The Revolt of the Machines

by Brian Stableford

  She described the scene in broken sentences, showing Augustine, surprised, lying on her side, tipped over, her legs crushed between two banquettes; and she still had ringing in her ears, mingled with the cries of the victims, the excited sound of the electric alarm bells that were signaling to all the stations along the line.

  I had to prepare her a glass of sugared water, scented with orange flowers. While twirling the spoon to make the sugar dissolve, I looked pityingly at my poor pale wife, her eyes closed and her head inert on her pillow, and I thought: It’s her turn. Thus, we’ve all experienced it. In that case, can we be the only ones?

  Take note that I did not doubt the objective reality of Madame Forbe’s dream for a moment. What would, the day before, have simply had the effect on me of a mere nightmare due to an embarrassment of digestion or some disturbance in the functioning of the circulatory system, I now admitted, without any hesitation, as a manifestation of sympathy at a distance, adding to all those I had been observing for several hours.

  I was in haste to widen my verification, and the night already seemed to me to be interminable. It was, however, necessary for me to calm Madame Forbe down in order to persuade her to go to sleep. I ended up falling asleep myself, albeit with some difficulty.

  III

  I woke up early and, allowing the others to sleep, hastened my preparations in order to be able to commence my daily round without delay. That morning, for the first time, I added a supplementary question to all the questions that the conditions of my patients required: “Have you had any dreams?”

  Some said yes and others said no, but in general, the responses were inconclusive, made in a tone of surprise and disinterest. It even appeared to me that my persistence had a bad effect and harmed my reputation as a serious man.

  “Undoubtedly,” Monsieur Gallois said to me a trifle sarcastically, “the excellent practice that has been giving me chronic dyspepsia and manifestations of arthritis for eight years has been…undoubtedly, I have dreams…just like everyone else. No?”

  He was exaggerating, but I had to take a bantering tone to calm him down.

  In sum, my enquiries not producing any results, I took curiosity further; I asked the last patients I visited, about eleven o’clock, squarely, whether they had suffered any hallucinations. Only one of my old clients, Mademoiselle Belpomme, who has been paralyzed for nine years, replied that, the day before, she had suddenly become aware of a scent of lilacs in her room, into which no flowers had been brought.

  “However,” Mademoiselle Belpomme hastened to add, “it isn’t the first time that has happened, and it’s always at the time of year when I had the habit of leaving Paris and going to spend the summer at my property in Brunoy.”

  My round finished shortly before midday. At that moment I happened to be in the Place Saint-Augustin; as it was on my way home, I called in at the commissariat in the Rue Lavoisier, where I had another statement to make.

  It was the Commissaire himself who received me. Like all his colleagues, he is a charming functionary, very well-mannered and well-spoken. He seemed to be delighted to see me, took my deposition, thanked me very warmly for the valuable aid that I had given his agents, and finally, as I got up to leave, he stopped me with a courteous gesture, saying: “Now that we’ve finished with my professional concerns, Doctor, it’s necessary that I bring your attention to a matter that is more in your particular province, and which will perhaps interest you. Can you imagine….?”

  He stopped, reflected momentarily, and stood up. “It’s better if you hear it from the mouth of the person concerned.” Crossing the room, he opened the door and shouted: “Leboul!”

  Hurried footsteps resounded on the parquet of the next room, where the agents were. The Commissaire stood aside to let through a tall, thin, dark fellow with two small ferrety eyes and the suspicion of a moustache.

  The Commissaire closed the door, came to sit down beside me, and said to the sergent de ville: “Tell Monsieur what happened to you last night.”

  To judge by the theoretical and decided tone in which he set out to tell his little story, I was far from being the second person to hear it, but it was no less interesting for that.

  “I was on patrol duty outside the door of the station last night between half past two and twenty to three. I was walking back and forth without thinking about anything, when it suddenly came into my head that someone was committing a crime in the Rue Tronson-Ducoudray. Things like that aren’t usual for me, and at first I didn’t pay any attention. ‘It’s just imagination,’ I said to myself, and I carried on walking. Well, a minute went by…Monsieur, I could no longer hold still; it was stronger than me. I went to look in that direction, and what do I see? A head sticking out round the corner of the street and, on seeing me, pulls back swiftly. ‘Suspicious,’ I say to myself, ‘have to take a look….’ I resume my patrol, making my boots sound on the sidewalk, then I suddenly turn round. This time, it wasn’t only the head but an entire man that, on seeing me, disappears again. Then I didn’t hesitate any longer—I run to the station and I tell the brigadier. You can imagine that at first, he made fun of me, but I held firm. ‘No matter how I know, it’s necessary to go; I tell you that I’m sure there’s something shady going on.’ And positively, Monsieur, with these eyes I have in my head, I saw what was happening as if I were there: two militiamen from the subcontinent keeping a lookout at the ends of the street and the other two busy trying to force the shutter. Already, one of them had got into the ground-floor lodgings. In brief, we went back at a run and when I heard the blast of the whistle that warned them about our arrival, the brigadier said to me, like this: ‘You know, Leboul, you ought to be a somnambulist!’”

  I shook my head, pretending to smile, amused by the agent’s style of reportage.

  “That’s very good,” I said to him, when he fell silent. “You’re a precious watchman, and I congratulate you.”

  “You can go,” said the Commissaire to Leboul. “Well, Doctor, what do you think? I ought to tell you that I sometimes dabble in hypnotism…yes, even a little spiritism…in brief, these questions interest me very much. Don’t you think that that man possesses the gift of second sight?”

  “Bah!” I said, standing up. “These cases aren’t rare, and they’ve been known to manifest themselves exceptionally in subjects who’ve never had occasion to observe anything similar. In any case, your agent might be exaggerating, and he seems to be a good talker.”

  The Commissaire struck a reflective pose. “Perhaps you’re right,” he conceded, finally. “In any case, it seems to me that it’s not without interest.”

  “Undoubtedly, undoubtedly…however, until further notice….”

  In a light and cheerful tone, my interlocutor interrupted me. “Of course….”

  I stood up. He accompanied me as far as the street.

  Come on, I thought, there’s not a moment to lose; here’s a further instance. If I can assemble a certain number of analogous manifestations, they’ll finish up forming a whole, very capable of interesting a scientific body.

  Lunch was waiting for me. Sitting in their customary places, Madame Forbe and her mother greeted me with a certain solemnity. Without saying a word, my wife pointed to my napkin, on which the blue paper of an open telegram cased me to dread an urgent summons that would not leave me time to eat.

  “Again!” I sat down, setting the telegram, at which my wife was continuing to point a fateful finger, down in front of me.

  “Read it, then!” she said, in an impatient tone.

  I obeyed.

  Laconically, in a few unsigned lines, the account confirmed, on behalf of Mademoiselle Augustine Lavert, the railway accident in which the unfortunate girl had had both legs crushed. Madame Forbe’s dream was realized.

  My mother-in-law fixed me with up-turned eye widened by fear. My wife adopted an expression of triumph.

  “Well?”

  “Well,” I said, carefully folding up the telegram, which I slipp
ed into my pocket, “It’s quite simple, but until further notice, not a word about all this.”

  All afternoon I remained in my study, busy drafting a detailed account of the facts, just in case.

  It was nearly six o’clock when a prolonged ringing of the bell in the antechamber caused me to shiver.

  “There’s another one,” I murmured, involuntarily.

  As I immediately strove to contain that nervous disposition to presentiment, someone knocked at my door and the anxious face of my chambermaid appeared,

  “What is it now, Berthe?”

  “Monsieur,” said Berthe, slightly embarrassed, “it’s a very oddly dressed man who wants to talk to Monsieur. He says that he’s come from America and that he took the train from Le Havre this morning to come and see Monsieur….”

  “Did he give you his name?”

  “My word, that’s right—I didn’t even think of asking him.”

  During the brief interval of silence that followed that declaration, I pricked up my ears; the visitor could be heard pacing back and forth in the hallway, at a precipitate pace; his shoes were making the parquet vibrate.

  I stood up and moved the domestic aside in order to open the door wide.

  “Please come in,” I said, imperatively.

  Advancing toward me, with broad strides, I saw a man, it’s necessary to confess, of the sorriest appearance. Ugly and miserable, his face was pockmarked, his eyelids swollen, his head closely shaved and his ears sticking out like the handles of a soup tureen. Of his costume, it was only possible to see frayed trousers descending over monstrous shoes of tan leather, studded with nails; all the rest—short, waistcoat, etc.—was enveloped in a rubber greatcoat yellowed by wear, militarily buttoned from the collar to the knees. In his impatient hands, seemingly poorly cared-for, my visitor was furiously kneading a traveling cap in faded green cloth, rendered formless under the exclusive or combined action of overwork and time.

  Berthe went out and I silently indicated a seat to the man. He refused with a gesture. He seemed violently emotional, out of breath, and his entire appearance seemed to signify: Oh, yes, it’s a fine time to sit down!

  Without giving me time to ask any questions, he said, in a staccato voice, looking me straight in the eyes: “Monsieur, my name is Sourbelle.”

  “Eh?”

  “Sourbelle,” he replied, authoritatively. “Yesterday evening, my wife murdered a newsvendor in front of you….”

  I nodded my head several times, precipitately. “I know, I know….but your wife said that you were in America.”

  He extended his hand in a tearful gesture. “Oh,” he cried, “she’s innocent, I assure you, completely innocent, so gentle, incapable of hurting a fly. The guilty party, in sum, is me.”

  “You! But haven’t I been told that you’ve arrived from Le Havre on the morning train?”

  Sourbelle’s bloodshot eyes stared at me madly, and I was able to see that behind their sickly lids, they did not appear to be devoid of intelligence.

  Abruptly, in order not to prevaricate any longer, he decided to take the chair that I had offered him, and sat down directly opposite me, his eyes obstinately fixed on mine.

  “Undoubtedly,” he declared, in a dull voice, “something supernatural is happening at present.”

  I could not help shivering. “What do you mean?”

  He threw his green cap on to the floor, crossed his legs one over the other, stuck his elbow on one knee and supported his chin on his closed fist.

  “Yesterday evening,” he said, “at about seven o’clock, we were approaching Le Havre. The Lorraine had just passed within sight of Cherbourg. Seven months, I was thinking, it’s seven months since I left, and here I am coming back, poorer than before, discouraged by one more attempt, in which the few thousand-franc bills we had saved have gone to waste….

  “Going back to the beginning, seeking the point of departure of that further disappointment, that was when I had to recognize as the first cause of all the evil was the woman who sells newspapers at the stall opposite the Théâtre de Vaudeville.”

  “What’s that?” I had started in my seat. A flash of light went through my head—but, intent on knowing everything, I mastered myself and signaled to Sourbelle to carry on.

  “Pay close attention,” he continued. “First of all, it’s necessary for you to know that I’ve had a run of bad luck. I flatter myself, however, with having courage; my poor wife and I have worked hard; I swear to you, we’ve tried everything. Successively, it has been necessary to give up or sell at a loss, all of our petty patrimony. We had only seven thousand francs left. I got a job as a mechanic with an automobile company. I earned a living, but what can you expect? I was obsessed with the idea of being better off; vegetating in place made my blood boil. One day….”

  He collected himself, recrossed his legs and picked up his knee in both hands, bringing it up to touch his chin.

  “Seven months ago—in consequence, at the beginning of last October—I was waiting with my twenty-five horsepower at the corner of the Chaussée d’Antin. While idling on the sidewalk I went over to the kiosk with its display of newspapers. To pass the time, I said to myself, I’ll buy a newspaper. ‘La Patrie, Monsieur?’ All right, La Patrie. I throw down my sou and open the accursed rag. Would you believe that I find an article on page three about the unknown California, a magnificent country, it said, still unexplored, where there’s everything to do. I’ve told you how I am: my imagination started working….”

  I was breathless. To hurry him along, I said: “In short, you left.”

  “I left. There’s no need to tell you what I did out there; only the result matters. Here I am…without a sou. Good. And the origin of all that—what do you see as the cause of all that?”

  I attempted to smile, because the poor devil was so sad I felt sorry for him.

  “Well,” I suggested, “A little credulity, perhaps…?”

  Grimly, and abruptly, he interrupted me.

  “Possibly, as the energetic cause, but as the circumstantial cause, as the contribution of hazard, the stupid, irritating hazard that often causes poor folk to choose between several unknown directions…anyway, if that accursed woman hadn’t been there with her newspapers; if, at least, she hadn’t, with her banal shopkeeper’s amiability, directed my choice, or if, instead of La Patrie, she’d offered me...what do I know? Anyway, yesterday evening, I was thinking about her, about her unconsciously suggestive role in my adventure, and, confronted by the result, I said to myself that if I could get my hands on her…you know how it is; it’s stupid; one says to oneself that one would do this or that, and, in sum, one does nothing. Certainly, if she’d been there, I’d have left her perfectly tranquil, but it’s no less true that I brandished my fist in the air, promising myself on the deck of the steamer, that soon…you understand?”

  I nodded my head. I was just as emotional as him, but for different reasons. I tried to speak, but he interrupted me by extending his arms.

  “Wait a bit. Having made that gesture, I resumed my stroll; in spite of everything, I was glad to be returning to France. I was thinking about my wife, who would be surprised, and also disappointed to see me come back without a sou. I pictured her in her little room on the sixth floor of a new house on the Rue Mogador, I could see her clearly, as one sees things that one remembers, but with more clarity, like an image, as if there was a cinematograph in front of me: she went downstairs, went out into the street, went behind the Opéra, along the Rue Mogador and the Chaussée d’Antin. She arrived opposite the Vaudeville. There, near the kiosk, there was a gentleman standing, reading a newspaper beside a little boy who was looking at the pictures….”

  I couldn’t help interrupting, exclaiming: “That was me! Do you recognize me?”

  “Perfectly. I recognized you when I came in.”

  “And you saw…?”

  The poor fellow lowered his head. “Everything. My wife approached, raised her arm, struck….

>   “When we arrived at Le Havre this morning, we disembarked. I was in a hurry to get to Paris, as you can imagine. I took the first train that was leaving. At Rouen, I found the newspapers which told me everything….”

  He had said all that in a jerky voice, becoming emotional between sentences. He ended up feeling nothing but his grief, and he stopped talking, letting his head fall into his hands, succumbing to a fit of tears.

  Eventually, he raised his head again. I don’t recall ever having seen anything more horrible than that face like a cheese-grater streaming with tears, and those eyes, as red as fresh wounds.

  “Since my arrival,” he said, “I’ve been everywhere: to the commissariat, to the court. I learned all the details and I’ve been promised that I can see my wife the day after tomorrow; tomorrow’s Sunday, it seems. Everywhere, I’ve told people what’s happened to me, and I saw that, without wanting to laugh at me, they thought I was mad. Then I thought of you, Monsieur, who are a physician, and perhaps won’t laugh at me if I ask you to help me prove to the law that this is a case of hypnotism, of entirely involuntary suggestion. Oh, I know full well that it’s extraordinary, unique—but after all, apart from that explanation, I can’t see any other!”

  He stood up. I stopped him with a gesture.

  “Me neither,” I said, softly.

  His face cleared, transfigured by a kind of joy.

  I went on: “In a few words, I’ll convince you of my intentions. I’m entirely in agreement with you, and I think that your gesture has done all the harm; it was involuntary, especially in its range, for misfortune determined that it would be prolonged at a distance. How is that possible? That’s what I don’t know yet, although I suspect a cause.”