”

  The boat was, in fact, sinking, and soon disappeared under the water,

  All the boats hastened to go to the place of the disaster; divers began to sound the lake; for at least ten minutes there was a frightful agitation, anxiety and disorder.

  Ever maladroit, Prince Omega had leaned toward the princess and said to her: “You see, Princess, I’m not the only one not to succeed.”

  The princess launched a thunderous glare at him, and then, turning her head, suddenly uttered anther scream, this time of joy. At the end of the lake she had just seen Vatenlair emerging from the water and heading rapidly toward the royal platform. In a matter of minutes he had made the journey, and this time, the engineer came out of the vessel and set foot on the shore.

  The king, transported, could not contain himself; forgetting his royal majesty, the queen, the princess and the entire audience, he threw his arms around the engineer and embraced him. Princes Betinette, who was very emotional, blushed deeply, and if it had been possible to read her heart, it is probable that one would have seen that she would have liked to be in her father’s place.

  IX. In which King Beta holds a great review of his troops and Princess Betinette, having become a fay,

  demonstrates her power.

  A few days after the regatta, the court returned to the city. There was much talk about the vacation. The portraits the Princess Betinette had made of the king were passed from hand to hand and caused great astonishment. Vatenlair’s diving boat was also the subject of all conversations, so Prince Omega, furious at his defeat, began to take a dislike to Remplume, who was decidedly good for nothing.

  In the autumn, after the grand maneuvers, King Beta had the custom of passing the army in review personally. That spectacle was very curious, for the king’s army bore no resemblance to those of the sovereigns of the rest of the world, and we cannot dispense with its description.

  We have said that King Beta’s kingdom was very backward: sciences, arts and letters were all still in infancy; ideas were primitive and, until the arrival of Vatenlair, everyone had been content with that. But the progress that was lacking in that direction was in advance in the matter of warfare, for a means had been found of winning battles without losing a single man, and even of being defeated while conserving the personnel intact. To obtain such a result, the isolation of the United States of Alphabetia was necessary, or the consent of the other peoples of the earth, but as the latter had never even been asked to give it, it follows that the particular fashion of making war of which we speak was completely unknown to them—which is profoundly regrettable, as we shall see.

  The principle of that manner of sorting out quarrels reposes on humanity. With good reason, those new peoples had judged that the death of combatants ruined the adversaries without procuring in any way whatsoever the justice of their cause, and that it was more humane and more profitable to have all conflicts settled by animals.

  The army was therefore composed of animals trained and directed by humans. To begin with, that had a great economic advantage, because it suppressed arms and munitions. Wars were nevertheless costly, for animals were expensive and difficult to replace.

  In a great plain that extended not far from Betaville, a rich stand had been set up for the royal family and the court. Vatenlair had asked for the king’s permission not to remain on the platform, in order to examine the strange ceremony in all its details. He had set out early in the morning with a special photographic apparatus and had not been seen again during the day. Princess Betinette, who had not been forewarned of his absence, appeared very nervous and gave the poorest of welcomes to Prince Omega, ever obsequious.

  Soon the review commenced.

  To begin with, a group of richly dressed valets was seen to advance, carrying immense cages filed with singing birds of all kinds: nightingales, starlings, blackbirds, orioles and parrots of every color. That represented the band; and it was, in fact, a slightly barbaric orchestra, but which made itself heard without interruption. It was installed at the foot of the stand.

  Then filed past, in turn: the elephants, whose trunks were gilded, marching heavily, guided by mahouts sitting on their backs; the lions, enchained, which roared before the king as if they wanted to give him an ovation; the striped tigers, which crawled and bounded by turns like cats; the bears, black, brown and white, which showed their ivory teeth and stood up on their hind paws as they went past the stand; the hippopotamuses with rough hides, responsible for battles on rivers and lakes; the wild boars with redoubtable tusks, which battled in forests; and the giraffes, inoffensive, but whose long necks, visible from afar, served as telegraphic signals. Then finally, came the jackals and vultures, attached to perches, whose mission was to clean up the battlefield.

  All those animals advanced in order, accompanied by numerous servants charged with their maintenance. That original, but also impressive, procession lasted for three hours, during which the music did not stop for an instant.

  When the court had returned to the palace, the members of the royal family withdrew to their apartments, and Prince Omega went back to his room, where Remplume was waiting for him.

  “Truly,” said the prince, “my uncle has a very fine army. I defy Princes Betinette to reproduce it on paper, as she did the king’s face.

  “Why is that, Prince? Dos she not have a machine disposed for that?”

  “For one thing, she didn’t have it with her; for another, the king stood still when she made his portrait. It would be impossible for her to reproduce an animate scene.”

  “That’s true,” said Remplume. “But since she’s so clever, suggest to the king that he ask her to make him an image of the review.”

  “She won’t be able to do it.”

  “Undoubtedly! But the king will be discontented to see the princess’s impotence and that will efface the bad effect that your failure produced—and then, it’s a small vengeance.”

  “Which won’t do me any good with her.”

  “How do you know? On seeing your finesse, she’ll no longer be so disdainful and will hold you in better account.”

  Prince Omega’s apartment was situated in a wing of the castle alongside the engineer’s bedroom, which had originally been part of it. A door, which had been sealed, communicated with the prince’s drawing room, and was so thin that the words spoken on one side could be heard distinctly on the other. Having returned home directly after the end of the review, Vatenlair heard the previous conversation in its entirety and he promised himself that he would profit from it. He had just spent all day taking pictures of the review, which permitted him to thwart the pernicious plans of Remplume. It only remained to warn the princess.

  For her part, she was eager to see Vatenlair in order to discover where he was in his labors, for it was necessary, in his interest, not to allow the king’s admiration to cool, by not showing him any more new enchantments. Lying on her chaise longue, she was thinking about ways to see him in secret, when she suddenly sensed a cloud pass over eyes and lost the notion of things. At the same time, she stood up and went down to the gardens, to which the engineer’s suggestion had already taken her once before.

  Having arrived there, she suddenly regained consciousness, and was astonished to find that she was no longer in her room. What had brought her there? With what objective? She did not know. After a moment, Vatenlair arrived and recounted t
he conversation he had overheard; at the same time, he explained to her the means of subverting the plot that had been made against her, and told her that in two days, he would have everything prepared to thwart her enemies.

  Following Remplume’s advice, Prince Omega had not delayed speaking to the king; to begin with he had offering him excessive compliments on his review; then, gradually, he had insinuated to him that such scenes merited being conserved in images, that memory was insufficient to retain an exact idea of them and that it was necessary to ask Princes Betinette to employ her talent to make a new masterpiece.

  “That’s a good idea,” said the king. “Thank you for having suggested it to me; I’ll talk to her about it this evening.”

  And indeed, that same evening, the king took his daughter to one side and expressed his desire to her. At first, the princess refused to attempt that proof.

  “Are you not a fay, then?”

  “Yes, but fays are not omnipotent! However, Father, since you ask, I will try, and in two days, if the enchanter Vatenlair will come to my aid, I shall pass your troops in review for you gain.”

  On the appointed day, Vatenlair had set up in the palace festival hall a small cabin made of black cloth, in which he installed his apparatus. On the opposite side, a large white sheet was applied to the wall. The armchairs reserved for the audience were facing the sheet. Vatenlair and the princess had made preliminary arrangements in order to give the session a fantastic character.

  At ten o’clock in the evening, in the brightly lit hall, the king, the queen and the courtiers were installed on the seats that had been prepared for them. Soon, Princess Betinette, dressed as a fay, made her entrance and spoke in these terms:

  “You have asked me, Father, to reproduce in images the magnificent review of your troops, which you passed the other day. I have obtained pleasure in obeying you. But I’ve done better; the scene that will demonstrate your power will be preceded by two others; one will represent the factory where your engineer is having your gas manufactured, the gas that is illuminating us at this moment; the other will show you the market of your capital. Those three scenes will be animated. You will see the animals file past as if they were alive; you will see the workers in the factory performing their different functions and men and women bringing to market and selling the various products of their cultivation and their industry. On that I put one condition, which is that the gas that is illuminating us, and which has already done you a bad turn by going out in the middle of the ball, will disappear forever. You have seen it this evening for the last time.”

  And before the king had time to respond, the hall was plunged into darkness.

  At the same time, a large tableau appeared before the spectators.

  Immediately, they saw designed on the tableau the gas factory with its ardent furnaces. Workmen, blackened by the smoke, were going back and forth, hurling charcoal into the braziers; others were opening valves; others were fabricating strange and unknown machines. There was a continual coming and going, of which the eye was never weary.

  That tableau was succeeded by the sight of the Betaville market. The merchants were laying out their produce, buyers were stopping at the displays; carts were passing by; there were oxen under the yoke drawing carts full of grain; here there were pigs being led, there poultry agitating in baskets; elsewhere, cabbages and vegetables of all kinds were being piled on the ground; in sum, there was an extraordinary animation.

  The court was greatly amused, and seemed wonderstruck, but waited impatiently for the final tableau: the review!

  Finally, after a few minutes that seemed like hours, they saw fixed on the sheet the royal stand with all the people who had been there two days before. They were motionless. The effect was gripping. Suddenly, the people were animated; the birds forming the band were seen to arrive, stopping in front of the stand, and then, successively filing past, the elephants, lions, tigers, bears, hippopotamuses, wild boars, giraffes, jackals and vultures. All of them seemed to be alive.

  The court was transported. The king was mad with joy, and murmured in a low voice: “My daughter is a fay! A true fay!”

  But the gas was not reignited, and the hall remained plunged in obscurity, Vatenlair took advantage of that to make his little cabin and his apparatus disappear through a door at the back.

  “Oh!” said the king. “Is it true what you said, my daughter, that the gas will not appear again?”

  “It’s true, Sire,” said Vatenlair, who had come back into the room. “The gas having displeased you, I’ve dismissed it; but I’ve replaced it.”

  At the same moment the festival hall was illuminated instantaneously by electricity, which was a further surprise, inexplicable for all the members of the audience.

  Prince Omega was enraged.

  X. In which the engineer Vatenlair perceives that he has not finished with Remplume.

  Prince Omega had already been a guest of King Beta for four months, and he had not mentioned leaving, which exasperated Princes Betinette to the point that one day she made the remark to her father.

  “Don’t you think, Father, that Prince Omega is treating us very casually?”

  “Perhaps a little, my daughter, but I can explain that. He dare not...”

  “Personally, I find that he dares too much!” Betinette interjected.

  “You’re interrupting me,” said the king. Let me finish: he dare not ask me for your hand, because he perceives that you are scarcely amiable with him; so he’s waiting patiently, and even impatiently, for you to look more kindly upon him, in order to risk his request.”

  “Well, Father, he’ll wait for a long time, for I shall never encourage him. Furthermore, I’m glad that I’m now obliged to renounce him.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Are you forgetting that I’m a fay and that I can’t marry a mortal unless he’s initiated in the science…of magic.”

  “That’s true, you’re a fay. I’d forgotten.”

  “Then again, fays choose their husbands themselves, and I don’t love Prince Omega enough to cast eyes upon him. So, Father, I’d be very grateful if you would make him understand that he has nothing for which to hope in my regard and that you won’t keep him any longer.”

  That delicate mission did not please the king very much. He did not want to displease his nephew, which would have displeased his brother. He was placid by nature, and rather soft, avoiding annoyances at all costs. He was known as Good King Beta. However, he promised his daughter to make the prince understand that any request would be futile, which would oblige him to cut short his sojourn.

  “However,” he added, “I would have liked to see you married; your mother and I are old; in accordance with the ordinary order of things, death might soon take us and you’ll be left alone. You might be a fay now, but you might still find others more powerful than you, who are jealous of you; a husband is an adviser and a protector. I’d be more reassured if you had made your choice before my definitive departure for another world.”

  “You’ll be obeyed, Father, and as soon as Prince Omega has gone, I’ll name for you the one I’ve chosen.”

  “You already have someone in mind, then?”

  The princess smiled. “Yes, Father, and he’s worthy of me.”

  Satisfied to see that the princess was beginning to see things his way, the king did not ask any more and quit her in order to go to the summer palace, where his gardeners were waiting for him, in order to show him the plant obtained by his original seed.

  The reader will certainly suspect that the husband on whom Princess Betinette had cast her eyes was the engineer Vatenlair, her professor. Although, thus far, no sentimental words had been exchanged between them, she had sensed an attraction toward him that she divined to be reciprocal. More than once, she had thought that he was about to declare himself, but he had doubtless understood the distance that separated them and had kept silent. For her part, she had not thought that she ought to encourage him until she had
deflected the certain refusal of her father; now, thanks to the trickery she had employed in passing herself off as a fay in the credulous mind of the king, she was reassured. In fact, although a princess cannot marry an engineer, a fay is not lowering herself in having an enchanter for a husband.

  The hour for her daily lesson having arrived, she went to see Vatenlair and made him party to the conversation she had just had with the king.

  Vatenlair understood then that the moment had come to reveal the depths of his heart to the princess. His confession was welcomed, as it had to be, and from that day on their union was decided; but it was necessary to wait for the departure of Prince Omega before it could be consecrated. It was no longer anything but a matter of finding a means of making him leave as quickly as possible.

  It was agreed that as soon as the prince went back to his apartment the engineer would go to his bedroom in order to listen to the words he was exchanging with Remplume. He had noticed that every day, at a fixed hour, the latter met with the prince; that espionage was very useful to him for thwarting the maneuvers that they discussed in order to harm him.

  That day, in fact, the conversation was one of the most interesting. The prince complained about the coldness of the princess and the indifference of the king; Remplume advised him.

  “Permit me to tell you that you’re taking it badly. You’re a prince, young and handsome, and as if you had no consciousness of your own value, you’re making yourself the slave of a petty coquette who is mocking you because you’re humiliating yourself before her. Pretend to neglect her and you’ll see immediately that she’ll seek you out. As for the king, you know him, as I do; he’s weak, credulous, devoid of personal conviction, always listening to the last voice he hears. It’s therefore good to flatter him, to approve of him, to advise him, to keep away as much as possible those who approach him, and to be with him constantly. Soon, he’ll only see through your eyes. That’s the way to go.”