The Mysterious Force

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  He connected little Marthe’s head to the positive pole and one of her feet to the negative pole. Then he turned the machine carefully, keeping watch on the tension. Nothing. The body remained inert. Georges accelerated the motion. Soon, a palpitation was discernible, which agitated her lips and raised her breast: Marthe was breathing!

  For some time, Georges maintained the rotation. The result remained the same. No matter! The experiment demonstrated, conclusively, the persistence of life in the little girl.

  Darkness fell again. The cold shadow thickened in the long room—but it was not the fearful shadow of the day before. The great constellations were almost complete; the seven stars of the Great Bear were visible. Furthermore, the thermometer stood three degrees higher than the preceding night.

  An immense lassitude overcame Meyral, but that lassitude too was normal. He did not resist sleep—what good would it do? Without light, was he not reduced to impotence? There was still the feeble light of the Holtz machine, but to obtain it he would have to harness himself to the machine. It was better to sleep. While he rested, the forces of normality would continue to resume their empire…

  VII. The Resurrection.

  When he woke up, broad daylight was streaming into the laboratory. Immediately, in spite of a residue of fatigue, the young man felt a considerable well-being. The light that inundated the room was almost similar to the light of a fine spring morning. Undoubtedly, it remained confusedly crepuscular, but how different it was from the sinister light of the preceding days!

  As soon as he was on his feet, Georges threw himself toward the apparatus. He uttered a cry like those he had uttered in his adolescence when the morning seemed promising. The greater part of the blue zone had reappeared.

  “The reaction is more rapid than the action,” he said, rubbing the palms of his hands together. “We’ll reach the indigo before noon.”

  That first movement, which lasted less than a minute, was so impetuous that he had forgotten the plight of his friends. The sight of extended bodies suggested nothing to him but the idea of sleep. Then his heart lurched. Gripped by dread again, he ran to Langre. The old man was in the same position he had been in the previous evening, but Georges observed important changes, one after another: he was breathing again; his heart was beating feebly and his pulse was perceptible, although slow. It was the same for the children, Sabine and the servants. Even so, their sleep was still profound.

  “Saved! They’re saved!” Meyral affirmed, with a quiver of joy.

  In those delightful minutes, doubt seemed impossible. Georges gazed out over the Luxembourg, saturated with light, and savored the young morning like a child. He decided that he would wait two more hours before waking them up, feeling strongly that, in the circumstances, it was necessary to let nature take its course.

  As on the previous day, a terrible appetite hollowed out his stomach. He devoured biscuits, stale bread and chocolate sensuously. The taste of foodstuffs seemed to have been renewed, altogether finer and more intense.

  “That’s the best meal of my life!” he murmured, slightly intoxicated. “That stale bread is incomparable, and the aroma of the chocolate sweeter than the perfume of may-blossom, lilac and newly-mown meadows.”

  He worked enthusiastically, varying and refining his experiments and accumulating notes. When Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas chimed 11 a.m., he started. Should he intervene or wait a while longer? Incontestably, the condition of the dreamers was continuing to improve. Sabine’s pulse and those of the children were almost normal; Langre’s was accelerating, along with those of the servants. They were all breathing fully.

  In addition, the temperature was climbing; an hour before it had passed zero and was approaching four degrees. The Holtz machine was giving off eight centimeter sparks. The blue rays had regained their integrity; the indigo zone was beginning to emerge.

  “Fire?” muttered Meyral.

  He struck a match, and went pale. The flame ignited: the sacred fire, the savior fire! What a thrill to see it creep along that paltry morsel of wood! Meyral forgot his science and became the naïve creature who sees a divinity in flame. He went to get a bundle of firewood and some coal from the kitchen.

  A few minutes later, there was a roaring fire in the stove. Then the heat began to spread its waves around. Before noon, the thermometer stood at 16 degrees.

  On reflection, Georges had judged that no intervention could do as much for his friends as the gradual rise in temperature. He waited, going from one to another, scrutinizing their faces or feeling their wrists. Gradually, the pale faces of Sabine and the children took on color. It was little Marthe who made the first movement; her right arm tried to push back the blankets that had become too heavy. Then she sighed and, after blinking a few times, her eyes opened.

  “Marthe!” cried Meyral, joyfully.

  “I’m hot!” the child replied. Her blue eyes looked at Georges, vaguely at first. “Mama!” she called.

  Sabine shivered. A vague smile passed over her silvery face.

  “Sabine!” said the young man.

  The large eyes opened like marvelous flowers. Sabine, half-plunged in a dream, continued smiling.

  That was the delightful episode of the resurrection; the immense joy of rejuvenated families filled Georges’ breast.

  “Have I been asleep?” Sabine asked, studying the cabalistic furniture of the laboratory in surprise.

  “You’ve all been asleep!” Meyral replied.

  Suddenly, she shivered; fear made her face tremble; she remembered. “Are we going to die?”

  “We’re going to live!”

  She raised her head. She saw little Marthe, who turned her joyful and innocent face toward her.

  “Are we saved, then?”

  “We’ve come back to life! The creative light has triumphed over eternal darkness. Look at the Sun, Sabine. In a few hours, it will have become the great Sun of our childhood again.”

  Sabine turned to the window, and saw the air repossessed by brightness, the sky beginning to resume the shade with which generations had colored their most beautiful dreams.

  “Life!” she sighed, while tears of ecstasy gleamed on her eyelashes. Then she blushed; she dared not look at Meyral any longer.

  He turned away, and Sabine, remembering that she was not undressed, lifted up the blankets and appeared in the dark costume that she had put on the day before last, as a sign of mourning.

  When she stood up, a certain anxiety came back into her being. She called to Langre and her little son. The blonde head and the white head stirred.

  “Let them wake up by themselves,” Meyral advised. “That’s the best way!”

  She acquiesced, and carried Marthe to one of the windows.

  The Luxembourg was the garden of her youth; as full of life as in the time when the past and the future had melted into the same dream…

  When she turned round, she saw Georges looking at her with humility—and they were like the Man and the Woman in the land of Seven Rivers, when Agni devoured the dry flesh of trees and the bright herds passed over the hills.14

  “Where am I?” asked a grave voice. Gérard had just woken up. A stupor was confusing his brain. His old soul had difficulty emerging from oblivion; distractedly, he sought to pull himself together. “The laboratory? Sabine…Georges…” He released a long groan; his ideas were beginning to take form. “Is this the last day?”

  “It’s the new life!” Meyral replied.

  With a violent gesture, Langre threw back his blankets; his aggressive and combative humor emerged from the mist. “What new life?” he demanded. “Light…”

  “Light is victorious!”

  Gérard’s eyes gleamed beneath his bushy eyebrows. “Don’t give me false hope, Georges,” he said. “Have the green rays reappeared?”

  “The green rays, the blue rays and even the majority of the indigo rays.”

  “The sunlight!” said the clear voice of Sabine.

  One by one, the serv
ants and little Robert had woken up. Delightedly, Langre contemplated the daylight that was streaming through the windows. “When did it begin to climb?” he stammered.

  “Thirty-six hours ago.”

  “Then we’ve been asleep for…”

  “For nearly two days.”

  “What about you?” murmured the aged physicist, with muted anger. “Did you witness the resurrection, then? You’ve seen the world reborn! Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “It was impossible.”

  Langre remained pensive and melancholy. He was experiencing a bitter disappointment; he was jealous. Then, delight got the upper hand. His old veins transported hope; on the renewed Earth he was about to live glorious days, and finally know justice. “Stand up!” he cried. “We mustn’t lose a single one of these magnificent minutes…” And, pouncing on his apparatus like a wolf on its prey, he threw himself into hasty research. He read Meyral’s notes avidly. “Ah!” he sighed, periodically. “It’s too wonderful…it’s too beautiful.”

  Meanwhile, Catherine made chocolate. In accordance with Langre’s wishes, they had that first breakfast in the laboratory. When the fuming liquid appeared, there was a moment of enthusiasm. Even the old scientist paused in his work to participate in the communion, and the humble meal became an incomparable fête.

  “Hi ho!” cried Langre, laughing. “We’ll have to ration our provisions!”

  “We’ll probably be short of meat,” Georges replied, “but not of flour, sugar, coffee or chocolate. The poor human race must have been decimated…and its stores are intact.”

  As shadow passed over the bliss, Sabine thought about Vérannes’ body, laid out in a neighboring room.

  “Hundreds of millions of our peers must have died!” said the old man, in a nervous voice.

  For some time, a rumor had been growing in the streets. They could hear the surf-like noise that the clamors of a multitude make. Suddenly, church bells started ringing. Hesitant at first, the sound multiplied and swelled. Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas sounded the Easter of the human race in great volleys.

  Part Two

  I. The Great Renewal

  The next day, the violet rays were reconquered and the human race resumed its routines. Fire reappeared in the hearths, in the blast-furnaces, in the brush and the grasslands. Electric boats resumed their journeys over the resounding sea; cars cluttered the cities; aircraft ploughed through the sky; the telephone, the telegraph and radio waves reassured the multitudes.

  People began to calculate the extent of the disaster. A third of humans, a quarter of domestic animals and a few million carnivorous and herbivorous animals in the last virgin forests had fallen victim to it.

  Among the westerners, Germany, the United States and Great Britain had suffered the heaviest losses. Germany’s population of 66 million had been reduced to 46; there were no longer any more than 65 million people in the United States and 39 million in England. Less deeply afflicted, Italy saw its population reduced to 30 million people, Russia to 90 million, Spain to 15 million and France to 34 million. In Paris, however, and along the Mediterranean shore, the hecatomb turned out to be exceptional. Of its four million inhabitants, Paris lost 500,000; Marseilles was diminished by half, Nice by two-thirds.

  For a few days, these losses seemed irreparable, but when the survivors began to be reassured as to their own fate, there was more talk of well-being than grief. Only mothers, and many fathers—such faithful creatures—were subject to profound regrets. Others experienced indifference, or the sly pleasure that follows the death of a relative; the innumerable inheritances created by the disaster became a vast celebration for millions of legatees. The cities having suffered more than rural areas, the social question was temporarily resolved; there was work for everyone, and richly rewarded; there was an abundance of disposable goods; the treasury was enriched to the point that taxes could be reduced, enormous public works undertaken and generous help given to the poor.

  The cause of the cataclysm remained mysterious, although conjectures were rife. The majority of scientists favored the hypothesis of an immense flux of energy originated in the interstellar abyss, which had swept over our planet, and perhaps Mars, Venus, Mercury, and even the Sun as well. As the nature of that energy escaped all conception, the hypothesis did not explain anything. No one could imagine why its effect had been to reduce or nullify known forces. A few thinkers also put forward the contrary hypothesis; it was not, according to them, an energetic flux that had passed over, but a torrent of ether particularly avid for energy, and which, in consequence, had absorbed light, heat and electricity in massive doses. In sum, according to some, it was a matter of antagonistic forces, and according to others, of a capture of force.

  The latter theory was contradicted by the rapid reconstitution of terrestrial energies: a summery temperature succeeded the cold of the deadly days; magnetism seemed to be increased; chemical actions were manifest with a surfeit of alacrity—which, in many cases, caused accidents, and demanded a surfeit of precautions in factories and laboratories; all in all, it was as if vital force had been saved up.

  The overwhelming majority of the survivors disdained these scientific discussions. A marvelous renewal intoxicated souls. The simplest joys acquired a miraculous intensity; the sweetness of existence suppressed almost all of the hatreds, jealousies and frictions that darken the days of human beings.

  Langre, Sabine and Meyral savored this happiness in its plenitude. They took refuge in the country, in a location replete with water, trees and greenery. The squat and sullen house was surrounded by gardens. A retired colonel in the colonial forces had had it built, according to his own plans, after returning from Africa. It was somewhat reminiscent of a fortress, but, as might be expected, it was spacious and comfortable. Three gardens produced a surprising variety of fruits and vegetables, as well as tall trees, superabundant flowers and lush grass. It belonged to the colonel’s daughter, a stupid creature who, having taken a dislike to it, could not bring herself to sell it, and let it out in order to obtain an income.

  The colonel had stuffed the bookshelves with volumes bought from the neighboring châteaux and multiplied its heterogeneous furniture. Light penetrated through a multitude of windows, and one could see, beyond the enclosures, a landscape of Old France, of elegant undulations, in which the crop-fields and meadows alternated with woodlands. Charming hills surrounded the villages and indented a western horizon rich in crepuscular fêtes. Among the beeches and linden-trees, two springs formed a rill that mingled its voice and youth with the gardens.

  It was there that they stayed during the world’s renewal. Gérard had lugged all his chemical and physical instruments out there, even though, for the moment, he and Meyral were going over their notes, searching desperately therein for some explanation of the scourge that had ravaged the Earth.

  This work did not weary them at all. They drew delight from the same well as Sabine, the children, the servants, all the people in the village, and even the animals—for the living seemed to receive something of that surfeit of energy that was observed in phenomena; even the sick savored a certain honey of happiness, which soothed their suffering and enchanted their respites.

  The family often went sailing on the Yonne, in a heavy rowing-boat manned by a taciturn villager. Beauty deployed its magic at every bend in the river. An islet planted with reeds, willows and poplars reminded them of castaways. Inlets sheltered armies of green blades; among long strands of waterweed, fish liked their cold and agile lives; the grass grew monstrously; large flocks of crows, nourished by the disaster, passed overhead screeching war-cries.

  Meyral ceased to struggle against his affection then. He let it grow, to fill his days like an inexhaustible river and form the substance of his dreams. What did the future matter? If necessary, Georges would pay for the days of his enchantment in pain; at least he would have passed through the gate of ivory and wandered in the enchanted garden.

  For a long time, the bright Sabine,
sheltered from the enemy male population, paid no heed to any voice. Her charm was at its height; the brilliant silken quality of her hair seemed to increase further; her neck, formerly frail, acquired a thrust, roundness and harmony. The form of her cheeks was perfect; her fresh eyes emitted a gleam of renewal that caused all the passionate creatures of fable to rise up before Meyral.

  When the family disembarked on the bank, and the tragic maidservant set out a picnic, it seemed to Georges that they formed a strangely united group, by virtue of the memory of trials undergone in common, and by some indefinable link that grew tighter every day. A large dog, which Langre had acquired in Sens, shared this intimacy; it suffered strangely when they had to leave it alone in the house; its absence was slightly painful for the adults as for the children. Even the old gardener who lodged in an annex at the back of the vegetable-garden, and his grandson—a little boy with silvery hair, scarcely tinged with a hint of straw-color—displayed an extreme pleasure in drawing close to the family. One might have thought that the goat and the donkey experienced an analogous inclination.

  Three weeks went by. The solstice had passed. It was the season of long twilights: on some evenings, sitting on the terrace, from which they could see the Yonne, full of beautiful lies that the clouds told after sunset, they had a presentiment of the pearl-tinted dawn, when the fairies of the sunset still dispersed their enchantments. The warmth was extraordinary; it exceeded that of the hottest years, but it was not at all oppressive. There was a fever of gaiety in their veins, which delighted in high temperatures. People and animals alike enjoyed a surprising sensuality in walking over the warm meadows or along the baking roads. Oddly enough, the grass, the foliage and the flowers were not suffering. Every day, to be sure, storms thundered for an hour or more, releasing deluges of rain.