The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (48 page)

At length my host’s confidence in me became complete. During the first few weeks he had not been able to avoid the suspicion – a very natural one – that my peculiar abilities
might be accompanied by some mental abnormality, some cerebral derangement. This anxiety once put aside, our relations became perfectly cordial, and I think, as fascinating for one as for the
other.

We made analytic tests of my ability to see through a great number of “opaque” substances; and of the dark coloration which water, glass or quartz takes on for me at certain
thicknesses. It will be recalled that I can see clearly through wood, leaves, clouds and many other substances; that I can barely make out the bottom of a pool of water half a meter deep; and that
a window, though transparent, is less so to me than to the average person and has a rather dark color. A thick piece of glass appears blackish to me. The doctor convinced himself at leisure of all
these singularities – astonished above all to see me make out the stars on cloudy nights.

Only then did I begin to tell him that colors too present themselves differently to me. Experience established beyond doubt that red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo are perfectly
invisible to me, like infrared or ultraviolet to a normal eye. On the other hand, I was able to show that I perceive violet, and beyond violet a range of colors – a spectrum at least double
that which extends from the red to the violet.
³

This amazed the doctor more than all the rest. His study of it was long and painstaking; it was conducted, besides, with enormous cunning. In this accomplished experimenter’s hands, it
became the source of subtle discoveries in the order of sciences as they are ranked by humanity; it gave him the key to far-ranging phenomena of magnetism, of chemical affinities, of induction; it
guided him toward new conceptions of physiology. To know that a given metal shows a series of unknown tints, variable according to the pressure, the temperature, the electric charge, that the most
rarefied gases have distinct colors, even at small depths; to learn of the infinite tonal richness of objects which appear more or less black, whereas they present a more magnificent spectrum in
the ultraviolet than that of all known colors; to know, finally, the possible variations in unknown hues of an electric circuit, the bark of a tree, the skin of a man, in a day, an hour, a minute
– the use that an ingenious scientist might make of such ideas can readily be imagined.

We worked patiently for a whole year without my mentioning the
Moedigen
. I wished to convince my host absolutely, give him countless proofs of my visual faculties, before daring the
supreme confidence. At length, the time came when I felt I could reveal everything.

It happened in a mild autumn full of clouds, which rolled across the vault of the sky for a week without shedding a drop of rain. One morning van den Heuvel and I were walking
in the garden. The doctor was silent, completely absorbed in his speculations, of which I was the principal subject. At the far end, he began to speak:

“It’s a nice thing to dream about, anyhow: to see through clouds, pierce through to the ether, whereas we, blind as we are . . .”

“If the sky were all I saw!” I answered.

“Oh, yes – the whole world, so different . . .”

“Much more different even than I’ve told you!”

“How’s that?” he cried with an avid curiosity. “Have you been hiding something from me?”

“The most important thing!”

He stood facing me, staring at me fixedly, in real distress, in which some element of the mystical seemed to be blended.

“Yes, the most important thing!”

We had come near the house, and I dashed in to ask for a phonograph. The instrument that was brought to me was an advanced model, highly perfected by my friend, and could record a long speech;
the servant put it down on the stone table where the doctor and his family took coffee on mild summer evenings. A miracle of exact, fine construction, the device lent itself admirably to recording
casual talks. Our dialogue went on, therefore, almost like an ordinary conversation.

“Yes, I’ve hidden the main thing from you, because I wanted your complete confidence first – and even now, after all the discoveries you’ve made about my organism, I am
afraid you won’t find it easy to believe me, at least to begin with.”

I stopped to let the machine repeat this sentence. I saw the doctor grow pale, with the pallor of a great scientist in the presence of a new aspect of matter. His hands were trembling.

“I shall believe you!” he said, with a certain solemnity.

“Even if I try to tell you that our order of creation – I mean our animal and vegetable world – isn’t the only life on earth, that there is another, as vast, as numerous,
as varied, invisible to your eyes?”

He scented occultism and could not refrain from saying, “The world of the fourth state of matter – departed souls, the phantoms of the spiritualists.”

“No, no, nothing like that. A world of living creatures, doomed like us to a short life, to organic needs – birth, growth, struggle. A world as weak and ephemeral as ours, a world
governed by laws equally rigid, if not identical, a world equally imprisoned by the earth, equally vulnerable to accident, but otherwise completely different from ours, without any influence on
ours, as we have no influence on it – except through the changes it makes in our common ground, the earth, or through the parallel changes that we create in the same ground.”

I do not know if van den Heuvel believed me, but certainly he was in the grip of strong emotion. “They are fluid, in short?” he asked.

“That’s what I don’t know how to answer, for their properties are too contradictory to fit into our ideas of matter. The earth is as resistant to them as to us, and the same
with most minerals, although they can penetrate a little way into a humus. Also, they are totally impermeable and solid with respect to each other. But they can pass through plants, animals,
organic tissues, although sometimes with a certain difficulty; and we ourselves pass through them the same way. If one of them could be aware of us, we should perhaps seem fluid with respect to
them, as they seem fluid with respect to us; but probably he could no more
decide
about it than I can – he would be struck by similar contradictions. There is one peculiarity about
their shape: they have hardly any thickness. They are of all sizes. I’ve known some to reach a hundred meters in length, and others are as tiny as our smallest insects. Some of them feed on
earth and air, others on air and on their own kind – without killing as we do, however, because it’s enough for the stronger to draw strength from the weaker, and because this strength
can be extracted without draining the springs of life.”

The doctor said brusquely, “Have you seen them ever since childhood?”

I guessed that he was imagining some more or less recent disorder in my body. “Since childhood,” I answered vigorously. “I’ll give you all the proofs you like.”

“Do you see them now?”

“I see them. There are a great many in the garden.”

“Where?”

“On the path, the lawns, on the walls, in the air. For there are terrestrial and aerial ones – and aquatic ones too, but those hardly ever leave the surface of the water.”

“Are they numerous everywhere?”

“Yes, and hardly less so in town than in the country, in houses than in the street. Those that like the indoors are smaller, though, no doubt because of the difficulty of getting in and
out, even though they find a wooden door no obstacle.”

“And iron . . . glass . . . brick?”

“All impermeable to them.”

“Will you describe one of them, a fairly large one?”

“I see one near that tree. Its shape is extremely elongated, and rather irregular. It is convex toward the right, concave toward the left, with swellings and hollows: it looks something
like an enlarged photograph of a big, fat larva. But its structure is not typical of the Kingdom, because structure varies a great deal from one species (if I may use that word) to another. Its
extreme thinness, on the other hand, is a common characteristic: it can hardly be more than a tenth of a millimeter in thickness, whereas it’s one hundred and fifty centimeters long and forty
centimeters across at its widest.

“What distinguishes this, and the whole Kingdom, above all are the lines that cross it in nearly every direction, ending in networks that fan out between two systems of lines. Each system
has a center, a kind of spot that is slightly raised above the mass of the body, or occasionally hollowed out. These centers have no fixed form; sometimes they are almost circular or elliptical,
sometimes twisted or helical, sometimes divided by many narrow throats. They are astonishingly mobile, and their size varies from hour to hour. Their borders palpitate strongly, in a sort of
transverse undulation. In general, the lines that emerge from them are big, although there are also very fine ones; they diverge, and end in an infinity of delicate traceries which gradually fade
away. However, certain lines, much paler than the others, are not produced by the centers; they stay isolated in the system and grow without changing their color. These lines have the faculty of
moving within the body, and of varying their curves, while the centers and their connected lines remain stable.

“As for the colors of my
Moedig
, I must forego any attempt to describe them to you; none of them falls within the spectrum perceptible to your eye, and none has a name in your
vocabulary. They are extremely brilliant in the networks, weaker in the centers, very much faded in the independent lines, which, however, have a very high brilliance – an ultraviolet
metallic effect, so to speak . . . I have some observations on the habits, the diet and the range of the
Moedigen
, but I don’t wish to submit them to you just now.”

I fell silent. The doctor listened twice to the words recorded by our faultless interpreter; then for a long time he was silent. Never had I seen him in such a state: his face was rigid, stony,
his eyes glassy and cataleptic; a heavy film of sweat covered his temples and dampened his hair. He tried to speak and failed. Trembling, he walked all around the garden; and when he reappeared,
his eyes and mouth expressed a violent passion, fervent, religious; he seemed more like the disciple of some new faith than like a peaceful investigator.

At last he muttered, “I’m overwhelmed! Everything you have just said seems terribly lucid – and have I the right to doubt, considering all the wonders you’ve already
shown me?”

“Doubt!” I said warmly. “Doubt as hard as you can! Your experiments will be all the more fruitful for it.”

“Ah,” he said in a dreaming voice, “it’s the pure stuff of wonder, and so magnificently superior to the pointless marvels of fairy tales! My poor human intelligence is so
tiny before such knowledge! I feel an enormous enthusiasm. Yet something in me doubts . . .”

“Let’s work to dispel your doubt – our efforts will pay for themselves ten times over!”

We worked; and it took the doctor only a few weeks to clear up all his uncertainties. Several ingenious experiments, together with the undeniable consistency of all the
statements I had made, and two or three lucky discoveries about the
Moedigen
’s influence on atmospheric phenomena, left no question in his mind. When we were joined by the
doctor’s elder son, a young man of great scientific aptitude, the fruitfulness of our work and the conclusiveness of our findings were again increased.

Thanks to my companions’ methodical habits of mind, and their experience in study and classification – qualities which I was absorbing little by little – whatever was
uncoordinated or confused in my knowledge of the
Moedigen
rapidly became transformed. Our discoveries multiplied; rigorous experiments gave firm results, in circumstances which in ancient
times and even up to the last century would have suggested at most a few trifling diversions.

It is now five years since we began our researches. They are far, very far from completion. Even a preliminary report of our work can hardly appear in the near future. In any case, we have made
it a rule to do nothing in haste; our discoveries are too immanent a kind not to be set forth in the most minute detail, with the most sovereign patience and the finest precision. We have no other
investigator to forestall, no patent to take out or ambition to satisfy. We stand at a height where vanity and pride fade away. How can there be any comparison between the joys of our work and the
wretched lure of human fame? Besides, do not all these things flow from the single accident of my physical organization? What a petty thing it would be, then, for us to boast about them!

No; we live excitedly, always on the verge of wonders, and yet we live in immutable serenity.

I have had an adventure which adds to the interest of my life, and which fills me with infinite joy during my leisure hours. You know how ugly I am; my bizarre appearance is fit only to horrify
young women. All the same, I have found a companion who not only can put up with my show of affection, but even takes pleasure in it.

She is a poor girl, hysterical and nervous, whom we met one day in a hospital in Amsterdam. Others find her wretched-looking, plaster-white, hollow-cheeked, with wild eyes. But to me her
appearance is pleasant, her company charming. From the very beginning my presence, far from alarming her like all the rest, seemed to please and comfort her. I was touched; I wanted to see her
again.

It was quickly discovered that I had a beneficial influence on her health and well-being. On examination, it appeared that I influenced her by animal magnetism: my nearness, and above all the
touch of my hands, gave her a really curative gaiety, serenity, and calmness of spirit. In turn, I took pleasure in being near her. Her face seemed lovely to me; her pallor and slenderness were no
more than signs of delicacy; for me her eyes, able to perceive the glow of magnets, like those of many hyperesthesiacs, had none at all of the distracted quality that others criticized.