In A Thousand Years

by Emile Calvet

  The doctor replied that, like the ancient philosophers, they carried all they possessed about their persons, and that they were at the orders of their generous host.

  Dryon summoned his steward and gave him precise orders for the departure. Éva, who ran the house with consummate expertise, supervised all the preparations personally.

  An hour later, a squadron of porters laden with baggage set off for the embarkation-point.

  At one-thirty the agronomist, giving his arm to his daughter and followed by his guests, traversed the garden in a straight line. Behind them marched all the permanently-resident personnel of the palace. On the far side of the park, the majordomo ran forward and opened both battens of a huge door, which gave direct access to a station of the circular railway. The guests of the palace went down on to the lawn, escorted by the sincere good wishes of all the servants.

  After a few minutes’ wait, they were rapidly conveyed to the aerostatic palace. At the fourth station, Dryon and his new friends got down. The travelers traversed a shady square, almost deserted, and soon found themselves facing a grassy bank twenty meters high.

  A man in the prime of life, presently sitting at the foot of a large marble staircase that went up to the summit of the mound, rose to his feet abruptly when he saw them and came to meet them.

  “Monsieur Humphrey, our skillful engineer,” said Guillaume Dryon, extending his hand to the newcomer.

  The engineer and the strangers bowed simultaneously.

  “Is everything ready?” the agronomist asked.

  “Yes, Monsieur; we’re departing in a quarter of an hour, unless you say otherwise.”

  “Very good.”

  The passengers climbed a hundred and twenty steps and went across the crown of the esplanade. A singular spectacle was suddenly offered to their eyes.

  A hundred rails, as shiny as steel rods in ardent sunlight, ran in parallel from one extremity to the other of a vast inclined rectangle measuring at least six hundred meters in length. Several ellipsoids striped horizontally by curves of polished steel, some measuring as much as a thousand cubic meters, rested on the tracks.

  A monument of great magnificence rose up from the inferior base of the quadrilateral, extending as far as the lateral sides.

  A few rare pedestrians, braving the torrid afternoon heat, were walking back and forth on the departure platform.

  The two scientists were prey to a keen excitement.

  “I don’t understand your agitation,” said the young man. “I can only see a station, more beautiful than the others, with widely-separated rails and carriages that have no wheels.” Pointing at twenty empty demi-ellipsoids with horizontal axes, fixed at the extremity of each track, he added: “There are some sentry-boxes of a rather original model.”

  The engineer headed toward the far end of the platform and pulled a lever fixed to the wall.

  Two men came out of the building and advanced toward him. He said a few words to them. The two employees immediately went back in, and the visitors saw, with astonishment, one of the machines slowly descend along the track and slot precisely into the corresponding cavity.

  “Messieurs,” said Guillaume Dryon, “our transport is ready. We have only to embark.”

  “How calmly he said that!” murmured Gédéon. “He’s obviously a Cahusac. For myself, I confess that I’m beginning to feel rather nervous, and if, in order to make the journey, I were given the choice between a vulgar choo-choo and that gigantic shell, I don’t think I’d hesitate for a moment. It’s not very courageous, I admit, but at my age, it’s permissible to be prudent.”

  “I believe I have an exact idea of the manner in which the departure will be affected,” whispered the physicist, addressing the doctor. “It’s obvious that the apparatus, moved by some force, slides over the inclined rails at an increasing speed, and that five hundred meters from the departure point it leaves the ground and launches into the air with the acquired momentum, which doubtless attains four meters per second. But what happens after that?”

  The passengers reached the aerial vehicle. Terrier was able to observe that it slid on four runners framed in longitudinal grooves of polished steel. The shiny curves they had noticed on the flanks of the apparatus were due to the gleam of powerful wings of tempered steel, which were presently resting inert on the sides of the vessel. They were articulated with the mass of the apparatus by thick metallic stalks resistant to any proof.

  At the rear end, a large parabolic windbreak, mobile in all directions, which formed the rudder, fell back along the dorsal part of the machine. At the front, a slight metallic bulge formed a prow of remarkable delicacy.

  “It really is an iron bird with eight wings,” said the professor, “but where is the motive force generated?”

  The engineer pressed a switch. A door opened in the corresponding partition and a stairway of six steps, covered by a rich Oriental carpet, unfurled to the ground.

  Éva ran up it as lightly as a bird and disappeared into the balloon. The doctor, who followed the young woman, shivered as he set foot on the first rung, but gravely climbed the other five. The physicist, who would have coolly taken notes on the rim of an erupting volcano, mounted the stairway calmly and unhurriedly. The young man hesitated momentarily, but, on seeing the gaze of his multi-great-grandson fixed upon him with a certain astonishment, he slapped his sides, uttered an interior sursum corda and scaled the six steps as if he was mounting an assault. Guillaume Dryon and the engineer brought up the rear, one after the other, entering the machine in a familiar manner that testified to frequent exercise.

  The door closed abruptly under the pressure of an interior spring that the agronomist had activated.

  The passengers then found themselves in an elliptical saloon, ornamented magnificently. A thick carpet covered the floor; wide soft divans were fitted along the walls.

  A sculpted ebony bookcase was attached to one of the walls, loaded with handsomely-bound books, the majority of which dealt with great voyages and discoveries. A general geography of the globe, in forty quarto volumes, occupied the bottom shelf. On the opposite side a vast planisphere was suspended, surrounded by detailed maps of continents and less extensive regions. At the back, a precision clock separated a barometer and a thermometer, constructed with infinite artistry. At the front there were two compasses, one of declination and the other inclination, indicating the trajectory of the balloon at every moment. In the middle of the ceiling, an electric globe, which could be illuminated by a simple push of a finger, was framed with admirable allegorical paintings.

  Four oval windows pierced symmetrically in the walls, at a convenient height, permitted an outside view.

  The engineer lifted a heavy curtain at the back of the saloon and disappeared. Shortly afterwards, a slight continuous noise became audible; the vehicle slid along the rails. The passengers sat down on the divans. Gédéon instinctively gripped the top of an ebony box that was close by.

  The movement became increasingly rapid, and a few seconds later the young man, having darted a glance out of the window behind him, pulled his head back urgently.

  “We’re going like the wind,” he said to the physicist, who, focused on his hypotheses, did not hear him.

  The whistling became extremely shrill, then ceased entirely.

  “We’ve stopped,” said Gédéon, “And I can’t say I’m sorry.” And he looked out again.

  The first glance seemed to confirm his opinion, for he could not see anything in front of him, but when he stood up in order to see where they were, he uttered a cry of alarm.

  “We’re more than a thousand meters from the ground!” he exclaimed. “The houses look like dominoes. Are we going to go up much further?”

  “No, my young friend,” the agronomist replied, “We’re at five hundred meters, the average height we maintain in summer, in order to have a little coolness.”

  The temperature had, indeed, dropped sensibly.

  The two scientists, tormented
by a legitimate curiosity, were burning to discover the theory of the machine that was carrying them through the air. Even so, still guided by prudence, they dared not interrogate their host and did not give any evidence of astonishment.

  The engineer came back into the room.

  “Everything in order?” asked Guillaume Dryon.

  “Yes, Monsieur. The water level is perfectly horizontal. We’re only traveling at a modest speed, of course, of sixty leagues an hour, because the right wings are a trifle fatigued, and it would be imprudent to force the pace.

  “Do we have enough power to reach Tanganyika without renewing our supply at Livingstone?”

  “Undoubtedly. We still have more than a cubic meter of liquid hydrogen.”

  The doctor and the physicist exchanged a rapid glance.

  Reassured by the engineer’s words, the agronomist came over to the two scientists and began to list for them the series of operations that they were to direct.

  The engineer after having made sure that the apparatus was functioning perfectly, remained in the saloon, his gaze sometimes going to the compass, sometimes to the barometer, frequently checking the progress of the aerial vessel.

  Éva was attentively reading a book of voyages.

  “The composure with which these people travel five hundred feet above the ground is beginning to infect me,” murmured Gédéon, who had been motionless since the departure. He leaned toward the window.

  The countryside, inundated by sunlight, was fleeing rapidly beneath the airship.

  “That’s curious, mind,” he said, in a low voice. “At the moment we’re passing over an immense excavation. That’s at odds with my knowledge of the physical geography of the globe. The Earth can’t be spherical, as is—or rather was—affirmed. Did the error of the astronomers and geographers stem from the impossibility of the studying the ground from a point as favorable as this one? I must make discreet enquiries about that subject, for, in my new situation as a librarian”—he swelled up with pride—“it’s not permissible for me make blunders, and especially not to spread tales.

  “That’s definitely the Seine, which is snaking away as far as the eye can see, as of old. Its course hasn’t been changed, and that’s good; of course, from here it lacks majesty. It’s a mere stream, and the lake that is about to disappear from view is as big as a vat, at the most. In spite of the paltry figure it cuts at this height, I salute the Marne, which we’re just crossing. It reminds me that in 1874 I was unanimously voted the presidency of the regatta. It puts a lump in my throat to contemplate the theater of my old nautical exploits.

  “The environs of Paris are rather well-to-do, as those innumerable little palaces surrounded by parks attest. Now I ought to set to work filling in the on-board journal that I’ve decided to write. When we arrive sat our destination, I’ll be sure to extract a picturesque narrative of our voyage, with which my descendants will, I think, be rather satisfied. Of course, as I intend to confide my intimate reflections to it, and don’t want to make the acquaintance of the lunatic asylums of Africa, I’ll keep the original under wraps.”

  He left the window and sat down in a large armchair.

  He took an elegant album with damascened platinum fittings, which the schoolmaster had given him when they left, from the inside pocket of his embroidered burnoose, and wrote on the first page, in letters half an inch high, the following title:

  Voyage of the Airship Arago from Paris to Lake Tanganyika, On-board Journal kept by Achille-Gédéon Cahusac, assistant librarian of the palaces of the illustrious Guillaume Dryon, member of the European Congress, President of the Circles of the Great African Lakes, Protector, etc.

  On the opposite page he wrote the names and titles of the six passengers.

  Surprised by these calligraphic operations, the doctor came over to him.

  Gédéon help up his album confidently and announced in a loud voice that he was asking for permission to record his impressions of the voyage for the palace library, reserving the privilege of only communicating the work once it had been relieved of the embarrassments of improvisation.

  Dryon and his daughter thanked the young man and put themselves at his disposal for any information he might require.

  The agronomist resumed his conversation with the two scientists, while Éva plunged back into her reading.

  The historiographer raised his head to the anterior porthole again but pulled it away swiftly.

  Antius and the physicist interrogated him with their gaze.

  “A second balloon is traveling parallel to ours, at lightning speed,” he said, nervously. “It’s waving a flag.”

  “We’ll reply to it,” said the owner of the Arago, tranquilly, reaching out a hand to press an ivory disk. Something rolled audibly over the flank of the airship.

  Gédéon looked through the window again and perceived a long strip of yellow cloth covered in large letters, which had unfurled on the side of the vessel.

  The agronomist picked up a pair of binoculars and followed the flight of the balloon with his gaze.

  “That’s the Orient, Messieurs, coming from Calcutta to Paris with a cargo of spices,” he said, setting down the binoculars on the table.

  After one final signal of greeting, the cloth rolled up, and a similar action was effected on the Arago. “The crew of the Orient is now as well-informed on our account as we are on theirs,” added Dryon, sitting down.

  “Are these exchanges of signals frequent?” asked Antius.

  “They’re gestures of courtesy that no one would want to refuse. It’s sufficient to establish a simple electric contact for the summary identification of a vessel to unfurl on its flank.”

  Everyone resumed their positions.

  “Now I’m perplexed,” Gédéon murmured. “What if, in spite of the map before my eyes, I commit some error regarding the names of the cities we’re passing over, and confuse, for example, Yssengeaux with Lyon and Carpentras with Marseilles?”

  As if she had divined the young man’s anxiety, Éva came to his aid. “Monsieur Cahusac,” she said, in her beautiful golden voice, holding him a notebook bound in pink leather, “here’s a little book that will save you the trouble of following the map step by step. It indicates the exact time of our passing over each large city. As we’re traveling in a straight line with a constant speed of sixty leagues an hour, it will be sufficient for you to consult the dial of the clock.”

  Gédéon accepted gladly and thanked the young woman from the bottom of his heart.

  “That charming child has got her ancestor out of a terrible difficulty,” he murmured. “Now let’s establish our calculations. We left at two o’clock precisely, and it will be easy to figure out where we are.”

  He opened the notebook. The first line read: 14 minutes, Mélun, 150,000 inhabitants.

  “That means, I suppose, that fourteen minutes after departure, we pass over that city, which has only ever been famous for its eels. It’s time to make an observation, for it’s two twenty-three.”

  Running to the porthole he perceived, a long way behind, an aggregation of microscopic houses fleeing rapidly. To the left and forwards, it was possible to follow the course of the Seine, and that of the Yonne, as far as the eye could see. An almost-imperceptible steam was flowing tranquilly below, which, after mature reflection, he recognized as the Loir.

  The hands of the clock marked two-thirty when a second airship passed six hundred meters from the Arago. Éva, who had picked up the binoculars and hoisted the flag, identified it as the Lavoisier, laden with ivory, arriving from Southern Africa and bound for Paris.

  On reading the name of Guillaume Dryon, the cargo vessel multiplied its signals of greeting.

  “The elephant-hunting has been productive,” Antius remarked.

  “Elephants are no longer hunted, Doctor,” said the agronomist. “That powerful pachyderm is domesticated in numerous herds, and the Lavoisier is loaded with the current year’s harvest, gathered from all parts of the c
ontinent. The entire ivory industry is centralized in Paris, which manufactures objects in marvelous taste, sometimes of great artistic value.”

  At two forty-five the Loire, like a sparkling ribbon, appeared on the right, and the Arago crossed he extremity of the hills of Nivernais. Although maintaining a perfectly horizontal course, the airship, by reason of the altitude of the region, seemed to be much closer to the ground.

  At three o’clock, the young man consigned Nevers to his album and the crossing of the Loire, whose upper reaches were now definitively to the left.

  The historiographer’s gaze had been attached to the mountains of the Auvergne, which rudely interrupted the circle of the horizon to the south-west, for a few moments when Dryon, after having consulted the clock, declared that they ought to be nearing Lyon. The passengers went to the windows on the left and were able to see a large aggregation of buildings to the east, which covered the junction of two beautiful rivers.

  “Lyon has twelve hundred thousand inhabitants,” said the agronomist. “Its situation on the Rhône and the Saône has made it a very flourishing city.”

  A few minutes later, Saint-Étienne was in view.

  “I expected to find a city bristling with factory chimneys, but can’t see a trace of smoke,” said Gédéon, aloud.

  “Saint-Étienne is still a first-rate industrial city, but all the factories are powered by electricity,” observed Guillaume Dryon. “The city supplies North Africa with is most advanced agricultural equipment.”

  At four-thirty, the Cévennes were crossed, and the travelers were able to admire the long line of the Rhône, sparkling in the sunlight from north to south. At that moment the balloon was saluted by a party of tourists from Madagascar, who were going to spend a few days on the banks of the Seine.

  The physicist, who had not quit the eastward-facing window for some time, had just announced Avignon when the writer, who had been scrupulously keeping his notes, accompanied by a few intimate reflections, looked out of the porthole.