The Nyctalope and The Tower of Babel

by Jean de La Hire

  In the street the trucks continued to burn. The soldiers’ corpses, lying in their own blood, were scattered over the sidewalk, sometimes in bizarre positions. A few civilians had also died during the battle.

  Then she saw a fat man waving to her from behind the control panel in the truck. She started raising her weapon but froze in mid-air. Her arm fell to her side and she dropped the Browning. Like a robot she walked down the stairs, crossed the hallway, left the house and headed for the man. During this time he had climbed back into truck behind the wheel.

  She reached the truck and sat next to him, in an almost cataleptic state, as if mesmerized.

  “Bonjour, Madame Saint-Clair,” he said. “Let me introduce myself. I am Armand Logreux d’Albury, an old friend of your husband. We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting each other before but I believe we have one friend in common, Engineer Maur Korridès. He wishes to speak with you and your husband and he has given me the most pleasant part of the mission—coming to fetch you. I’m glad you accepted his invitation on such short notice.”

  He seemed very satisfied with his bit of humor and snickered. Then he continued.

  “This little experiment allowed me to test the improved version of my psychic amplifier, which gives me total control over people’s behavior when they’re hit by the ray. Impressive, isn’t it?”

  During this speech, Sylvie sat like a statue. She was still under the influence of the mysterious machine and her will was completely submissive. Her husband, thanks to his great spiritual strength, might be able to resist this infernal machine, but Sylvie could not fight back.

  Logreux went on with his monologue. He knew that Sylvie could not answer but he was having fun bragging about his crushing victory over the forces of the Nyctalope.

  “Yes, Korridès thinks he’s boss but it’s me who organized everything. When I met him, he’d been beaten, made a prisoner in Spain. In fact, he was even thinking of ways to put an end to all his suffering. That was the moment I was waiting for. I got in touch with him through telepathy and said: Korridès, you’re not giving up now when you have the means to overcome your enemy once and for all?

  “After hesitating a moment, he answered me, concentrating hard: Who are you?

  “And I sent out: I’m Armand Logreux d’Albury, whom some call the Master of the Seven Lights. I’m offering to join forces to crush the Nyctalope, our common enemy. I’ll take care of breaking you out and you will use your mechanical knowledge to build an exoskeleton for me so I can once again move freely. In fact, when I met the Nyctalope, he tricked me and made me a quadriplegic by injecting a toxic chemical into my blood that killed my nervous system below the neck.

  “The pact was made on the spot. Later, Korridès said he thought it would be easy to do what I wanted and it was like a scientific challenge that interested him. Especially if the exoskeleton had to be controlled by my mind. A psycho-mechanical machine in a way, a first of its kind! He loved being the first in anything. I knew this and thereby could lead him where I wanted him to go. The pact was concluded. Using one of the guards that I controlled mentally, I snuck into the prison a Tibetan drug that makes one appear dead. I only had to wait for them to bury him. Then I would go and get him. I put my Indian servant in charge of that. So, he made the contraption I had asked for and turned an invalid into a superman. Because, go figure, he used the opportunity to give me extraordinary strength! Then all we had to do was plan our revenge to destroy all the work and the family of your husband before he destroyed us.”

  The Master of Seven Lights stopped talking, apparently lost in thought.

  Sylvie was in no condition to do anything about all this new information. And despite her knowledge of Paris, she was not even able to memorize the route taken by the truck. The vehicle was still driving around the capital but the buildings were sailing by her eyes without her recognizing a single one or figuring out where they were headed.

  After a while it seemed that they had crossed the Seine. The truck stopped alongside a fence. She watched herself climb out of the truck and cross a construction site. Then she entered a big building whose door shut behind her.

  CHAPTER XVI

  The Destruction of the Nyctalope

  At 1 a.m., the Nyctalope’s airplane was soaring through darkness. He was still far from Paris and could only make out a few lights down below.

  Saint-Clair was piloting automatically. His mind was totally absorbed by the conversation that he was having with Captain Gougeon on the radio. He had just learned that his house had been attacked, his friends killed and his wife kidnapped.

  “Yes, Monsieur Saint-Clair, it’s a real disaster. More than thirty soldiers are dead along with ten CID agents. The others are all pretty gravely injured. I myself managed to pull through. I only got a bayonet in the leg and got knocked out. When I came to the battle was over and I was being rescued by the army medical services that was just arriving on the scene.”

  “And my wife has disappeared?”

  The Nyctalope could barely contain himself. His voice trembled. He had not imagined that his enemy would retaliate so quickly and he felt completely overwhelmed by the events. But already, without even being fully conscious of it, his remarkable mental faculties, perfectly honed over the years, were at work on getting the upper hand. He had had the greatest Tibetan lamas as masters and controlling his emotions had become second nature to him. But he knew, and it always frightened him, that in extreme cases he could fall apart, like when his mother died a few years earlier. He asked for more information in order to reduce his stress by thinking about and analyzing the situation:

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Highly likely. We didn’t find her body in the salon where she was holed up. Plus, a few wounded soldiers say they saw a beautiful blonde woman leave the house walking like a puppet and get into a truck. Given the nature of the attack, kidnapping looks like the most reasonable assumption.”

  “And… the Dorlanges?”

  “Unfortunately, they’re both dead and we found their bodies. We’re interrogating possible witnesses to…”

  Static had been cutting off Captain Goujon’s words until he finally became inaudible. Saint-Clair tried adjusting the radio and changing frequencies to reestablish contact but to no avail. All of a sudden the crackling stopped and a voice boomed through the speaker:

  “Léo Saint-Clair… The Nyctalope?”

  “I hear you loud and clear. Who is this?”

  The voice sounded triumphant:

  “Hello, Monsieur Saint-Clair. This is Maur Korridès. I think the time for explanations has finally come…”

  “Maur Korridès! You dare… after killing my friends and kidnapping my wife…”

  Saint-Clair, who did not want to lose control before his enemy, had difficulties keeping a lid on his anger. He managed, however, to calm down a little and let Korridès talk:

  “Well, yes, I dare! And with your limited means, you’re right to be surprised at hearing my voice over your radio.”

  “It’s your gall that surprises me! I have no doubt that you’re the one who’s been intercepting my radio communications. So much interference and static isn’t normal. But you still don’t know all my plans. I thought, of course, about a double agent infiltrating the CID… but there are so few people who are in the know that an outside spy using technology is the most probable explanation. So, I figured it was you with your scientific knowledge who was pirating my conversations and messages. No, I’m not surprised but you could have done it with less interference, less static while you were listening in. A genius like you, it should have been right up your alley. When your men attacked me in Madrid I had no more doubt about it. There was no other explanation.”

  In a less triumphant tone Korridès answered:

  “Perhaps… Perhaps… But as faulty as it was, my invention did the job. I knew that I might be discovered. So, I compensated for the technological shortfall with the speed of my actions. And as you will
see, it won’t matter a bit to my final victory. I’ve already hit you hard and I will hit you again, you and yours, until you’re all completely exterminated.”

  “I just learned that you attacked my house on Rue Montbrun and you kidnapped my wife…”

  By saying this Léo was trying to get more information about the fate of his wife.

  “Of course I did!” Korridès roared. “I succeeded in destroying the CID and now I’m going to finish off the rest of your people: your son, your first wife, your friends… In the next few hours you yourself will be executed. Then it’ll be your wife’s turn. You can’t do anything for her! I’ve prepared an unprecedented, scientific end worthy of her beauty. But if you’d like, I can explain the different stages of my crusade against the Nyctalope and how I’m going to destroy you.”

  The Nyctalope thought he could outwit his opponent, but he needed more time. The plan he had in mind would be easier to put in play for two reasons, on the technical side, if he were closer to Paris. As things stood he was not sure that his counter-attack would succeed. Therefore, he had to stretch out the conversation so he could make the best use of his teams. He kept talking:

  “In fact, the key is to know why you even started this crusade. Of course, we confronted each other in the past but I don’t really understand how such a vendetta could have come out of that…”

  “You don’t understand! You ruined my life and I was supposed to just lie down and accept it?”

  “Ruined your life? Oh, right, your wife, Diana Krosnoview, the Red Princess, was killed when she was my prisoner. But I wasn’t behind it and she was in prison because you and she had kidnapped my wife and son to avenge the death of Leonid Zattan, her old boss, whom I had managed to destroy.”

  Saint-Clair did not feel very convincing. Korridès was in a rage:

  “But you were responsible for the death of my third wife! Like a coward you let her get murdered! For this I have to take revenge personally and you can’t wriggle your way out of it and pretend you had nothing to do with what happened!”

  The Nyctalope was very surprised by this unexpected answer. He said:

  “How could I have hurt you before we fought in Spain? We had only met each other once before and it was very brief. On Mars, in the French colony of Argyre, just before it was destroyed…”

  The Engineer went off on a long speech during which his voice softened, as if it got lost, gradually, in a maze of memories:

  “Yes, it was the day all the colonists went crazy. That cursed day when they killed one another, when husband murdered wife, father slayed son, friend slaughtered friend. As you know you were not the only one there. I was there, too, with my wife Marguerite. I remember: the day she and I left, we were walking in one of those gorgeous forests on Mars. The leaves of the majestic trees were all different shades of red and rustling gently in the Martian breeze. The fantastic animals running around the forest were a pleasure to our eyes. We were trying to imagine how these weird animals lived.

  “That morning we had watched from a distance the movements of a kind of giant, yellow millipede that was forging its way through the thick bushes. After our walk, when we had strolled back to the colony, we were still talking about the impressive sight. It was then that we heard the screams and explosions. We didn’t yet know it but the colonists had started their day of destruction. At first we tried to get closer but when we saw how the peaceful people had suddenly, for no apparent reason, turned into wild, rabid beasts, killing one another, we knew we had to stay away. Hiding behind a nearby hill we saw an old man being chased down by young colonist armed with an iron bar. It looked like Oxus, who had founded the Argyre colony long before the French expedition got there, at a time when it was still a secret base of the organization known as the XV. The young man caught up to Oxus and hit him over the head. The old scientist fell down and never got back up.

  “Horrified, we decided to skirt around the living quarters and head for our ship, which we’d left near the place they parked the radio-planes. As opposed to those interplanetary ships imagined by the XV that moved on a force field emitted between the organization’s Congo base and the one near the Mars colony, my ship ran on heliose, an energy source of my own invention that left me independent. It was a synthetic metal with a strong attraction to the sun. By using butterfly valves I could regulate this magnetic pull, thereby traveling in space. After a bunch of detours my wife and I were almost at our rocket ship when you showed up, wild-eyed and covered in blood. You looked like you had lost your mind. You were heading straight for my ship, no doubt to steal it so you could get off the red planet. But unfortunately for you, we stood in your way, apparently insignificant objects in your eyes…

  “I was protecting Marguerite. I stepped forward and asked you to leave us alone and go your way. You karate chopped me on the neck with your bloody hand. I felt a sharp pain run through my body and I passed out almost immediately. When I came to, next to Marguerite who was rubbing my face gently, we had been abandoned on Mars. In the sky our ship was speeding off until it finally disappeared. You left the planet in our ship and we were marooned among the lunatic colonists.

  “We decided to hide while waiting for things to calm down. But before we could find shelter, some of them spotted us and gave chase. We ran as fast as we could. With the light gravity on Mars we were taking giant leaps and this chase through the air had something unreal about it. Maybe we would’ve lost them if Marguerite hadn’t twisted her ankle after jumping a little too high. I helped her up and we kept going, but we were slowed down and the mad hunters were getting closer every second. We were almost at the edge of the forest when I was hit on the back of the neck. I dropped to my knees. Before I could get up I was hit again and this time I passed out.

  “When I came to I had a bunch of cuts and bruises all over my body. I still bear the marks of this attack today. But this was nothing because a few feet away I saw the body of Marguerite, hacked and slashed with a knife. She had obviously defended herself bravely before falling under the blows of her enemies. Her hand still grasped a bloody stone, one of those stones that were already naturally red that you find all over Mars. Near her, only a few feet away, our attackers were lying lifeless on the ground. They had fought and killed one another. I was the sole survivor but I was physically and emotionally shattered.

  “Why did I not die that day with my wife? I don’t know. Why did I escape the strange effect that drove the other colonists insane? This, too, remains a mystery. But with time I came to believe that Léo Saint-Clair, whom all of France considered a hero, a paragon of virtue, had left us to die, me and my dear Marguerite, out of cowardice, only to save his own hide. If it wasn’t for him, we would’ve been able to escape. He was the one who dug our graves. I had to punish him. I survived all this time to avenge Marguerite by punishing the one who was responsible for her death. At first I failed and I almost died myself. But today the time has finally come to settle accounts.”

  Saint-Clair let the Engineer talk, primarily for strategic reasons, but also because the story both interested and troubled him. He could not believe what his enemy was telling him. He remembered the Martian colony, of course, where he had lived with Xavière, his first wife, and their three children. Xavière had died giving birth to their son Pierre. She was closed up in a transparent sarcophagus and thanks to a treatment discovered by a scientist in Argyre, her body would remain eternally young and vital, as if ready to be reborn.

  But the events that had caused the destruction of the colony had remained, until now, buried in the depths of his memory, as if hidden behind a veil of ignorance. The shock he felt was no doubt caused by a long amnesia. The Engineer’s speech was, therefore, a real revelation for him. But now he was starting to remember and all the tragic events were slowly coming back to the surface of his memory. The protective veil was finally being lifted and memories were flooding in.

  The colonists had been contaminated by an intelligent virus that tried to control
their bodies and that drove them mad. He, too, had been affected. He did indeed return to Earth in Korridès’ rocket and was found completely dazed. Because before this, he had suffered the most terrible tragedy. He had not just shoved aside the Engineer to take his ship but like the other colonists driven insane by the Martian parasite, he had participated in the massacre. He had killed. He thinks he had even killed his own children. For Saint-Clair the shock was unbearable. While he was trying to get over this, Maur Korridès spoke again, as if lost in his own memories:

  “Yes, I wandered over the Martian plains not knowing where I was going, completely hopeless. Without Marguerite my life was meaningless. A long and happy marriage had just come to an end. I had no reason to live. My life was over. But your savage face kept haunting my nights. After I don’t know how long, I saw there remained only one thing for me: vengeance. Yes, before leaving for the farther shores I had to avenge Marguerite and punish the man who ruined my existence. I went back, therefore, to the remains of Argyre. Nothing but silence and death. Lifeless bodies all over the city. Death had done its work but the equipment was not too damaged. Going through the laboratories I noticed that the radio-wave propulsion system could be repaired easily. My wife had died for nothing because you could have taken a radio-plane to leave the planet.

  “After a few hours of work the propulsion system was up and running. I got into one of the radio-planes and flew to Earth. After a week I was back in France. Then I needed to prepare my revenge. I found out that you were busy with the war against the Germans. You were hopping from one trench to the next, which made it hard for me to reach you. I had to be patient and wait for the right moment. It was just before the end of the war when I met Princess Diana Ivanovna Krosnoview. She was setting up a network of Bolshevik agents whose mission was to spread the revolution in the west when the fighting had stopped for good. Me teaming up with Bolsheviks! Everything about them disgusted me! The rule of mediocrity! Only exceptional beings like myself should lead the human race. But in the final count, as Lenin used to say, the end justifies the means. And my revenge trumped everything. I helped Diana as much as I could to set up her network.