The World Above The World

by Brian Stableford

  “The only elevators working are those leading to the old interior city,” Goldfeller said, calmly. “I advise you to take them as quickly as possible if you don’t want to be asphyxiated by the gas that’s about to be released above the city.”

  Hernu’s eyes sparkled with sudden rage. He appealed to the crowd, on which Goldfeller’s declaration seemed to have made a strong impression. “You heard what he said. Help me, friends. We can force him to let us leave from here.”

  “Yes…yes…”

  Already, they were all running forward. The Gem King took a revolver from his pocket, with which he had been fidgeting for several minutes, and aimed it at the menacing crowd. The gesture interrupted their surge.

  “I’ll kill the first man who takes another step,” he declared, calmly. “As for you, you blackguard, I could repay your insolence and your crime with a single bullet, but, I repeat, you will be punished. I want an exemplary, lawful, public punishment, and I’ll catch up with you.

  Lost in the crowd, into the midst of which he had prudently slipped, Hernu shouted: “Yes, villain, we’ll catch up with you. I know every corner of this accursed tower; I know where the diamonds are, and the reserves of gold; I know the workings of all the elevators and all the machines. We’ll begin to make use of them and…”

  A powerful voice interrupted him. It was that of one of the service phonographs repeating the monotonous warning that had been resounding every five minutes at every crossroads in Aeria:

  “…Before 8 a.m…!

  XII. The Flight

  Scarcely a quarter of an hour remained, and the instinct of self-preservation was the stronger. The hostile crowd dispersed rapidly in the direction of the central elevators, dragging Hernu along, who peppered us with threats and bravado from afar.

  Goldfeller put his evolver back in his pocket; a satisfied smiled relaxed his taut lips. “Let’s get back inside quickly,” he said.

  He helped me to transport the treasure that he had just recovered back to the governmental palace. When the heavy bronze door had closed behind us, I paused momentarily to get my breath back; at the same time I looked at the Gem King and shook my head.

  “You were mistaken,” I said, “not to smash the skull of that rogue Hernu. Single-handedly, he’ll bring together all the malcontents, and you’ll have as many enemies inside as outside.

  He interrupted me dryly. “I have infinite resources and innumerable auxiliaries at my disposal. If necessary, I’ll imprison that imbecile mob until the day of triumph.”

  “What if there’s a rebellion—if the auxiliaries on whom you’re relying follow Hernu’s example and turn against you?”

  Goldfeller stopped me with his gaze and the slow gesture with which he took my hand. In a profound voice, he said: “I’ve never retreated, Bayoud, when it’s a matter of imposing my will. I’ll destroy everything, if necessary, rather than give in!”

  A few moments later, we had returned to the huge study. Goldfeller’s first action was to go and open the door of the little redoubt in which Yella was sleeping lethargically. He contemplated that radiant blonde and white image momentarily. She was the weak point of his exceptional nature; conscious of the dangers that threatened her, Goldfeller remained a man who wanted to protect his daughter, and, when the moment came to separate himself from her, when another might have wept, he reflected.

  “Come on,” he said, abruptly. “Let’s get a move on.”

  He leaned over the young woman, took her in his arms, and then, in a voice that had suddenly changed, said: “Pick up that lantern and follow me.”

  The journey through the semi-darkness seemed to me to be a long one. The little lantern provided a poor light. Goldfeller walked slowly.

  “It’s here,” he murmured, finally.

  He had stopped in front of a door that sealed the exit from the corridor, and which doubtless opened by means of simple pressure on a spring that was known to him.

  Abruptly, the narrow corridor broadened out to the proportions of a highway illuminated as far as the eye could see by electric street-lights. A few paces away, a magnificent limousine seemed to be awaiting its passengers.

  The Gem King made a sign to me to open the door of the car, into which he immediately climbed in order to deposit Yella on a sofa.

  “Now,” he said, leaping to the ground, “let’s go fetch the strong-box.”

  The second journey was quicker than the first. Everything was ready for the departure, and Goldfeller gave the signal himself.

  “Allow yourself to travel without lights until the slope of the ground levels off. Then go at top speed for 20 kilometers; the objective of your journey is an elevator into which you can take your car, whose weight will be sufficient to activate the mechanism. Don’t get out of the car before someone comes to open the door for you. The woman who will present herself is Yella’s nurse; she will act, as you will, according to the instructions contained in this letter. Goodbye.”

  He held out a piece of paper, which I slipped into my pocket. I wanted to take his hand and I stammered some vague words into which, in spite of everything, I would have liked to inject a little tenderness. The supernatural individual pushed me on to the seat of the car, which was set in motion, gliding over the slope that drew it away. Goldfeller was already out of sight; I was never to see him again.

  We went down a ramp that must have described a helical curve, in such a manner as to bring us at a gentle slope to a tunnel beneath ground level. A quarter of an hour sufficed to reach the elevator. I sensed that we were rising up to the level of a vast garage, whose door opened immediately.

  I saw a thin and severe woman, dressed like a governess, with grey hair above a forehead streaked with wrinkles. Having greeted me without a word, the woman climbed into the car and leaned anxiously over Yella. I heard her murmur: “She’s asleep.”

  As for me, jumping to the ground, I went out of the garage. I saw a spacious courtyard, a small flower-garden and a little house with green shutters at the top of a short flight of steps.

  “Where are we?” I asked, mechanically.

  With a gesture, the woman showed me the nearby bell-tower of a church and said, simply: “Troyes.”

  So close to Aeria! Within the radius of the fulgurite! Had the Gem King had brought us out into a besieged village only to expose us to the blows of his defense? I scarcely had time to evoke that terrible idea when I remembered the letter that I was to pen at the end of my journey.

  It had been written by Goldfeller and signed by him. It contained these simple words:

  Take Yella into the white room and wait for her to wake up. Leave immediately thereafter. M. Bayoud will drive the car to the Swiss frontier. There, I confide my daughter to her nurse, Sophie Moor.

  The woman who was listening to me had already taken the younger woman in her arms and, carrying her like a child, headed toward the house, whose steps she climbed. I followed her.

  On the first floor, in a white-painted room whose only furniture was an immense bed, the woman set down her burden. She straightened Yella’s arms, covered her with a light sheet, turned toward me and said, simply: “I’m Sophie Moor. Do you want me to show you to your room?”

  A few moments later I was installed in my turn. The windows of the large room that was assigned to me overlooked the countryside, and I immediately perceived the enormous mass of Aeria on the horizon.

  It made a strange impression on me to see the monumental prison from which I had so unexpectedly escaped, gilded by the morning sun. Leaning on my window-sill, I began thinking about the extraordinary adventure that I had been living for months, and about the singular man whose pride, from the height of that mass, had tried to dominate the world. Eventually, the lassitude of that night of fatigue and emotion overcame me; I threw myself on the bed and slept profoundly.

  I awoke slowly, almost painfully.

  The sound of voices was rising from a nearby side-street. I eventually contrived to distinguish one word ami
d the buzz whose frequent repetition struck me: “Balloons…the balloons…”

  The memory immediately returned, clear and obsessive, of the preparations that had preceded my departure from Aeria: the fleet of dirigibles was about to pass over the city.

  Through one of the windows in my room it was easy for me to follow the movements of about 50 cigar-shaped balloons that were advancing in an uneven line to the west of the tower.

  The little suburban street where the house that served me as a refuge was located was filled by an attentive crowd, and I heard the reflections and suppositions of the idlers rising toward me.

  “This time, they’ve got the upper hand.”

  “One of them’s moving ahead of the others.”

  “Watch for a moment—you’ll see the bomb fall.”

  “They’re going to bomb that pig-iron tower!”

  I gazed at the accursed tower, in the pure light of the mid-day sun. It rose up like a monstrous black crag with a summit bristling with domes, roofs and bell-towers. The imagination of illustrators had dreamed of such giant mountains crowned with fortresses. Above this one the air was vibrating as above a torch, and I shivered as I thought of the poisoned wind that the monster was vomiting into the sky. I alone could understand the mute battle that was about to be engaged between the detested city and the aeroscaphs that were advancing above it.

  At what moment would the murderous emanations begin to act upon the crews steering the balloons? That, no one has ever known, but it is permissible for me to presume, according to what I had heard Goldfeller say himself, that the intoxication was progressive, going from stupor to sleep, to end in death. At any rate, when the aerostats passed over the center of Aeria, it seemed that the vibration of the air became more energetic, as if the currents of deleterious vapor had increased their intensity. At the same time, there was a momentary pause in the progress of the dirigibles, a suspension—and, abruptly, all of them began to drift in the wind that as blowing from the east and, curving around, they began to retrace their route. There were even a few of them that bumped into one another and went on together, stuck to one another, to the astonishment of those who were watching the scene without understanding its mystery.

  Two hours later, the scattered, soulless fleet passed over Paris and traversed western France to vanish, with its dead pilots, over the Atlantic Ocean, where the first cyclone arriving from the Antilles would complete its destruction.

  XIII. The End of a World

  How long those hours of waiting seemed to me! I scarcely dared to go outside, to show myself in the streets, for fear of awakening a curiosity that, given the entire region’s exasperation with Goldfeller, might have been fatal to his daughter and myself.

  I spent my time leaning out of my window, contemplating the tower from which all life seemed absent. Sophie Moor served me, exchanging a few laconic words. Who was that woman? One of the numerous creatures that Goldfeller had been able to attach to his fortune, but especially passionate in her attachment to Yella; she seemed very firm, avoiding any allusion to the drama that was being played out in Aeria. That evening, however, as I was walking in the garden surrounding the house, smoking a cigarette, she came to me and silently pointed a finger at the tower, whose black form rose into the sky, illuminated by moonlight.

  “They haven’t switched on the lights this evening,” she said.

  I nodded my head, pensively. Undoubtedly, I thought, Goldfeller did not consider the atmosphere sufficiently purified to permit the inhabitants to go back up into the pen air. Unless….

  The general state of mind within Aeria did not seem to me to be at all reassuring for its masters. The revolt of a subaltern as important as Hernu seemed to me to be pregnant with threats for the future, and already I could anticipate some of what would happen. But the end—the apotheosis provided by Goldfeller for that terrible dream—no, I could never have foreseen the horror of it, in spite of everything I knew about that indomitable character.

  Yella was to sleep for another 24 hours, and I hoped to have the time to leave, after her awakening, at dawn on the third day. The previous evening, I began to check the automobile, and filled it with gasoline—in short, used my time as best I could while waiting to depart. I was busy running oil into one of the pumps when Sophie Moor came into the garage and, without saying anything, handed me a printed sheet, a special supplement to the Journal de l’Aube, which was being sold in the streets of Troyes.

  This is what I read in the latest news:

  This morning, an aircraft in the form of a parachute landed on the roof of one of the outermost houses in Provius. Eight individuals were aboard the apparatus and, to the questions of those who found them, more dead than alive, they admitted that they had escaped by that means from the Goldfeller tower, thanks to a riot that had broken out in the bunkers where the population had been enclosed by order of the dangerous monomaniac who, for several weeks, has sown terror and ruin through our countryside.

  In the first revolutionary movement that had caused the riot in question, the crowd had rushed up the stairways toward the balloons moored to the aerial stations, in order to pile into them; when the moorings were cut, those who were able to penetrate into the gondolas fled at hazard under a hail of projectiles launched at them by Goldfeller’s maleficent gang.

  Still trembling at the dangers they had run, these unfortunates affirmed that the inhabitants of the tower, weary of so many horrors, were absolutely determined to impose peace on the Gem King, who, aided by an entire staff of monsters, persists in destroying everything within the radius of his frightful empire.

  This, combined with the sage measures that the Ministry of War is preparing to take for the complete isolation of the tower, permits us to hope for a prompt end to the nightmare.

  Following a few rather confused interviews with the eight escapees, which indicated that the stores where the aircraft were kept had been opened by the rebels thanks to a sort of overseer whose name they did not know, but in whom I believed that I recognized Hernu. The man in question had, it appeared, been shot with a revolver by the Gem King, who had succeeded in escaping himself from the rage of the rioters and had disappeared into the secret coverts of the interior of the tower.

  “Do you think,” asked Sophie Moor, when I had finished reading, “that he will get out of this alive?”

  I replied without hesitation that I believed so, Goldfeller having surely provided for himself the means of escape that he had provided or his daughter. The old woman nodded her head and murmured, as if to herself: “He’s such an extraordinary man!”

  Shortly after midnight, as I was dozing fully dressed on my bed, a knock on my door woke me up. I ran to open it, and found myself in the presence of Yella’s nurse.

  “She’s awake—come quickly.”

  The effect of the narcotic had not lasted as long as Goldfeller had thought. Propped up on one elbow, the young woman was looking around her in surprise. She recognized her nurse and reached out to her.

  Pausing on the threshold of the white room, I gazed at Yella. How beautiful she was, still pale with sleep, at the limit of life, this side of the angels, but beyond human creatures! She saw me, smiled, and beckoned me to approach.

  “Where is my father?” she asked. “Why are we here?”

  I told her about the attack on Aeria by the balloons, and gave her a succinct and softened account of the events that had constrained Goldfeller to send her away. As I spoke, I saw her grow paler still, then blush and begin to tremble. I hastened to conclude and, in order to convince her, gave her the letter that her father had handed to me as I left.

  She read it and sighed profoundly; then immediately put her hand to her breast.

  “I’m choking,” she murmured, painfully.

  Scarcely reawakened to life in the depths of the earth, she was suffocating, that frail creature made for high altitudes. Sophie more raised supplicant eyes toward me.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  �
�Yes,” said the old woman, forcefully, “let’s go. Monsieur will take us as far as Switzerland, and we’ll return to Falkenstein, my dear. We’ll wait for your father there.”

  Yella smiled sadly. Then she held out her hand to me. “You’ll stay with us, won’t you?” she asked, in an imploring tone that excited me delightfully.

  I bowed, and stammered that I was at her disposal. Such a plea seemed the culmination of a strange joy to which I dared not abandon myself entirely, so little did the ravishing creature before me seem fitted to lead a human life.

  It only remained to quit he house.

  As I was about to give the signal for departure, we heard a bell ringing on the ground floor.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s my father” cried Yella.

  She made as if to run downstairs. From Sophie Moor’s anxiously prudent glance, I understood that she feared some mysterious complication whose revelation it was important to spare the young woman.

  I stopped her with a gesture.

  “It’s the garage bell, isn’t it?” I said, affecting a tranquil assurance. “It’s not your father, Mademoiselle, for he’d already be in the room. Perhaps he’s sending us a message. I’ll go down and see.”

  Leaving the old nurse with the Gem King’s daughter, I went down to run to the garage, whose double doors I opened wide. What I had said to Yella was to calm her; I understood that it was necessary, to begin with, to remove the automobile that was to carry us away and send down the platform to allow the elevator free play. All that took some time, and it required all of Sophie Moor’s ingenious cleverness to prevent Yella from running to the window, from which she would have been able to contemplate the frightful spectacle that offered itself to my eyes as soon as the new vehicle had surged from the well at the bottom of which its journey had concluded.

  On the front seat off the green-painted limousine that came on o the platform to replace the one I had take our I perceived Siam-Si, his eyes staring and his hands clenched on the steering-wheel. Inside, sprawled on the cushions, his temple pierced by a black hole and his face streaming blood, was Kandy, the young and unfortunate Kandy, whose open mouth still seemed to be smiling.