The Supreme Progress

by Brian Stableford

  A whirl of trees, houses and bridges pass before his eyes, flying past at top speed. Finally, the train stops. Here is Martinville. He recognizes all of the places where he spent his life, his lovely life of yesteryear: the station, the presbytery, the bell-tower, the main street—and, at the far end of the main street, in the distance, he perceives a little white house. One last effort, and he has arrived. He knocks; no one answers. He knocks more loudly; a light appears and footsteps are heard on the sand.

  “Who’s there?” says an uncertain voice.

  Thank God, it’s Frantz! “Frantz, Frantz—it’s me!”

  And Frantz and Georges are in one another’s arms.

  A few days later, Monsieur Lissardière hosted a great dinner-party. He had never been as triumphant. He had just been named president of an important official committee charged with organizing the fossil Archives of France. It was that appointment that was being celebrated. Over dessert, the name of Georges Perron was mentioned.

  “Don’t speak to me about that man!” said Monsieur Lissardière, with virtuous indignation. “He’s an ingrate!”

  Everyone smiled; then they talked about something else.

  Meanwhile, out in Martinville, the Sun was setting—a beautiful October sun fading away into the ruddy mist extended over the Ocean. Frantz and Georges were rummaging into the grotto of the Mirosaurus again. They had picks in their hands, and numerous pieces of debris were cluttering the ground.

  It was Georges who paused first. “It’s over, my poor Frantz. There’s no more Mirosaurus.”

  “Patience,” said the worthy Frantz. “We’ll find something, we’ll find something.”

  “Alas, it wouldn’t be the same.”

  They sat down and contemplated the sea. The sublime spectacle delighted them; they had no need to speak to understand one another, and, remembering past misfortunes, they shook hands.

  Thus their life passed; no troubles saddened them; no dissent drove them apart.

  Georges did not spare a thought for Clotilde or marriage. He devoted his attention to his collection of fossils, which grew by the day. He discovered two Ostreas whose structure was extremely curious, and he sent a paper to the Paleontological Society of Calvados. The Parisian Societies were too scientific for him, and he dreaded prompting some other Lissardière to come to Martinville.

  In the evening, in the old dining-room with the wooden dressers, gently rocking back and forth in his armchair, he listened to Frantz’s violin singing the harmonies of the old masters. Then Georges dreamed while awake.

  He has made a great discovery that has turned science upside-down and opened up a new world; all the scientists in Europe come to admire his work and listen to his lectures. Hundreds of listeners hang on his every word, following the progress of his thoughts.

  Then the scene changes. Another dream, just as beautiful, inflates his heart with pride. He is in Africa, in regions burned by an implacable Sun; he is the leader of a little band of valiant men; he has conquered immense lands unknown to other men and planted the tricolor flag in those barbaric regions.

  Sometimes, again, he sees himself as an omnipotent minister, reforming the laws and institutions of France, reversing abuses, unmaking hypocrites, confounding the envious, followed by a shivering Assembly.

  Often, too, there is a theater auditorium, shining with light. The prettiest women in Paris, the most seductive actresses, cluster around him; the curtain goes up; people listen, stupefied with admiration; frantic applause bursts out from all sides, and the name of Georges Perron is greeted with shouts of enthusiasm.

  Frantz has stopped; the music falls silent, and all those chimeras fly away. Georges finds himself back in Martinville, a bumpkin as before.

  “What a pity!” he murmurs.

  But Frantz does not reply. He knows that one does not forgets glory, once one has imagined that one might possess it one day. He knows that illusion is sweet, but that reality is bitter.

  Charles Epheyre: Professor Bakermann’s Microbe

  A Tale of the Future

  (1890)

  In the latter days of the months of December 1935 Professor Hermann Bakermann returned joyfully to his lodgings, striding through the streets of the little town of Brunnwald as rapidly as his generous girth would permit.

  He was rubbing his hands as he walked, a sign of profound satisfaction—a legitimate satisfaction, for, after long labor, Professor Hermann Bakermann had finally found the means of creating a new microbe, more redoubtable than all the known microbes.

  It will doubtless be remembered that in the last half-century, microbial science had made extraordinary progress. In the mid-19th century, a celebrated Frenchman, Louis Pasteur, had proved that certain minuscule creatures exist, which penetrate surreptitiously into the bodies of humans and animals. He had called these perfidious parasites “microbes.” He had even indicated ingenious methods of recognizing them, collecting them and cultivating them. Now, in 1935, the works of Pasteur had been long surpassed. Obedient to the impulse provided by the master, all the scientists of Europe, America, Australia, and even Africa, had set to work. Thanks to them, the most difficult problems had been clarified, the most obscure problems resolved; there was no longer any disease that did not have its microbe, labeled, classified and stored. The forms, the behavior, the habits and the tastes of all terrestrial, marine and airborne microbes were known, and microbial science had become the basis of medicine in all the universities.

  In Germany, as elsewhere, mores had changed considerably in the last 30 years. The reign of the spiked helmet had finally come to an end. The professors and the scientists had resumed their place in the sun; they no longer trembled before a beardless corporal, and the ancient German customs, honest and peaceful, had succeeded the regime of the saber.

  That was why the noble town of Brunnwald possessed a brilliant university, sumptuous laboratories and excellent professors. Now, none of these masters had more zeal or talent that the celebrated Hermann Bakermann. At an early age he had flung himself impetuously into microbial science; later, having become a professor, he had been able to construct the laboratory of his dreams. It was there that he spent his life. Disdainful of his patrons, he lived amidst his flasks and his culture media, surrounded by the most powerful and most deleterious viruses.50 In order not to be infected by his poisons, however, he had taken all the necessary precautions. By means of a skillfully graduated series of vaccinations, he had eventually rendered himself almost invulnerable, with the result that his health did not suffer at all for that existence passed entirely amid the germs that afflicted poor humankind.

  However, as not everyone in the world was as well-protected as he was, Professor Bakermann had taken care to construct, at the extremity of his laboratory, a special room, to which he jokingly referred as the “infernal chamber”, which he did not permit any other human being to enter at first. This little room, heated and lit by electricity, was equipped with powerful disinfection apparatus, and the prudent Bakermann never came out of it without first purifying himself with the most active antiseptic fumigations.

  As he went home that day, then, Professor Hermann Bakermann was content. The problem that he had sought in vain for such a long time to solve had finally received a simple solution. The means of rendering harmful microbes inoffensive were known, but that was only one aspect of the problem. Bakermann had found a means to render inoffensive microbes harmful.

  When we say “harmful” we do not mean to imply mildly harmful, but terrible, overwhelming and irresistible. The microbes presently known only kill in a day, half a day at the worst, and are also possessed of a fragile vitality. It does not take much to attenuate them or render them harmless. The problem, therefore, was to have a virus powerful enough to kill in an hour, at a dose of a hundredth or a thousandth of a drop, in such a manner that no living creature could survive it. Above all—and this was the most delicate part—the terrible microbe must be very resistant, incapable of allowing itself
to be weakening by intemperances of climate or the medications that artful humans were inventing incessantly.

  Gradually, Bakermann had succeeded in making his great discovery. “A microbe,” he said in his course, “is like a human being. We humans need a varied diet. We need soup, sauerkraut, beer, caviar, butter, cakes, mutton, fish, lobster, pâtés, honey, almonds, fruits, sardines, Rhenish wine, champagne, potatoes and kummel. Our health improves as our alimentation becomes more sophisticated and more complicated. Well, microbes have the same needs as we do. Let us give them a very varied and rich nourishment, and we shall make them increasingly vigorous—which is to say, energetically malign, for the vigor of a microbe is proportional to its destructive power.”

  So, all Professor Bakermann’s concern was lavished on the confection of his culture media. In this respect, he could have given tips to the best French chefs. In his latest medium, he had found the means of introducing 87 different alimentary substances, and the microbes within it were developing with a truly prodigious vital intensity.

  We cannot enter into detail here regarding the famous scientist’s scientific techniques. At any rate, thanks to improved culture media and certain electrical procedures that he was still keeping secret, Bakermann had profoundly transformed a vulgar microbe, the microbe that turns butter rancid—very widespread, alas!—by submitting it to a whole series of complicated cultures, and he had made it into an extremely nasty microbe.

  A hundredth of a drop killed a large dog in two and a half hours, and a single drop could kill 3000 rabbits in two hours. It goes without saying that Bakermann had not been able to try it out on such a large quantity of rodents, but he had caused a considerable number to perish, to the great indignation of Frau Bakermann.

  Frau Bakermann? Well yes, there is no life that does not have some secret distress, no fruit that does not conceal a poisonous worm, no rose that does not have an unfortunate thorn. For the illustrious Bakermann, the poisonous worm, the treacherous thorn, was Frau Josepha Bakermann.

  Frau Bakermann had never understood microbial science. Every time the unfortunate scientist tried to talk to her about it, she looked at him suspiciously.

  “What good is all this fuss about futilities that make everyone laugh? Instead of going to the theater or for a walk, you shut yourself up in an unhealthy room with rabbits, toads and pigeons! Is that a job for a man who respects himself and his wife? If only you imitated Dr. Rothbein, who, while being just as much of a scientist as you, makes ten visits a day and is paid 20 marks for every one—but you’re incapable of making a simple pfennig. You’re nothing but a poor man, Bakermann, and it’s me who tells you so; I’m astonished that there’s a single student on your course, for you only know how to tell them the same story over and over again.”

  In brief, Frau Bakermann detested microbes.

  She hated something else too: that was the tavern.

  All the greatest men have their faults, and, on searching hard, one will always find a defect, a stain or a weakness in the best of them. Professor Bakermann had his weakness too; it was the tavern.

  All things considered, Bakermann’s conduct was excusable.

  Drinking tankards of good beer one after another, in a joyful row, with cheerful comrades, while playing a hand of piquet or discussing the condition of Europe and the progress of microbial science, is certainly more agreeable than listening all evening long to bitter recriminations regarding the exorbitant price of rabbits, the high cost of the exquisite foodstuffs that it was necessary to buy to nourish the microbes, the uselessness of delicate thermometers that cost 100 marks, and the necessity of having a fur cape like Frau Rothbein, or Oriental door-curtains in one’s drawing-room like Frau Scheinbrunn, the president’s wife.

  When Bakermann had succeeded in getting to the door without being seen, he was saved. He only came back very late, with his head a trifle heavy and his face crimson, but quite satisfied, and submitted, without saying a word to an avalanche of bitter words. He even—which is a terrible thing to say—got used to it, ending up only being able to go to sleep to the sound of lamentations and invective.

  This evening, however, as he went home, Bakermann gave no thought to his wife. He was thinking about his terrible microbe.

  “I’ve found it…I’ve found it!” he repeated to himself. “Yes, I have it. Oh, the brigand! It’s given me enough trouble! But what shall I call it? It’s necessary to give it a name, for every new microbe must be given a name, and this one is definitely a new microbe. It can almost kill at a distance. Ah! Yes, that’s it! That’s it! Mortifulgurans. Bacillus mortifulgurans. That has a really fine ring to it!”

  “Ah, there you are!” cried Frau Bakermann. “Not bad. 8 p.m.! Did you even look at the time? I thought you weren’t coming back—and that wouldn’t have been any great pity.”

  “Calm down, Frau Bakermann,” said the worthy man, “And get ready to rejoice, for I’m bringing you good news.”

  “Really?”

  “My word, yes—very good news, and very important. You know, my dear, what I’ve been seeking for such a long time, the microbe that kills rabbits in two hours, at a dose of a thousandth of a drop…”

  Poor Bakermann, with a perseverance worthy of a better fate, stubbornly told his wife about all his scientific experiments, and the snubs that he met with every time had not yet discouraged him.

  “If you think I’m going to listen to your nonsense! Yet another stupidity! Isn’t it pitiful! At your age!”

  “But, Frau Bakermannn…”

  “Come on, it’s dinner time—and no tavern today, you know. I know all about your accursed microbes. Every time you claim to have made a discovery—a discovery!—you take advantage of it to spend the night drinking with good-for-nothings like Rodolphe Müller and Cesar Pück. I warn you, thought, that I’m not in a patient mood tonight.”

  I can see that, Bakermann thought, sighing.

  Nevertheless, he did not lose all hope, for Frau Bakermann often fell asleep after supper, and Bakermann took cowardly advantage of that respite to get away.

  Bakermann ate with a good appetite, therefore, and paid no heed to Josepha’s threats. She, becoming increasingly irritated, to a great extent than ever before, told her husband quite bluntly that if he went out, she would cause a scandal; that she would go to his sanctuary—which is to say, his laboratory—and even to the infernal chamber itself, in order to carry out a search.

  “It’s there, I’m sure, that you’re hiding Eliza’s letters.”

  Bakermann contented himself with sighing and raising his eyes to Heaven.

  Eliza was a servant girl that Frau Bakermann had once been obliged to sack, for she suspected her husband of kissing the little rogue on the sly. We do not know to what extent the accusation was justified, but it was still the case that, as soon as Eliza’s name was pronounced, Bakermann lowered his head and was unable to make any reply.

  “Yes, Eliza’s letters! That’s certain. What’s become of her now? She hasn’t left the town, and you’re still seeing her. Frau Scheinbrunn told me that she’s been seen in a silk dress and pearl earrings.”

  Bakermann did not breathe a word, and tried to distract himself by repeating: Bacillus mortifulgurans!

  “Guess, Josepha, what name I have given it!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Bacillus mortifulgurans. Eh? It’s a good choice, isn’t it? My colleague Krakwein is capable of making a disease of it!”

  “I’m sure,” Frau Bakermann continued, “that you still write to her. A girl who is always badly coiffed, a liar, a glutton, a debauchee…”

  “Wife!” Bakermann groaned.

  “I’ll go to your accursed laboratory—yes! I’ll go and I’ll search everywhere, and I’ll find the proof of your wretched conduct.

  “Wife, my dear wife,” Bakermann murmured, “you mustn’t do that. Remember that my mortifulgurans is there, and that I alone can enter the infernal chamber without danger. If you knew all the precautions I take. Think of your health, you
r precious health, my darling.”

  Deep down however, he scarcely took any notice of Frau Bakermann’s threats. Almost every evening, there was the same anthem, and thus far, Frau Bakermann had never dared cross the redoubtable threshold of the infernal chamber.

  Later, Frau Bakermann, wearied by quarrelling, dozed off in her armchair.

  My word, Bakermann thought, it’s not far from here to the tavern. I’ll go along to say good evening to Cesar Pück and tell him the great news. I’m anxious to have his advice about the mortifulgurans. Josepha’s well away for an hour, and she’ll still be asleep in the same place when I get back.

  With that, walking on tiptoe and making himself very small, Professor Bakermann went into the hallway, put on his coat and hat, and went out.

  Once he was outside, he uttered a deep sigh of relief, and smiled involuntarily at the thought of the tavern when Cesar Pück awaited him.

  Cesar Pück, Valerian Grossgeld and Rodolphe Müller were, indeed, there, faithful to their posts. They uttered a joyful hurrah on seeing their illustrious friend arrive.

  “I can see that there’s news!” exclaimed Pück. “You’re wearing your finest smile!”

  “Yes, indeed!” cried Bakermann. “Boys, I have my microbe, and I call it mortifulgurans.”

  “Bravo!” said Müller. “I knew that you’d get there in the end. But you mustn’t rest on your victory. Do you know what you ought to look for now?”

  “My word, no!”

  “The bacillus of good humor—and you can try out its effects immediately on Frau Bakermann.”

  “That would, indeed, be a glorious success,” Bakermann murmured. “But we’re here to talk about cheerful things. Come on—a tankard! And let’s get the party started!”

  Beer had never been so exquisite, nor a game of piquet so interesting. With insolent good luck, Bakermann won as often as he could have wished. Aces and kings flooded his hands. In the meantime, tankards were emptied effortlessly, while pipes and laughter kept pace.