The Revolt of the Machines

by Brian Stableford

  Stammering anxiously, he apologized for the state of his attire.

  “Science has its immunities,” replied Rémois, roguishly.

  “It’s strange, Monsieur; supernatural, Mademoiselle…look at my arms. It’s incredible! Incredible….I’ll refer it to the Académie….”

  As his visitors looked at him in astonishment, he added: “That’s true, you don’t understand. Please pay attention for a minute…do sit down…pardon me…but I’m amazed…suffocated…. Oh, it’s too curious, you know! I can only explain it as a phenomenon of autosuggestion. I inject myself without being aware of it. But when? Where? And the most curious thing is that the sera doesn’t have any effect on me.”

  “I’ll make the observation that you’ve taken on a thief as an experimental case study,” said Rémois.

  “Yes, I’ve cultivated his microbe, and injected it into a refractory animal…a guard dog. And I….”

  “How do you expect such a serum to act on you? It would be wrong to judge you.”

  “Yes, of course!” Cordeau exclaimed. “Am I stupid! But then, there’s good reason to be amazed. Where and when have I injected myself?”

  “You’ll figure it out, Doctor,” Rémois indicated Hélène, who was very amused. “Mademoiselle Noirmont, in response to the amiable invitation that I extended to her in your name.…”

  Cordeau pulled himself together. “Mademoiselle, believe me, I’m touched…deeply touched. I’m entirely at your disposal. My method is, in any case, easily understood. It’s elementary. Let’s take the hypothesis of a case of drunkenness, for example. I take the microbe of a confirmed drunkard, supposedly incorrigible, on the brink of delirium…I cultivate it…I inoc…I…sapristi! It’s so singular….”

  And Cordeau, his eyes immeasurably wide, beside himself, examined his arms again.

  Rémois recalled him to the demonstration.

  “You inoculate….”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The drunkard’s microbe.”

  Oh. yes…excuse me. So, I inoculate a refractory animal. And therein lies all the observation, all the science of my method. It’s necessary to appropriate the refractory animal….years of observation. I’ve been aided somewhat by the studies of naturalists…and also by the worthy La Fontaine…. Therein, as I say, is the criterium of the Cordeau method. By the way, they smiled the other day at the Académie….”

  “They always laugh a little at pioneers.”

  “They mistake them for lunatics, don’t they? So, I inoculate a refractory, and hence sober, animal.”

  “A donkey.”

  “No,” said Cordeau, with a patronizing smile, “a camel. Then I extract the serum of the immunized camel and I inoculate the drunkard.”

  “And he doesn’t hit the booze anymore.”21

  “Never! It’s infallible. But as an experiment I preferred to choose a thief. I had some difficulty finding one, in spite of my reiterated advertisements in the press.”

  “You were hard to please.”

  “Well, I had to be—but thanks to you, my dear friend, I finally got the man I wanted.”

  “Indeed. He is, I believe, thirty-five years old, with thirty-five convictions already—a recidivist given amnesty….”

  “If he’d been made to order, I couldn’t have been better served. If I cure that one—and I guarantee it—who will dare to deny my discovery? I’ve only had my subject for two weeks, and already he hardly ever steals from me. I deliberately leave money within his reach. In the first few days, I didn’t find anything there. Now, if I leave a hundred sous, I get six francs back. Gradually, he’ll give me back all that he’s stolen. Then I’ll be able to attempt the supreme experiment. And with what accomplishments my experiment is already endowed! What fortunate consequences will it not have for the human species, made virtuous, returned to the Golden Age? And what could be simpler? It’s Columbus and the egg! Nature, the good mother, always places the remedy beside the evil. The animals that civilization hasn’t spoiled have conserved their own character. Therein lies salvation, therein is the solution to…to….”

  And as the psychologist, waving his long arms, searched for the word, like a club orator, he experienced a sharp sensation of thirst.

  There was a glass on his side table, half-full of cold toddy. Cordeau drank it in a single draught, and refreshed, continued: “I shall have the glory of having endowed humankind with the panacea for which alchemists searched long and hard in blood and diabolical formulae. Have I said that it’s the solution to the great problem of social equilibrium?”

  In the matter of equilibrium, the doctor was losing his own. He tottered like a drunken man, and started babbling fragments of sentences in which scientific terms recurred: cerebral force…atavism…reflex causes…. Then, in a hoarse voice, he waxed indignant against his adversary Lesécant.

  “No, pork butcher, it isn’t you who’ll have the glory…not you…not you…me….”

  Finally, he was obliged to sit down, complaining of a headache, and went to sleep.

  Rémois and Hélène contemplated him, not understanding what was happening before their eyes.

  Then the young man rang a bell. A man came into the drawing room.

  “Oh, it’s you, Fléchard. Look—Monsieur Corbeau has suddenly gone to sleep.”

  The newcomer darted a glance at the side table and saw the empty glass.

  “He’s drunk his toddy. That doesn’t surprise me. I doctored it. Well, I wanted to take full advantage of the leave that the head of the Sûreté granted me, at your request. I’d like nothing better than to earn my daily bread honestly, but there are limits. He’d have injected me too often if I’d let him—I’d be nothing but a pincushion. So, as he has a habit, while…working, of drinking a toddy, I put a few drops of laudanum in his eau d’aff.22 That calms him down a little…except that, every time, while he’s asleep, he rolls up his sleeves and he’s off…another prick…he’d be full of holes if I let him…but one’s only human…one isn’t a brute….”

  A double burst of laughter greeted Fléchard’s revelation. The thing was, in fact, well planned. The detective, accustomed to the guile of his difficult trade, had found a means to escape Cordeau’s hair-raising operations.

  “Look, he’s starting again….”

  Indeed, the psychologist, mechanically, rolled up his sleeves and, as if he had had a lancet in his hand, administered a series of punctures….

  The young couple took their leave of Fléchard. As they departed, Rémois said to his fiancé: “I haven’t remained inactive, you see. I’ve avenged myself. I have them both. I can do what I like with them, by virtue of the fear of ridicule.

  On the way to Fontenay station, he gave the young woman the key to the enigma. “I was at college with the secretary of the Head of the Sûreté. I made use of our acquaintance. A phenomenal criminal record was assembled for agent Fléchard—one of the worst in the Prefecture, from which he obtained a leave of absence. He presented himself to the incredible Cordeau, who welcomed him with open arms, and eyes closed: ‘Oh, my friend! Thirty-five convictions! You’re a frightful scoundrel!’ You can imagine the worthy agent’s face. And Cordeau added: ‘But I esteem you all the more for it; you’re the man I’ve dreamed of….’”

  The painter concluded: “Now, let’s get the train, and since we’re in a good mood, let’s go see your other suitor.”

  VI. A Recalcitrant Subject

  “You’ve come at a good time! I’m swimming in joy!”

  So said Lesécant as he introduced Rémois and Hélène into the drawing room of the Villa Paré.

  “We’re glad to hear it, my dear Master.”

  “Extraordinary!” the other continued. “Beyond my hopes! Can you imagine that my carbo-pepto-azotic tablets really are the ideal nourishment? Vésigout, who’s been consuming nothing else for a fortnight, is doing marvelously. He’s putting on weight!”

  Rémois had difficulty suppressing wild laughter, thinking about the excel
lent cuisine in which Vésigout was indulging at the Quatre-Chemins restaurant.

  The surgeon continued: “The puffiness due to alcohol has disappeared. He looks superb. This morning, I set aside the promised ten thousand francs on account, and I’m going to start preparing him for the surgery today. First I’ll take out his teeth…but pardon me, Mademoiselle Noirmont would perhaps rather not hear such details….”

  “Oh, no, Doctor—I’m strong….”

  “Good…no sensitivity, at least….” As Hélène laughed, frankly amused, he went on: “What an admirable little wife you’ll make for a surgeon. Oh, if you marry me—and I’m certain of it, for Cordeau is nothing but a donkey—I’ll initiate you into my art.

  “So, tomorrow, I’ll take out Vésigout’s teeth, a week later, the hair and nails…after that I’ll removed the intestines, which have become useless. And finally, we’ll come to the admirable cultivation of the pituitary gland—the third eye.23 I’ll make a window in the forehead, here, a little above the top of the nose. I can say without fear that it will all go well…it’s a window on infinity that I’ll be opening up for that man….”

  After having repeated the tirade that he had already declaimed to Vésigout, Lesécant concluded: “It mustn’t be thought, in fact, that the pituitary gland, even though it appears to present the embryo of the organs of the eye, can be transformed to the point of performing the same banal function as the ocular orb. Perhaps complacent observers, deceived by appearances, find in that vegetating gland a failed organ imprisoned between the mass of the cerebrum and the cerebellum, but what do I make of it? Although the pituitary gland contains all the elements of the eye, although one finds therein the sclerotic, the fibrous and opaque exterior envelope, the transparent cornea—which is, in my opinion, merely a modification of the primary envelope—the choroid, the crystalline lens, the retina; when all that exists in the miniature cerebrum that I want to cultivate, what do you think I’ll have made?

  “It’s not an eye that I’m rendering but a nervous center, a point of strange sensibility. And when people see the prodigious faculties of my subject, after the operation, perhaps they’ll want to understand the theory that I’m defending, and will defend to the death; and see that the explanation of abnormal phenomena—spiritism, hypnosis, magnetism, troubling problems before which even the princes of science go pale without any certain result—resides in the existence of that organ, perhaps failed, but far from being useless. Nature has never created anything useless. Life is for all, and all is for Life….”

  Launched on that terrain, Lesécant, in a vibrant voice, constructed a metaphysics so confused that he ended up unable to find a way out of it. He no longer knew how to conclude; finally, turning to Hélène with a bow as graceful as was possible for him, he said: “Well, Mademoiselle, that’s the theory. If you want to witness the practice—in brief, if you want to follow the birth of the colossal endeavor that I’m undertaking, Dr. Lesécant will be only too happy to place himself entirely at your disposal.”

  “Very kind of you, Doctor.”

  “And now, permit me to introduce you to my subject. When you arrived, I left him in my study. Come on. We’ll go quietly, to surprise him. The dear boy! Do you know, I love him already.”

  “Vésigout is a good fellow,” said Rémois. “Perhaps a trifle…irregular—fond of the bottle.”

  “Pfft!” retorted Lesécant, with a gesture of the hand. “Cured…better than by the Cordeau method…..”

  “Good food is sometimes a remedy.”

  “Good food…but I’ve told you that my subject has been nourished exclusively on my tables for a fortnight. Ex-clu-sively! And I confess that the result has exceeded my hopes. He’s put on weight…here…look….”

  With infinite precaution, the surgeon opened the door of the study. His back turned, very preoccupied, Vésigout did not hear them come in. Lesécant advanced on tiptoe, and then suddenly, nailed to the floor by amazement, his arms folded, at first he could only utter guttural exclamations: “Oh!... Oh!....”

  Vésigout tried to hide his work, but Lesécant bounded forward and seized the piece of paper.

  “My portrait! In caricature! He’s drawing!”

  Rémois and Hélène were very embarrassed. Redder than a tomato, trembling like a schoolboy caught doing something naughty, Vésigout, with tears in his eyes, distressed by the thought that the dream was about to vanish, of the ten thousand francs that he was not going to see, stammered: “I…I can explain…”

  But Lesécant cut him off. “That’s not your business, it’s mine. The explanation belongs to science. This is a curious case of mental vision. His brain has perceived my image; his hand has executed it. And there’s a resemblance. A seer couldn’t do any better.”

  Driven by his mania for explaining everything scientifically, and his unreflective nature, Lesécant had just got Vésigout out of trouble. With aplomb, the Bohemian went on: “My father knew you well, Doctor.”

  “There—what did I tell you? The transmission of the image….”

  Rémois and Hélène were leaning out of the window. They could no longer contain themselves; laughter was choking them.

  “You have a marvelous view from your villa,” said Mademoiselle Noirmont, in order to say something.

  “Isn’t it? That’s admirable.”

  In fact, the view was limited to a garden fifty meters long, in which Lesécant cultivated absolutely nothing but medicinal herbs. The doctor’s “admirable” was, of course, extended to Vésigout’s drawing.

  “Oh, my friend, since you already draw so well, what will you do when you have the third eye?”

  Before they left, and while Lesécant, dissolving in amiabilities addressed to Hélène, gave her a tour of the villa and cut the most beautiful flowers in his greenhouse in her honor, Rémois took Vésigout to one side.

  “That wasn’t very prudent.”’

  “Well, old chap, I distract myself as best I can. If you knew how boring it is here. He wants to pull out all my teeth tomorrow. I’m giving up on your scheme, you know….”

  “It’s up to you to find a means of escape.”

  “For tomorrow—yes, it’s arranged. Last night, at the risk of breaking my neck, I got into the doctor’s operating room through the window on the first floor….”

  “Why didn’t you get a key made?”

  “Secret lock, old chap. It’s the only room that no one goes into except the man himself.”

  “Ah!”

  “Then I played the burglar, cutting a windowpane with a diamond all around the rim and putting it back in place from the outside with hooks of my own invention, after filching all the instruments of torture he’d got ready to fix my jaws. So, for tomorrow I’m all right, but afterwards….”

  “Find something else.”

  “And after that.

  “After that, you can blow your cover, if necessary—but warn me first; I want to have witnesses there.”

  “And the cash?”

  “You’ll get the money, whatever happens.”

  The next day, Dr. Lesécant nearly fell over, struck down by apoplexy, when he went into his operating room and found the instrument cupboard absolutely empty. The door was locked. There were no panes missing from the window. Then again, why had the robbery been committed? With what aim? He called Jérôme and scolded him so harshly that the old servant handed in his notice.

  He asked Vésigout whether he had heard anything abnormal, the blind having sensitive hearing.

  “No, Doctor, nothing.”

  “Well, someone’s stolen my instruments.”

  “Ah!” The Bohemian’s astonishment was so utterly natural that Lesécant was taken in.

  “That astonishes you, eh…and annoys me. I was counting on getting rid of your teeth today….”

  “That’s unfortunate, Doctor, because I was ready.”

  Two days later, the surgeon came back with a new set of instruments. He found his subject in bed, moaning.

/>   “Ah, Aiee! It’s my back that’s hurting…and I have a fever…aiee! If you knew, Doctor!”

  “No luck at all,” Lesécant said to himself, dejected. “It’s as if nothing’s going my way.” With great generosity, he added: “Don’t worry, my dear Vésigout. A week’s rest and you’ll be fine…”

  A week’s respite, thought the other. That’ll keep Rémois happy.

  At the end of the week, during which Vésigout did honor to the kitchens and the cellar at his restaurant, Lesécant, on arriving at the Villa, found him lying on the lawn in the garden, dead drunk. Beside him was a bottle of old rum.

  The surgeon cursed and raged, reproaching himself bitterly for having chased away old Jérôme.

  “When he was here, at least he watched him. I’m an idiot, to be sure—but in the future, I’ll stay here and watch him myself. At least I got here in time—he might have died.”

  Vésigout, we ought to say, was not drunk at all. It was a stratagem intended to delay the fatal operation yet again. But he paid dearly for that stratagem; without him being able to prevent it, Lesécant, with an entirely professional vigor, picked him up, carried him to his bed and, without further delay, administered an emetic whose effect was disastrous.

  “Damn it! The animal’s been eating!” cried the doctor, furiously. “Oh, I was wrong to send Jérôme packing. Oh, my lad, sleep it off—and tomorrow afternoon, I’ll deprive you of your lower jaw, and I certainly hope you won’t do it again!”

  Poor Vésigout! In spite of the nausea induced by the emetic, he wondered what he was going to do to get rid of the terrible guardian whom his unfortunate idea of playing drunk had imposed on him for the future.

  A day without eating! Reduced to the boss’s horrible tablets!

  A fine idea! the Bohemian said to himself. It’s a lot of trouble to earn ten thousand francs!

  At any rate, there was no way to get out of it now. Seated in a leather armchair, bound hand and foot, the patient was going to see his molars, incisors and canine’s extracted, one by one…or it would be necessary to confess that he wasn’t blind…and Rémois hadn’t been warned.