by Theo Varlet
What is happening, then? It is a cosmic consequence of frantic industrialism, whose applications have attained a planetary scale. The lines of energy transmission are responsible for the threat; as a consequence of the location of the regulatory plants, the great distributive channels are orientated, on both continents, in a latitudinal direction, which is modifying the gravitational field of Ektrol.
The remedy would be simple, with a degree of cooperation. It would be sufficient for one of the two continents to agree to organize its lines at right angles to the other, in order to neutralize the perturbation. But the ultimatum issued by White Ektrol demands that Red Ektrol should take that action. Red Ektrol responds with an inverse ultimatum. Meetings and brandished fits in the capitals and thousands of cites, great and small, in which enemy flags are torn up and burned.
Oh, that hatred twists faces…millions and millions of lacertian faces! What a tragic caricature, what horror and what shame, to see in three dimensions like this the bestial character of bellicose hatred, which would be no different on Earth, among the representatives of Homo sapiens!
Abrupt attack, by air...
Khalifur, the splendid and immense metropolis of old, seen from the top of the Palace—from terraces over the Observatory—looking westwards. A thousand skyscrapers are illuminated from top to bottom against the nocturnal sky by Babylonian street-lighting. The cinema and television halls are full, and the dance-halls, and the hominine-fighting arenas, where two celebrated champions are fighting this evening, in a match whose phases are being proclaimed by loudhailers in all districts...
And suddenly, the tone changes; the loudhailers announce calamitous news and warnings, the alarm of which is obvious even without being able to speak the lacertian language. The lugubrious appeals of sirens. Extinction of lights, panic, horrid confusion divined in the darkness, turbulent crowds in flight toward the armored shelters, especially toward the eastern district, reconstructed in anticipation of gases...
During that obscure swarming, however, the sky fills with a sinister droning: the approach of aerial engines. Salvos of anti-aircraft fire thunder from below…and the downpour of torpedoes falling from the heights bursts forth.
A giant firework display cleaves the darkness; in the western districts the decapitated skyscrapers crumble, and first spreads its monstrous flowers...
A gas war has commenced, but it is almost immediately stopped, without having time to do enormous damage. Barrages of telemechanical waves, which stop the enemy aircraft engines, have been installed on the perimeter of capitals and industrial centers.
It is only a pause. Hatred does not disarm. Of two continents, there is one too many on the planet. And Satan-Diplodocus whispers the desperate solution: ultra-X bombs. Their ranges of action far surpasses the zones of defense. Too bad if there is a certain amount of breakage during their manufacture; so much the better if their effects harbor surprises—that will happen to the enemy!
In hundreds of thousands, the fulminating bombs are ready to spring forth, for an initial sprinkling of the Red continent. The great strategist is seen, telephone in hand, leaning over the televisor that shows the aerial squadrons in flight... They are in position. “Launch!”
Satan-Diplodocus holds his sides with laughter. What a great surprise! Far more is achieved than the mere ravage of a continent! The perfect and definitive objective of scientific warfare has been achieved at a stroke: the total elimination of civilization on both sides. The charge is too powerful, the bombs too closely grouped. The ill-contained fulminating energies have unleashed plutonian forces hidden beneath the crust of Ektrol, and it is the planet itself that splits, fragments and explodes.
On the horizon, Himalayan masses can be seen leaping like mountain goats, fragments of continents projected into space by the deflagration of the central fire...
A frightful aurora borealis, the ardent night advances, and lowers its curtain over Khalifur...
The same camera angle, on the asteroid Eros…a superficial fragment of the planet that has leapt obliquely under the shock like a shard of flint...
The rotunda of the Observatory. Through the ocular of the great telescope, in the distance of space, the scattered fragments of Ektrol can be seen...
A city in flames, the capital of the Whites, can be made out on one of those blocks, which breaks up in its turn and crumbles, in the infinite ether...
XXII. The Thought of a World
That glimpse of the end of a world lasted for long, slow minutes in a poignant silence. A terrible lesson for us, indeed! Is it not a similar destiny that awaits the humans of Earth if our civilization continues, like that of Ektrol, to precipitate itself with an ever-accelerating velocity toward a future of uniquely material progress in which brutal instinct persist, with ever-more-unlimited destructive power at their disposal?
Then Zilgor spoke. This is his speech, as Oscar Frémiet recorded it in his notebook that same evening:
“Terrans, the spectacle that you have just witnessed, we have seen with our own eyes, we survivors who are here: me, the Unique and my twenty Immortals, guardians of the science and the thought of Ektrol.
“The catastrophe brought about by the industrial, democratic and military delirium of applied science has rendered us wise. We have renounced the errors and the crimes of which the anterior civilization rendered itself culpable, the failures of cosmic duty toward the planet of which we had custody: the destruction of life on its surface; deforestation and the inconsiderate squandering of natural resources; abusive and insensate electrification extending so far as to disturb gravitation; the absurdity of technology, the so-called generator of wellbeing and repose, but inevitably resulting by its acceleration in forced labor for all; assaults of the reigning species against itself, fratricidal wars whose necessity originated from another error, the limitless multiplication of individuals devoid of elevated thought, whose numbers caused brutal instinct to predominate.
“Industrial and technological madness we have renounced. The planetary catastrophe took charge of the abolition of the futile excess of individuals, and after that cleansing, we have refused to renew the experiment on the same basis. For we could do so, either by reestablishing, even on this minuscule asteroid where we are, sufficient conditions of habitability, or by emigrating to another planet. But that would only serve to reiterate the fundamental error of large number, of struggle and violence.
“We have only saved scientific thought, arrived at its culminating point. On every planet, thought gropes for millennia, comes to light in the organic species designated for that world, and accomplishes its destiny, which is to attain Knowledge, the only result of rational thought and civilization that counts. Ours had completed its cycle, exhausted its resources and killed the very world held in reserve by the genius of nature for that supreme experiment.
“It remained to conserve the Science acquired.
“Already, on Ektrol, in the final era, its enlargement appeared increasingly incompatible with the normal duration of an individual life. The progress of practical applications demanded a specialization such that science could no longer be held in its entirety in a single brain. We have reduced to the minimum, almost abolished, its practical applications—and the possibility of indefinitely prolonging the existence of a determined individual has permitted is to realize Science in the Scientist.
“Hosts of vulgar individuals are unnecessary henceforth. The species having found its superior type of scientific thought, one or several exemplars are sufficient to maintain it. Instead of forming a cumbersome cultural broth, without any other role than to permit the occasional chance birth of a brain of genius, the living matter of Mortals, mere donors of gray matter, reproducing in limited quantity, no longer serves any other purpose than ensuring the indefinite reproduction of the Immortals.
“We Immortals are the depository of the thought of Ektrol, its representatives vis-à-vis the solar system and with regard to the Cosmos: the Witnesses. And among t
hem, one central brain: mine.
“We are above joy and pain, in the serenity of Knowledge; above passions, above sexual difference, abolished in us; above the material wellbeing once ambitioned by industrial civilization. It is sufficient for us to retain in our formulae all the possibilities of science. We do not use them. What would be the point? Save for a few applications strictly useful to existence—and the cinema, for the amusement of mortals not yet fully disengaged from animality.
“Terrans, I have told you our Wisdom. I offer you therein something better than all the riches you hoped might attain from your voyage to Eros: a means of diffusing through the solar system and putting to profit the final results of the existence of Ektrol, of its fully-deserved misfortunes and its surviving thought. You will return to your Earth, when the time comes, to announce that Wisdom to humans.
“Will it serve to enable them to avoid a catastrophe analogous to ours as the conclusion of the technological experiment? I suspect that nothing can prevail against the infatuation and the contagious dementia of two billion humans provided with an atavism as dire as that of our animal slaves, in the conditions in which your society has evolved. Perhaps it will be necessary, as on Ektrol, for you to be subject to punishment in order for you to attain, as we have, Wisdom...”
It was almost a hope that great centuries-old Lizard—the Master of Eros, the Unique with the gold-laminated skull—addressed to us from on high. And around us, the other green-caped lizards, his contemporaries, stiff and cold, scrutinizing us with their lateral eyes, seemed to be drinking in through their third eyes the meaning of the words that Zilgor was pronouncing in French. As he concluded, ironic grins passed over their enigmatic physiognomies.
While our usual jailers led us back to our prison, Oscar whispered: “There no reason whatever to laugh at us. To end up the way they have…the Immortals! I wasn’t wrong to call them Academicians.32 What a bunch of clowns! For centuries on end they’ve persisted in sitting on their immutable and invariable science!”
“Well,” I whispered to Aurore, “Madame Simodzuki would be rather disappointed to see her beautiful dream of saving science, by confiding it to an elite protected from the violence and conflicts of industrial civilization, realized in this fashion.”
Ida, who was waiting for us, listened with an ironic indifference to her fiancé telling her about the film, and only manifested curiosity in relation to the hominines. She seemed almost to regret that their species had not originated on Earth; that gave her one less grudge against the tyrants. But she objected: “It’s all the same. Your Immortals say that they’re in possession of Wisdom, and they haven’t even abolished slavery!”
“On the contrary,” said Aurore, “they’ve established it. Would we have abolished it, if it were a matter of a species radically different from ourselves? If we had reduced to slavery, let’s say monkeys, or dogs? You must understand, Ida, that hominines here represent little more than animals among us. On Earth, slavery between humans has been suppressed—and with great difficulty!—by machines. Here, by contrast, the renunciation of machines has led to the taking into servitude of that inferior species, without any considerations of humanity intervening.”
I expected a virulent riposte from the Russian, but she employed a gentle irony.
“You’re worthy of your understanding with the famous Zilgor, Captain. Personally, I congratulate myself for having immediately chosen the side of the slaves. The masters don’t deserve to live on this world, let alone rule it.”
At any rate, it was among those beings that we were going to have to spend another year and a half...
XXIII. At Liberty
A sign of the times: we’ve moved house. No more prison. The new abode is better maintained, furnish almost adequately, and includes radiators and lamps that work—but it’s still one room, common to the four of us, and instead of the plaza where we once had the gratuitous enjoyment of lacertian cinema, it overlooks the rear of the Palace, and we have before our eyes the sinister ruins of the burned and blasted city, beneath the black and starry sky of the interplanetary void even in daylight.
Has that spectacle of horror been inflicted up on deliberately, in order to drive the lesson more firmly into our heads between now and our return to Earth? Or are they presenting it to us as a contrast, to make the sight of surviving Khalifur—I dare not say more agreeable—less dilapidated? Perhaps, though, we’re attributing overly subtle motives to Zilgor. The present world no longer having any importance for him, he might suppose that we think similarly…or Aurore, at least: the only one who counts, in his view.
My wife is no longer considered as a curious animal that he needs to keep locked up in order to have incessantly at his disposal. She is free to come and go, because it is evident that one word would suffice to prevent her from going away, and that, in any case, she cannot go far. The slight consideration afforded to the other three envoys from Earth—the “dunces,” ambassadors devoid of prestige—comes from Aurore; it is by reflection that they participate to some degree in the apparent raising of her status. Personally, I pass for a sort of Prince Consort. Oscar has his profession as a reporter in his favor, but his acquaintance with Ida against him, she being scorned because of her assiduity with regard to the abject bowwows.
We are no longer on the leash of our individual jailers, promoted to the rank of official servants, but all the police, both intra- and extramural, have received orders and seem to be responsible for watching us. I see them surging forth in the Palace to forbid me to go through a door, if, while wandering on my own, the whim takes me to opened the door in question, and in the evening, we are herded discreetly toward our lodgings if we linger outside. One example has demonstrated to us that we are still under the permanent threat of the wand. When Ida once attempted to remain with the bowwows after nightfall, we saw her frog-marched back with her elbows, knees and larynx paralyzed, as during our capture when we arrived.
It was Styal who notified us of that instruction, but without giving us a reason for it. Styal—the only one, except for Zilgor, who speaks French fluently—has kept his initial role as interpreter and his function as mentor. He follows Aurore like her shadow, supposedly ready to give her any information she desires—and it exasperates me, when I’m with my wife, not to be able to exchange two words without the presence of that inconvenient witness.
In brief, we’re no longer in prison, but it isn’t much better. What incarceration on Earth could be more annoying than a sojourn in Khalifur with such “liberty”?
I’m certainly suffering more than any of my companions, for although I have, since marrying Aurore, subordinated my career as a painter to her scientific career, I’ve nevertheless retained my artistic sensibility, and these conditions of existence affect me greatly.
The lack of material comfort leaves me indifferent, but what saddens me is the lugubrious face of this steel-clad world, devoid of flowers, birds and any nuance of gaiety. I’ve improved the appearance of our lodgings slightly with the aid of fabrics discovered in the cellars of an ancient store; I’ve contrived an intimate corner in which Aurore and I can sit in the evenings under the lamp, but in the streets, there’s nothing but the shiny reflections of nickel-steel, the arid hue of cement or the rust of ancient iron. The only patches of bright color are the green leotards and yellow shorts of the wrestlers and the vermilion capes of the verdigris-complexioned Mortals carried in their litters or wandering resignedly, carrying out the bleak duty of living.
No sympathy is possible between me and the Lacertians of any category. Although science—which, touching the absolute, is essentially the same on all planets, according to Aurore—has permitted them to make inventions similar to ours, their intimate life remains impenetrable to us I offered, at first, to accompany my wife in their midst and observe these beings, simultaneously so different and so similar to humankind, but in spite of the habituation that permits us to set aside their animal masks and consider them as pure intelligences, an
abyss separates me from them. No relationship with them is possible for me.
Even among the Mortals, who are inevitably more similar to me by virtue of having two sexes, reproducing—oviparously, it’s true—and having children, an atmosphere of grim and intransigent asceticism repels me at every step. There is a fundamental opposition of interest between them and us; their unique objective, superior to the reproduction of the species and even the conservation of the individual, is the service of Zilgor and the Twenty, their scientific divinities, Engineers for the most part, in the factories that maintain around the Immortals the indispensable living environment, they only live in mystical expectation of the day when they will be chosen to furnish one or other of the Twenty, or even Zilgor himself, with substitute gray matter…and die in the process. They raise their children in that same faith and same idealism. Death, not life, is their goal.
As the Lacertians are primarily nocturnal, that which might have interested us most—their entertainment—is hidden from us by the obligation to remain imprisoned from sunset to sunrise.
In any case, their serene brutality toward the hominine slaves would be sufficient to distance them from me—and they experience a scorn for Oscar and me that they do not hide, because of our resemblance to hominines. Only Aurore, by virtue of her science, finds a little favor in their eyes. They allow her to go into their dwellings, but visibly desire her to leave and reply as briefly as possible to the questions that Styal asks on her behalf.
The Twenty Immortals, each specializing in his own branch, only participate in complete science during meetings of the Twenty-One. Aurore sometimes attempts to question them, but those ancients are repellent to me, like old egotistical bachelors. Those asexual ascetics of science—a few of them were once female, but have been reduced by their immortalization to organic equality with the others—are reduced to the condition of the “neuters” described by Maeterlinck in his marvelous Vie des Termites,33 having no other sensuality than disgorging their knowledge into Zilgor by means of their psychic eye.
