“Oh, you sense it!” Langre cried, ironically.
Meyral had picked up the flint-glass prism. He looked at the spectrum projected on a plate, with the sort of distracted attention that one frequently encounters in laboratory men. “It seems to me,” he said, “that there’s an anomaly in the violet.”
Langre shivered, in a fashion comparable to that of a war-horse that hears the trumpet sounding. “What anomaly?”
“Firstly, a certain pallor…and then again, one might think that the violet region is less extensive. I might be mistaken, for my personal equation is certainly disturbed this morning.”
Without saying a word, Gérard began taking measurements. “You’re right! The extreme violet is eroded.”
An emotion equal to that of the previous day contracted their faces.
“Let’s verify it!” said Georges.
They verified it. After experiments exact to the micrometer it became evident that the extreme region of the violet was lacking, and that the neighboring region was reduced in intensity.
“Approximately a 30th of the spectrum has disappeared!” Langre concluded. “In consequence, the ultra-violet…”
There was no need to go on. Already, Meyral was helping him to set up new apparatus. The observations were decisive. The absence of any simple chemical or phosphorogenic effect left no doubt as to the disappearance or extreme enfeeblement of ultra-violet radiation.
“You’re right,” the old man murmured, nervously. “The disorder persists—and the continuation is as disconcerting as the beginning!”
Successively, they analyzed light produced by electricity, gas, wood and coal; they all manifested the same lacuna.
“Something awesome is happening!” the young man sighed. “If the anomaly is general, the worst hypotheses become plausible. What’s going to happen in Europe tonight?”
He picked up the newspapers that he had thrown on a table and searched for news from the provinces and overseas. They were innocuous, apart from three items transmitted before the mob had invaded the Central Telegraph Office: a brief dispatch announcing troubles in Marseilles; another relating to the sabotage of a battleship; and a third recording an unexpected excitement in London.
“We can, at least, conclude that the disturbance extends over a considerable area,” Langre said. “Let’s see if any other papers have appeared.” He rang a bell; the maidservant was not long delayed in showing a yellow-patched face.
“Go and buy some newspapers, Catherine.”
“If I can!” she replied, acrimoniously.
“You will be able to,” Meyral remarked, cocking an ear. Wild shouts announcing the sensational editions of the newspapers were audible.
Catherine went out, with a tragic expression. She came back with La Presse, Le Journal, Le Petit Parisien and Le Figaro. The first pages were devoted to the vanquished mob, but in the following pages numerous telegrams testified to the morbid state of the entire human family. In Madrid and Barcelona the revolution was victorious. Homicidal riots had bloodied the Italian peninsula. There had been violent skirmishes in Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Brussels, Amsterdam, London, Liverpool, Dublin, Lisbon, New York, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Constantinople, Kyoto and 50 other cities: battles everywhere, after a period of frenzy, ending in a strange torpor. The mob had triumphed in Mexico, the Brazilian state of São Paulo, Athens and Canton—and doubtless in many regions that the disorder had isolated completely from the world.
“That leaves us in no doubt!” said Langre, throwing Le Figaro aside. “The entire planet is affected.”
“And no news of a scientific nature!”
“Oh well—let’s get back to work!”
They worked doggedly for an hour searching for further characteristics. They only found one: the region of red and orange acted with unexpected intensity on fluorescent substances.
“That region,” Meyral remarked, “even seems to be more luminous than usual.”
“By comparison, undoubtedly. What remains of the violet must be weakened; I imagine that the indigo, and even the blue, are deleteriously affected. Note that the daylight has a yellow tinge.”
The tragic maidservant abruptly came into the laboratory. “Madame Sabine wants to see Monsieur.”
“Is she afraid to come into the laboratory?” Langre asked.
“It’s because Monsieur is working.”
“She won’t disturb us.”
Sabine’s blonde plaits appeared. Her expression displayed neither agitation nor fear, but a listless melancholy, which deepened her dark blue eyes. Meyral looked at her covertly, with a gentleness full of resentment. That hyacinth and convolvulus complexion, the allure of an undine in moonlight, such glossiness, harmony and freshness—it was the fairy tale that had led his youth astray. By departing with the other, Sabine had changed all the legends…and he had not forgiven her. At the sight of her, he experienced the weight of defeat, and the corrosion of the defeated; on evenings saturated with aromas, stars and adventures, she depleted the splendor of the world.
“I woke up late!” she said, excusing herself.
“You were worn out by fatigue,” her father replied, after embracing her. “We’ve all fallen victim to a bizarre drowsiness. How are the children?”
“They’re asleep.”
“They were awake until 3 a.m.!”
Sabine had moved toward Georges. “I’ll never forget!” she said.
He clenched his fist in order not to reveal the immense shiver that shook his being. The past reappeared, with its springs and verdant hills.
“Yes, you’ll do well not to forget!” exclaimed the old man. “Without Georges, time would have been lost—and time, on that ferocious night…”
Anxiety inundated the young woman’s face. “What’s happened?”
“Frightful things, my poor child! Perhaps less frightful than…” Cutting his own speech short with an abrupt gesture, however, he began again: “The mob has been dispersed; the city and the nation are tranquil; our surroundings remain in the chaos in which we flounder from our first breath to our last sigh!”
Sabine took these words to mean that there were no longer any but individual dangers. Thinking about Vérannes, she became feverish. “I can’t live with him any longer!” she whispered.
“You’ll live with me,” Gérard declared. “I behaved like an unspeakable idiot in allowing that man to take you away. I can’t repair the inevitable, but I can cut the mooring-rope!”
She broke into a smile. She was not far-sighted; the future was lost in the fog into which it fades for savages—but a menacing image made her shiver. “What if he becomes violent?”
“Let him come!” growled her father, impetuously. He put his hand on Meyral’s shoulder. “He will find me, and he will find this fellow.” He continued, with a mixture of anger and bitterness: “Oh, why wasn’t it you, my son, who loved Sabine!”
Georges went pale, and a convulsive smile passed over his mouth.
IV. The Twilight of Life
The day was peaceful. Radiotelegrams announced the end of the agitation over the entire planet, save for the southern states of the Argentine Republic, Tasmania and New Zealand, where an appreciable decrease in feverish symptoms was still observable. As time went by, though, new anxieties increased incessantly. They scarcely reached the social underworld, but, swiftly disseminated by men of superior culture, they brushed the intermediate strata.
Scientists kept track of the “malady of light” with an ardent anxiety. Experimenters had discovered the singularity initially observed by Meyral. Without adding anything substantial to the observations made by Langre and Georges, their observations confirmed, to the extent of its disappearance, the phenomenon of abnormal double refraction—or, rather, the duplication of light.
In Paris, Berlin, London, Brussels, Rome, Amsterdam and all of Central Europe, the end of the first phase of the phenomenon had occurred at about 3:30 a.m. It ha
d been manifest slightly later in Eastern Europe and in Asia, and later still in the northern regions. It was delayed in North America, except in high latitudes. In the tropics, and especially the southern hemisphere, the delay was further accentuated. All the times were corrected to Greenwich Mean Time. It appeared that the phases had nothing to do with the Sun.
As for the new phases, they followed their course. After 7 a.m., the hour at which—in Paris as in London, Liverpool, Amsterdam and Jena—the disappearance was ascertained of a narrow band of the extreme violet and all the ultra-violet rays, a progressive paling and disappearance of the remainder of the zone was observed. Nevertheless, at 7 p.m., a part of it remained—but the indigo appeared duller.
Various secondary phenomena followed. Firstly, it was ascertained, as Langre and Meyral had done, that the brightness and fluorescent power of the orange and red were increasing continuously. Soon, it was also observed that these two colors were acquiring singular chemical properties, although not very pronounced. On the other hand, the electrical conductivity of metals was decreasing; iron was the most greatly affected. Communications via submarine cables became capricious. Although transmission by terrestrial wires remained normal for those of medium length, it deviated over long distances. The production of Hertzian waves became more difficult. Work in electrical factories became subject to numerous malfunctions.
The perturbations became more marked during the night. By morning, the violet zone of the spectrum was invisible. Communication by submarine cable was no longer possible. The major telegraph lines were scarcely functioning, and only intermittently. All electrical factories had been shut down. Chemical reactions were becoming capricious in factories as in laboratories, and some had ceased to work. In consequence, wood and coal were burning poorly, giving dismal flames. Terrestrial magnetism was weakening; compass-needles were giving uncertain indications, which rendered navigation perilous. The planet was illuminated by a yellowish light.
That was a funereal day. A breath of the end of the world passed over humankind. Individuals sensed the immensity of the phenomenon and its frightful mystery, and huddled together nervously, gripped by the instinct of the herd. The phantasmagorical creatures that herald cataclysms were seen to surge forth—but no one knew anything! The men of the laboratories and those of books, the scientists who numbered the stars and those who weighed atoms, could not even offer a conjecture to the terrors of the multitude; their power was limited to minute description of the episodes of the drama.
The third night saw the last electrical communications disappear. Batteries gave derisory currents; dynamic induction seemed to have been abolished; no apparatus produced Hertzian waves any longer. In the morning, people found themselves deprived of the nervous system that had united them “innumerably” all over the world. By the evening, they averred that they were inferior to people of the olden days; steam abandoned them in its turn. Alcohols, petroleums and even wood and coal had become inert. To produce a little fire it was necessary to have recourse to rare products—which, they felt certain, would not be long delayed in sinking into chemical death.
In three days, therefore, and without any clue as to the origins of the catastrophe, humankind found itself reduced to impotence. People could still navigate by sail or by oar, and harness horses to their carriages, but they were prohibited from lighting the fires whose red caress their savage ancestors had felt in the fringes of forests, in the profound plain or on the banks of rivers.
One infinitely enigmatic thing was that life went on. The grass continued to grow in the meadows, the wheat in the fields, the leaves at the tips of little branches. Beasts and humans accomplished their subtle functions. In sum; organic chemistry seemed to be intact. Not entirely, though: a coppery tint was mixed with verdure; human skin became ashen; everywhere, physiologists perceived a slowing down of pigmentary functions. Emotional sensitivity also seemed to have decreased. Undoubtedly, creatures were agitated by a continual fear, but the “pulsations” of that fear were less violent than at the beginning.
Because the threat extended over the entire world, it seemed less terrifying. People did not experience the individual outrage that is by far the most bitter and intolerable. Among the old, the sick, the disabled, and even more so in those suffering from some mortal disease, a sentiment of “revenge” attenuated the distress. Outside of these psychological elements, however, there was a narcosis. The nerves lost their customary sensitivity; cuts and bruises awakened no more than a muted pain; the imagination was weighed down and impoverished. Only deductive intelligence showed no weakening. As for the spirit of observation, what it lost in promptitude it seemed to regain in precision and constancy.
On the morning of the fourth day, Langre and Meyral, after a meager breakfast, held a consultation in the laboratory.
“The blue has almost disappeared!” the old man murmured. He was pale and distressed; his eyes had lost their fever; a stupor had slackened his fervent expression. “Nothing can save humankind,” he affirmed.
“Quite probably,” Meyral agreed. “The chances of salvation are small—nevertheless, they’re not zero. That depends on what I call the trajectory of the cataclysm—for I don’t believe for a moment, old friend, that these phenomena are durable. They will pass.”
“When?” asked Langre, morosely.
“That’s the nub of the problem. If we assume that the phases are regular and comparable, we can extrapolate their limit.”
“What limit? I can see several of them! In the end, all light and infra-red radiation will disappear, or the destruction will stop, whether at the green, the yellow, the orange or the red—so many limits!”
“The limit would then be the end of all radiation and the end of all superior life. I assume that mammals cannot survive the disappearance of the yellow and the orange, even admitting that the last phase is brief. There’s no point in anticipating that eventuality. Let’s imagine, however, that the crisis reaches its maximum when it reaches a part of the yellow radiation, and that a reaction then begins. It seems evident that the briefer the phases are, the better our chances of survival will be. Well, it took three days to consume violet, indigo and blue; it will therefore require about a day to make green disappear. Let’s say one day to eat into the yellow. In 48 hours we’ll reach the limit, and then the retrogression will begin.”
Gérard looked at is companion pityingly. “My poor child! When all human calculations are so utterly ridiculous, how can one still construct hypotheses? There’s no reason why all the radiations shouldn’t vanish, to the very last.”
“I perceive, however, a certain ‘compensatory’ logic in the progress of the phenomenon. In addition to the fact that the red and orange have definitely become more intense, the temperature is very nearly normal. That last fact permits a hope.”
“A very feeble hope!” Langre protested, bitterly. “Certainly, it might signify that the energy lost by one part of the spectrum tends to increase another, but that might only be a residue of the transformation. If we assume that radiations of the visual order are being gradually converted into unknown energies, one has to expect reactions—but those reactions don’t prove that the conversion won’t proceed to the end. Then again, I can’t believe, even for a moment, that humankind can support the disappearance, even temporarily, of the green waves! I’ve always held that it’s a color essential to life.” He concluded, with a humorless laugh: “For the time being, it’s possible—and in any other circumstances I’d say probable—that the phenomenon will be transitory; its initiation was too abrupt and its evolution too rapid for our logic to see it as anything other than an immense accident—but what is our logic worth?”
He fell silent, and resumed work.
For half an hour, they devoted themselves to melancholy experiments. Then Meyral sighed. “Is the accident due to interstellar space?” he wondered.
“As a mere perturbation of the planet, it seems excessive,” Langre retorted, “and as a perturbation of
the Sun, implausible; it would be necessary to complicate the solar influence infinitely to imagine that the abolition of superior waves is so exactly similar by night and by day…for the slightest fire lit by humans and for the light of the stars. I’m inclined to admit that the catastrophe is interstellar in origin.”
“Then it would influence the Sun, and in that case too we should discover differences between its diurnal and nocturnal action?”
“But differences infinitely smaller than if the Sun alone were involved. No matter—we must search for them. Perhaps an attentive reading of our experimental journal will reveal one of them…in which case…” A little of the bitter enthusiasm that had sustained him against the denials and spoliations of justice swelled up in his face. “Poor old maniac!” he muttered, striking his breast ironically. “Miserable dream-machine! Humankind is about to perish, but you…” A cold shiver made his shoulders quiver. “I can’t do any more!” he groaned. “Let’s gather together—unite our petty lives before sinking into the formless fog.”
Meyral listened to him with an immense compassion, which also poured out over himself. “Yes,” he replied, “we must be together; it’s necessary not to separate yourself from your family any longer—even for an hour. It’s ungodly!”
“Catherine!” shouted the old man.
The gloomy maidservant appeared. In the coppery light, she displayed a face in which terror had hollowed out holes and wrinkles. Her pupils were dilated, like those of a cat in twilight.
“Tell Madame Vérannes that we’re waiting here for her and the children—and Berthe and Césarine too,” said the old scientist, in an amicable tone. “You can stay with us too, if you prefer.”
“Oh, yes, Monsieur!” she exclaimed. “I’d certainly prefer that!” The herd instinct was manifest in the gesture of her arms, extended toward her master; she had confidence not only in the old man, of whom she was deeply and faithfully fond, but also in the enigmatic instruments on the tables and against the walls.
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