In A Thousand Years Page 4

  “When that crisis, the prolongation and frequency of which will not be without danger, eventually ceased, I had a few moment of absolute quietude. In spite of these purely physical impressions, my brain was subject to an intense activity, and my analytical and imaginative faculties had insensibly obtained a veritably prodigious power and conviction.

  “In our scientific speculations—you must have experienced it, Terrier—we are sometimes in the presence of ideas whose assimilation is particularly difficult. We are only separated from certainty by a limit that is sometimes insensible but which often opposes a resistance, necessitating a forceful concentration of thought. In the state in which I found myself, all the clouds had disappeared, and the most transcendent abstractions penetrated me with an axiomatic evidence and clarity.”

  VII. A Case of Ubiquity

  “I don’t know what association of ideas led me to occupy myself with what was happening at the Académie that day, for I had not been present at the session, but, by a strange phenomenon, conjectures gave way to real vision. I found myself sitting motionless in my armchair, without my neighbors being able to perceive my presence.

  “Mirbel went up to the podium and announced to the assembly that the president had gone home, having been taken ill after a great dinner given the day before by an opulent member of the Agricultural Society. The fact, I must admit, did not cause any anxiety and even provoked a few smiles.

  “‘Our honorable president,’ he added, ‘warned me this morning that he would be unable to chair the session and asked me to take his place.’ After a few moments of silence he said: ‘You will also notice, Messieurs, that our honorable colleague Dr. Antius is absent again today. Last Thursday he was supposed to take the chair, and did not put in an appearance. It is certain that only serious reasons could have impeded the exactitude of the most punctual member of our assembly.’

  “While saying these words, Mirbel had looked at my seat two or three times. I was therefore invisible. I tried to get up in order to reply, but my entire nervous apparatus of voluntary movement was paralyzed. I tried to open my mouth to make my presence known; it was impossible. I realized that I was therefore forced to witness the session as an invisible and intangible witness. I say intangible because my two neighbors, Dulaurier and Thibault, exchanged a handshake through my stomach.

  “Soon afterwards, I heard the reading of the minutes of the last session. There was nothing remarkable in hem, and I congratulated myself privately for having stayed at home. After two or three insignificant communications, the famous Poulard took the floor in order to refute a paper that I had read a month previously. His argument was even more wretched than usual. He had merely been boring until, having run out of resources, he suddenly became aggressive. At one time, he even permitted himself to call my thesis a collection of nonsense.

  “I tried once again to get up, in order to reckon with the impertinent individual, but in vain. When he had finished, the venerable anthropologist Luberneau came up to the podium and opened a notebook, whose size and thickness provoked a general yawn. Shortly afterwards, all heads had slumped on to the backs of chairs. I even heard two or three sonorous and regular snores.

  “Thibault and Dulaurier has escaped the universal torpor. The former was gravely sketching the orator’s gigantic nose, which he had captured rather well; the latter was looking at the ceiling, searching for an elusive rhyme that would conclude a sonnet of the Anacreontic genre, whose termination seemed to be preoccupying him greatly.

  “When the old doctor had concluded his sermon, which he had delivered in the desert, he took a Stone Age vertebra, jawbone and clavicle from his pocket. Lifting up the objects successively in his left hand, he rendered an account of each in turn with a prolixity of detail that would have rendered the Académie rabid if it had not been plunged into the profoundest and most legitimate slumber.

  “The poor fellow, who—fortunately for him—is half-blind and three-quarters deaf, convinced that he had been listened to with religious attention, finally came down from the platform with a visible expression of satisfaction.

  “The clock, which chimed five o’clock, woke up a few of the sleepers with a start, who shook the others, and the session was closed by Mirbel, who, retained by presidential propriety, had merely been dozing.

  “In a few minutes, the hall was empty. I was not without anxiety, feeling that I was shackled to my armchair for a period whose duration it was impossible for me to anticipate.

  “The usher suddenly came into the hemicycle, and, seeing that he was alone, proceeded to hum some baroque music-hall refrain. He headed for the rear door, opened it and disappeared down the staircase that leads to the interior courtyard.

  “Suddenly, it seemed to me that I had entered into possession of the power of voluntary movement. I made an effort and stood up without difficulty. While applauding myself for having quit the state of a mummy, I hurried toward the main door and went rapidly down to the street. The noise of my footsteps reassured me. I was no longer a phantom. I went back into the house without being perceived by Madeleine, who was filling the feeding-trays in the aviary. I went to the laboratory and threw myself down in my armchair.

  “I soon went to sleep. When I woke up, it was six o’clock in the morning. The action of the narcotic had, therefore, lasted for eight hours, during which I had lived partly in duplicate.

  “I went up to bed. It was impossible for me to close my eyes, for my mind was suffering from an extraordinary overstimulation. After an hour, I got up, but I was afflicted by vertigo and obliged to sit down. With great difficulty, I made my way down to the drawing room. I lay down on a divan. Suddenly, I was invaded by a profound terror. I could not succeed in stringing two ideas together; it seemed to me that I was going mad.

  “All day I remained in the state of absolute idiocy. It was not until the following day—this morning, in fact—that I recovered possession of my faculties, after the most agitated slumber. Scarcely had I woken up than I leapt out of bed. I had to check the various phases that had marked the singular vision without delay.

  “I ran to Dulaurier’s house, which is a hundred meters away. He’s a very early riser. When I went into his house he was just finishing grooming his beard.

  “‘Well, Colleague,’ I said, going into his study, without any other preamble, I didn’t know you were a poet.’

  “‘Oh!’ he said, visibly embarrassed, ‘if you’ve come so early, Antius, to compliment me on that subject, you’ve wasted your time, for I haven’t tried to compel the muse in all my life.’

  “‘It seems to me, however, that the day before yesterday, while old Luberneau was delivering his soporific report, you were putting the final touches to a sonnet that seemed to me to be rather risqué. Shall I recite it for you?’

  “‘Don’t you dare! All right, I admit my crime. But how the devil do you know about that bad habit, which I conceal with the greatest care, and to which I only abandon myself very rarely?’

  “‘I was beside you, and, not suspecting my presence, you didn’t take any precaution. I will add that Thibault succeeded rather well in capturing the orator’s obelisk-like nose.’

  “Dulaurier looked at me suspiciously. ‘All that’s accurate,’ he said, ‘but I assure you that, if you were at the session, no one saw you.’ He added: ‘It’s true that all our honorable colleagues were snoring conscientiously for two hours, and that Thibault and I were overcome in the end, like the rest. It was probably then that you came in, and that you were able to discover the serious occupations to which we had devoted ourselves. You doubtless didn’t take long to make yourself scarce, for which I congratulate you.’

  “As I wanted to accumulate proofs, I continued: ‘It’s certain that no one saw me, especially Poulard, from whom I’ve promised myself to pluck a few feathers, and soon.’

  “‘Ah!’ said Dulaurier. ‘You heard...’

  “‘No, but I’ve been told that he used the word absurdities?’

 
; “‘He didn’t go as far as that; he contented himself with the expression nonsense.’

  “I was convinced. I shook my colleague’s hand, telling him that hazard alone had brought me to his door. He saw me out, requesting my silence with regard to his poetical lucubrations, especially with regard to our colleagues. I assured him that he could sleep easy on that score.

  “As soon as I got home, I hastened to summon you, in order to give you an account of these marvelous things. I was saving the communication until after dinner. I had nothing really in view then but the interest that would result for us from the exact elation of the strange exaltation of thought, which permits sight through space, time and matter, when the desire you expressed to know what will be happening on Earth in a thousand years abruptly gave birth in my mind to the most audacious project.

  “I tell you this solemnly: I have the sincere, profound and absolute conviction that any person who absorbs an infinitesimal fraction of the substance, taken to its superior degree of concentration, will be able to read the future as clearly and I read the past; for there is certainly, between the past, present and future—which are, after all, only ideas of relation—a fatal link of which he will be the master. It will be sufficient to concentrate his thought on the mystery into which he wishes to delve, as soon as the first physiological symptoms make themselves felt.”

  Fixing his ardent eyes upon his guests, the doctor continued: “Would you like to try the experiment this evening?”

  “Certainly,” the physicist replied, calmly. “But don’t you fear, Antius, that the ingestion of the alkaloid, concentrated to the maximum, might sent us to make conjectures in a better world?”

  “Have no fear in that regard; I’ve taken precautions. This very morning, I experimented on a guinea-pig. Not only did I make it swallow a quantity far superior to the one we shall take, but I even injected a similar quantity into the subcutaneous tissues. It did not seem to be at all inconvenienced. Instead of going, as is its habit, to hide in the darkest corner of my study, it gravely came to sit down on my table. For half an hour it remained pensive. Then, perceiving Bourbouze’s new galvanometer,5 which I purchased last month, it immediately got up and went to walk around it, inspecting it with the attention of a connoisseur. This evening, it was still very cheerful, but its gaiety was dignified. It directed glances toward me in which I caught a hint of a rather pronounced ironic sentiment.”

  “In that case, I see no objection,” said the physicist.

  “I’m eager to know how our descendants will travel,” exclaimed Gédéon, whose imagination was already at work.”

  “We’ll slip away to the laboratory quietly,” said Antius, in a low voice. “If Madame Boquet, who is doubtless presently asleep beside her ovens, wakes up, all will be lost.”

  VIII. The Proof

  The three diners got up silently and went along the corridor, muffling the sound of their footfalls. The doctor, who was marching in the lead, lamp in hand, headed for the pavilion, the door of which he opened.

  Terrier and Gédéon, who were following close behind him, stopped. Turning toward them, he said: “Come in carefully; I’ll close the door behind you and leave you in darkness momentarily. It’s important that I send Madeleine to bed, in order that she doesn’t inspect the house from cellar to loft, as is her habit.”

  The two men went in. The doctor turned the key in the lock as an extra precaution and went to the kitchen.

  Madame Boquet, who was sitting on a narrow stool with her head on the entablature of an old dresser, was profoundly asleep, maintained in that awkward position by a kind of unconscious equilibrium.

  The doctor went up to the housekeeper and shouted in hr ear: “Madeleine!”

  The old lady woke up with a start, rubbed her eyes and exclaimed: “Do you think I’m deaf? For a start, I wasn’t asleep, I was just a little drowsy.” Looking at an old cuckoo-clock that was ticking dully on the mantelpiece, she said: “Oh my God, is it possible? Midnight already! Do you all want to make yourselves ill. Where are the others? Is it good sense to go out at this hour in this deserted quarter?” She got up. “I’ll see them to the door.”

  “They went home more than an hour ago,” said Antius. “I saw them out myself. So go to bed—I won’t be long doing likewise.”

  The worthy woman lit an inch-long candle-stub from the dying flame of the lamp that was flickering over the hearth, blew out the latter, and, having paraded her gaze around the theater of her exploits, went out of the kitchen and went upstairs, ponderously.

  The doctor went out into the corridor and waited there, immobile, for a few moments. When Madame Boquet had gone into her room, he went out into the garden that extended in front of the house without a light. Ten steps from the perron he turned round and looked up at a small widow that had just lit up. After five minutes, the window went dark again. Convinced that he was now safe, he went back in, locked the door and headed for the laboratory.

  His two companions were standing up, motionless.

  “All’s well,” he said. “Now, no one will disturb us.”

  Then he shone his lamp over the walls, searching all the corners with his gaze.

  “Ah, there he is!” he exclaimed, showing his friends the guinea-pig, stretched out voluptuously on a Ruhmkorff coil.

  The animal, surprised by the exclamation, got up on its four feet with dignity, looked at them one after another with a kind of disdainful fixity, and then nonchalantly resumed its original posture.

  “It’s certain that that insignificant mammal, which is looking at us impertinently, is animated by a singular force,” said the physicist.

  “And he’s marvelously healthy,” added Antius. “Sit down, while I get everything ready.”

  The professor and the young man took their places in two vast leather armchairs next to the experimental table. The doctor opened a cupboard hollowed out in the thickness of the wall and took out a small bottle, which he examined in the light.

  “This is the substance,” he said.

  Gédéon leaned over. “I can’t see anything,” he said. “Are we going to practice homeopathy?”

  Antius poured the contents of the bottle on to a disk of polished glass; five microscopic globules, brown in color, fell on to the surface.

  A sudden emotion had gripped the three men.

  “My friends,” the doctor said, gravely, “before hurling ourselves into the unknown, let us fix firmly in our minds the following resolution: as soon as we experience the first symptoms of intellectual overstimulation, let us concentrate all the might of our thoughts on the mystery whose depths we wish to plumb, and above all, let us not lose sight of the fact that an indissoluble link must constantly bind us together.”

  As he said these words he put two globules back in the bottle, which he locked away. Then he took three graduated glass vessels, into each of which he poured two grams of distilled water. He handed one to the young man, the other to the professor.

  Following his example, each of them took a globule and set in on his tongue. Then, drinking the liquid that was to wash it down, each of them swallowed all of it with a vigorous gulp.

  The glasses were replaced on the tray. The doctor spoke again. “Now, by the grace of God,” he said, solemnly, “let us remain cam and collected, and focus all our thoughts invariably on the subject in hand.”

  For ten minutes, an absolute silence reigned in the laboratory. Everyone maintained complete immobility.

  Suddenly, Gédéon gave some evidence of agitation, and then became as calm as before. Shortly thereafter, the same symptoms were manifest in the two scientists. The silence was still profound and solemn.

  After a further quarter of an hour, the young man suddenly closed his eyes, stiffening in his seat. “Uncle, Master, what a strange sensation!” he said, in a halting voice. “I’m being carried through space. My God, how frightful! I’m devouring distance at lightning speed. I’m flying ahead of the Earth in its orbit. Don’t leave me!” And his
head fell back, inertly, against the back of the armchair.

  The two scientists gripped the young man’s cold hands in their own.

  “Perhaps we were wrong to attempt to fathom the future,” said Antius, in a dull voice.

  “The die is cast,” murmured the physicist. “I too can feel my heart freezing. I’m experiencing a sensation of rapid displacement. Oh, what frightful speed! The Earth is no longer anything but an atom behind us—but you’re both close to me.” And he slumped backwards, slowly.

  The doctor was gripped in his turn by a profound shiver. He pronounced a few unsteady words and, his fists clenched, threw himself backwards.

  A few seconds later, the three men, motionless, inert and frozen, seemed to be sleeping the eternal slumber.

  Part Two

  A THOUSAND YEARS LATER

  I. Resurrection

  The sun was emerging over the horizon and sprinkling the countryside with golden arrows when Gédéon opened his eyes. All the objects surrounding him appeared at first to be drowned in a kind of iridescent mist, for he was no longer possessed of clarity of vision.

  “Uh oh!” he said. “Am I the victim of a case of diplopia?” he sneezed vigorously several times, and added: “If I still have doubts on that score, I’m certain with regard to a cold in the head.” He pulled back his hand, which he had extended in front of him, and found it to be wet. “Of course,” he said. “That explains it. I’m simply lying in the dew.” After further examination he muttered: “My unmentionables are well and truly soaked.”

  He tried to get up, and, trying to obtain a point of leverage on the ground, put his hand on a muddy boot, which remained inert on that contact.

  “That boot is harboring a foot, to which a leg is attached, which belongs to someone, for sure,” he added, aloud. “If my sight is troubled, my reasoning is clear, thank God!”