“ ‘Are you sure?’ I asked him, fearfully.
“He put both hands to his forehead. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, I can’t be sure. It’s necessary to perform experiments; it’s necessary to turn back…’
“We didn’t turn back,” Fabrice concluded. “And inasmuch as Brandt could not elucidate that enigma, the most frightful mystery must be added to all those that already reign over the submarine darkness.”
WHEN HENS HAD TEETH
I was woken up in the middle of the night by a distant mournful clamor.
I had passed some difficult examinations at the end of October, and as soon as I obtained the happy results, I had made haste to leave Paris for a fortnight. An old friend of my father’s, Doctor Templier, had invited me to stay with him, as I had the previous year, on a large island in the South-West, where he was accustomed to prolong his pleasant sojourns for as long as the temperature permitted.
The wind was blowing up a storm when I arrived at my destination, after having been rudely shaken in the sea’s arms. The doctor was waiting for me at the quay with his two daughters, Pauline and Simone. He was apologetic for greeting me in such brutal and inhospitable weather. “While this lasts,” he said, regretfully, “we can’t shoot birds.”
That was his favorite occupation: hunting along the shore—not so much to provision his larder as to enrich his ornithological museum.
It is necessary to say that no region of the vast Earth is visited by as many birds as the island on which I had just landed. You would not believe the flights of multicolored birds that the stroller on its beaches and in its pine-woods perpetually causes to rise up with every step. It would take an entire year to count the multitudes of winged voyagers, large and small, which take a rest there in the course of their migration, for a few days or only a few hours.
My host’s little motor car, lurching in the gusts of winds, brought us by some miracle to the low-set house with the tiled roof charged with flat stones, where I paid my respects to the worthy Madame Templier. The glass cases of the ornithological collection garnished the periphery of the large hall; they contained a profusion of stuffed specimens, whose ranks were ever-increasing.
“As soon as the storm lets up, young man, we’ll take our rifles. It’s the seasons of great migrations and this terrible wind can’t have failed to drive certain birds to the island that don’t ordinarily use it as a port of call. A windfall!”
Dinner was very pleasant, but we didn’t stay up long thereafter. Nothing is more tiring than the wind. My cheeks were glowing, my eyes stinging. I went to my bed gladly. Nevertheless, I didn’t fall asleep right away. The squalls were whistling furiously. One would have thought that the house was about to blow away at any moment.
It was the clamor that woke me up. I found myself suddenly sitting up in the darkness, my ears pricked.
I lit the oil-lamp, whose flame flickered in the draughts, and again I heard—very distantly, it seemed—in spite of the howling of the storm wind, a desperate bellowing. That was the last. After a few minutes of expectancy, familiar noises animated the dwelling. I had certainly not been the only one to hear those sinister appeals. I got up. Doctor Templier had done likewise; we ran into one another in the large hall. He wasn’t anxious.
“I thought I heard the bellowing of an animal in distress,” he said. “There are pastures two kilometers away, between the woods—perhaps you remember them. The animals haven’t been brought in yet; in bad weather, they shelter in a half-enclosed barn. The herd belongs to a smallholder whose farm is too far away for him to be able to hear anything at all. Something tragic is happening over there, but I confess that the prospect going out in complete darkness to face the wrath of the unleashed elements isn’t at all tempting. If it were a matter of a human being…so much the worst for the beast. Let’s go back to bed. Tomorrow morning, we’ll go take a look…”
I couldn’t go back to sleep, and I read until dawn—which found me impatient to find out what I could about the cause of that frightful bellowing.
The tempest hadn’t died down. We set off—the doctor, Pauline and I—braced against the assaults of the imperious wind, which pelted us with vaporous rain. The clouds sped by, raveling out; the grey sky was nothing but a world in flight.
We followed a route through the woods, in order to take advantage of the shelter they offered. The sand of the pathway was whipped up, and the wind through it in our faces.
The edge of the wood ran along the meadow; the livestock barn was nearby. A dozen horned beasts were huddled therein, pressed against one another, silent and miserable. Some distance away, on the grass, something white, black and red attracted our attention. It was the cadaver, three-quarters devoured, of a piebald heifer. The hard ground in the vicinity had not preserved any footprints.
“What can have done that?” asked the doctor, greatly intrigued. “We have no carnivores on the island, thank God! And yet, and yet…look at these tooth-marks…little pointed teeth…narrow little jaws. No, those aren’t the jaws of a fox; their extremity forms too sharp and angle. Besides, in the absence of more ample information, the fox is unknown here.”
I caught sight of a muddy spot not far away where the aggression had undoubtedly taken place. “Note, if you please, doctor, that there are no prints visible in the mud, except for those of that poor beast—which did not stop prancing, I imagine, while launching those poignant cries for help.”
“That’s true,” the doctor admitted. “Damnation! But in that case, its assailants can’t have touched the ground? Imagine that!”
Pauline picked something up a short distance away. “A feather!” she said. “Here’s another…and another…”
The doctor examined these feathers with an indescribable stupefaction. Then he came back to the massacred and partly-devoured ruminant.
“If they were birds,” he murmured, “the skin of their victim ought to bear…but yes! Look! These holes, these talons. They’re the claws of raptors, which dug into the heifer’s hide!”
“Birds armed with teeth?” I said, incredulously. “Only Archaeopteryx was provided with them—and if I’m not mistaken, that antediluvian monster has only ever been seen in a fossilized state…”
“Yes!” he said, shivering, his eyes illuminated by a strange gleam. “Archaeopteryx—a species extinct for millennia! The creature intermediate between the reptiles and the birds.”
We looked at one another in bewilderment.
At that moment, as the tempest eased slightly, we saw a flight of huge, heavy and very awkward birds rise up from a distant wood, which the wind bore away in a jostling mass.
Since then, one can admire three long grey feathers in one of Dr. Templier’s glass cases, boldly labeled: Archaeopteryx pinion-feathers.
Does the ancestor of birds still survive in some unknown place? That feverish adventure leads me to believe so, and sometimes to tremble.
ON THE PLANET MARS
“Monsieur le Directeur,” said the inhabitant of the planet Mars, manifesting a great agitation, “the Earth is inhabited! I’m now certain of it!”
“Really?” said the other Martian, with the utmost calm.
We are able to transcribe in these terms, for the usage of human brains, this commencement of an extraterrestrial dialogue—but will the reader please accept that the reality did not correspond in the slightest to the images that the preceding sentences will have suggested to him?
First of all, did this exchange of ideas produce any vibration of sound in the planet’s atmosphere? No words had emerged from the mouths of the two Martians; they were conversing by means of silent waves of which we can give no better definition. Did they, in fact, possess mouths? One could not see any trace of them. To our human eyes, they presented themselves in the form of two lenses49 about two meters in diameter, standing upright on the ground thanks to the temporary flattening of their bases. These lenses, of which one was reddish and the other bluish, were very thick and perfectly opaque in the midd
le, but that thickness decreased toward a periphery which, so to speak, did not exist, for the lentil was not delimited by a sharp and precise border; they faded gradually into space like a nebula.
Imagine two lenticular nuclei, variously colored, each fading away into a peripheral fog, and you will have an approximate idea of the two superior Martians in question. No faces, meaning no physiognomy; and if we have permitted ourselves to say that one of them manifested a great agitation, it is because that is what its color indicated, by way of an unaccustomed glare.
“Yes,” it continued. “Inhabited! I haven’t left my observation apparatus for several days, and I’ve clearly perceived intermittent lights that can only be signals produced by intelligent beings with an awareness of mathematics.”
“You’re young, my friend!” said the blue Martian, whose body took on a lovely moiré effect of green-tinted concentric ripples.
“I assure you, Monsieur le Directeur, that I’m not the victim of an optical illusion. This is a matter of signals, which are being sent from there to us, and to which we can reply without difficulty, given the advanced state of our Martian science.”
“Ta ta ta!” said the director. “Chimeras and foolishness!”
His interlocutor’s red tint suddenly paled, only to become, a moment later, deeper than before. “In spite of the respect I owe you,” he said, “in spite of your age and your scientific knowledge, Maître, I cannot admit your skepticism and I stand my ground. I don’t have the right. The question is more important than us—you as well as me. Just think! The plurality of inhabited worlds! The problem of communication between the people of the universe! Maître, we have brothers on the Earth—I can prove it to you. Are we to remain indifferent to their efforts, deaf to their appeals?”
As it expressed itself thus, the young Martian—who was undoubtedly some astronomer attached to an observatory—became increasingly animated, moving back and forth by rotating itself as if it were a wheel, which is the fashion in which such individuals progress.
“Do you think you’re the first to discover that the Earth is inhabited?” the old Martian replied, softly.
“Pardon?” said the young one, nonplussed, suddenly ceasing to rotate.
“These lights have already been noticed by others. Others have drawn the necessary conclusions from those manifestations. Let me tell you, furthermore, that we did not have to wait for them to be produced to discover what you have just discovered. For many years, we have known that the Earth is inhabited by a great quantity of diverse creatures, one species of which has dominated the others for thousands of years by virtue of the power of the mind. That is humankind. It is, down there, what we are here. Certain instruments of observation, of a range that you cannot imagine, allow us to know with great precision what is happening on Earth.”
“What do you mean? What instruments? Are they kept secret, then?”
“Oh yes. Only our elders, of which I am one, know the whole truth concerning the Earth. There is nothing we don’t know about the mores of humankind and its history.”
“Is it possible?” exclaimed the neophyte, utterly flabbergasted.
“You need, my young friend, to forget these signals that you’ve glimpsed. Swear to me that you will never mention them to anyone—for the Grand Council had decided that it will not reply, under any pretext, to Earth’s solicitations.”
“But why?” asked the other, desperately.
After a pause, the old Martian continued, in his mute language. “If you were a human on Earth, you would have some difficulty in believing that the inhabitants of our Mars are peaceful, and that they live wisely and quietly—for the Terrans have given our globe the name of their god of war, and they are convinced that we are bellicose. You will agree with me, however, that life is pleasant here and that nothing ever happens to trouble the harmony that reigns among us. Alas, my son, I cannot say as much for the Earth. Everything is certainly not perfect on Mars—but down there! If you only knew!”
“All the more reason, Maître, to communicate the benefits of our civilization to the Terrans!”
“Hmmm! It’s just that, you see, the Grand Council decided otherwise—and it would be only prudent, my young friend, for you to conform to their decisions! Believe me, we have nothing to gain from commerce with humans, but everything to lose! Come on, let’s repeat it together: the Earth is uninhabited!” Perceiving the hesitation that he had provoked, the blue Martian went on, paternally: “Give in. It’s a matter of orders that one does not debate. We are no longer in the domain of science, but that of public safety. Humans equal danger! Danger! It’s necessary that they don’t exist, so far as we’re concerned.”
For a moment, the young Martian contemplated the Earth-star shining in the sky with a lovely blue light. And as he revered the wisdom of the elders, he said: “Very well. The Earth is uninhabited.”
Afterword
As with Un Homme chez les microbes, it is impossible to resist the temptation to begin a discussion of “L’Homme truqué” with some speculations as to what the fuller length version might have looked like, had Renard not decided to cut the intended novel short at some 27,000 words and wrap it up rather abruptly, referring his readers to J.-H. Rosny Aîné’s “Un Autre monde” for further speculations regarding the exotic life-forms that the character equipped with a new kind of sight had begun to notice.
Presumably, the author’s original intention had been to offer a much fuller explanation of the secret world revealed by Jean Lebris’ marvelous “electroscopic sight.” He would have given a fuller description of the known world as seen from this hypothetical viewpoint, and a much more elaborate account of the hidden world that it revealed, previously inaccessible to our senses. As to why he changed his mind, we can only speculate. Perhaps he realized, belatedly, that he had made a fundamental mistake in his characterization of the world of electricity in confusing electrons with photons. Perhaps he realized, when Un Homme chez les microbes failed to find a publisher for the third time, that the kind of extensive and languid exposition required by such imaginary exploration was something that put editors and readers off, and that there was no place for such exercises in the contemporary literary marketplace, which was besotted with murder mysteries and love stories to an extent that the tokenistic nature of his attempt to dress his story up with both would be obvious. The fact that he was consciously re-treading imaginative ground previously broken by Rosny might have been another factor weakening his resolve. At any rate, he took the decision, and left us with a novella that is very obviously unbalanced and truncated, probably less than half of the work it had originally set out to be. The fact that it remains fascinating anyway, and by no means ineffective, in both speculative and literary terms, is some compensation, but the published version can only leave the minority of readers who are sympathetic to his original cause a trifle disappointed.
As with many of Renard’s hypothetical marvels, the parasitic “electrical” entities glimpsed in the story were to receive further consideration in subsequent works, but only in a very scat fashion. As the reader of this collection has observed, Renard provided another tantalizing glimpse of something similar in “Eux.” As with some of the other marvels in question, however, other writers took up the task that he abandoned. The possibility of such parasitism between individual human beings had been previously mooted in numerous literary works of “psychic vampirism” predating “L’Homme truqué,” including Jean Lorrain’s “L’Egrégore” (1887)—which Renard might well have read—J. Maclaren Cobban’s Master of His Fate (1890) and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Parasite (1895), and it was inevitable that the notion would be generalized again in the way that Rosny’s “Un Autre monde” and Renard’s “L’Homme truqué” had set out to do.
The science fiction story that makes the most spectacular use of the motif in question—if only because it was the first to do so in an extended melodramatic mode—is Eric Frank Russell’s Sinister Barrier, first published in 1939. Rus
sell took his own inspiration from the writings of the assiduous collector of curious reportage Charles Fort, who had made the laconic suggestion, after aggregating one collection of such reports that humans might be the “property” of some alien race which maintained them like livestock, in order to feed surreptitiously on some kind of “life force.” Russell’s pulp fiction fantasy could not, however, develop the idea in the careful and methodical way that Renard had originally intended, any more than Renard had been able to do, and other science fiction stories following Russell’s example also elected to exaggerate the horrific element, and to plan potential rebellions of humankind against their invisible oppressors. “L’Homme truqué” thus took its place in the same restricted group of philosophical fantasies as Un Homme chez les microbes and the relatively obscure titles cited in the afterword to A Man Among the Microbes and Other Stories.
The philosophical foundations of the notion briefly introduced into “L’Homme truqué” and placed at the core of “Eux” lie in the same source as those of many earlier stories: the apparent corollaries of Cartesian dualism. Le Docteur Lerne had already introduced a kind of psychic vampirism in the startling scene in which Klotz/Lerne’s “soul” suppresses and largely displaces Nicolas’s “soul” while he is engaged in sexual intercourse with Emma. Although the subsequent development of that story posits that souls cannot exist in a “free-floating” state independent of some physical anchorage, it only requires one more small step of the imagination to envisage alien entities composed of an alternative kind of matter closely akin to the stuff of human souls—so closely akin, in fact, that they can aliment themselves upon it in mysteriously horrific ways. In “L’Homme truqué,” however, that notion remains stubbornly unextrapolated, and it seemed more appropriate to concentrate discussion on the aspect of the story that is much more fully developed: Renard’s second attempt to compile a narrative account of a new sense.
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