The Humanisphere Page 4

  Beavers are bipedal; that, as is evident, is the character common to the three andro-selenian species. Like the Vespertilios, they are almost always four feet in height, rarely less and never more. Furthermore, apart from their intelligence, manifested by a facial angle of greater opening, they offer the greatest analogy with terrestrial beavers; they could even be confused with the latter if they were not upright on their feet, if they had a smaller stature and if their arms had not been designed by the Creator to accomplish the part they play in lunarian industry.

  Such are the three very distinct races that inhabit the globe of the Moon. Nevertheless, numerous and clear-cut as those natural distinctions are, they are feeble by comparison with social distinctions. In fact, although the Vespertilios live in the same places as the Selenians, it is not in the same capacity; if, like them, they mingle in various kinds of labor, they are not of the same quality; and above all, the occupations of either are completely different from those of the Beavers.

  Strictly speaking, houses do not exist on the Moon, but rather manors, often octagonal in form or conical, susceptible by their extent of containing two or three hundred individuals. Those manors are sometimes separated from one another by large spaces populated with trees, which cannot be called gardens because they do not include anything analogous to leguminous or fructigenic plantations. The trees in question seem entirely designed for ornamentation or salubrity.

  We have noticed troops of Selenians still young and small frolicking in these plantations. Each group was under the surveillance or the safeguard of a Vespertilio. As only individuals of the Selenian race are found among those children, that first observation put us on the track of discovering a multitude of other customs that would otherwise have escaped us. The Vespertilios thus seemed to us to be fulfilling functions analogous to those of the pedagogues of Rome, who were all slaves. Once that analogy was found, we extended it, and eventually discovered that the Vespertilios were the slaves of the Selenians.

  We have seen Vespertilios working on the land, and never Selenians. The latter were exercising a sort of surveillance over them, not individually but grouped into ambulant committees. We concluded therefrom that property in the land in question might well be common. Other arguments came to fortify our opinion, and give us reason to think that the community in question even extends to different orders of relationship. Is that a bad thing or a good thing? Does it offer evidence of a social estate more or less advanced than ours?

  I know that in recent times philosophy has agitated those questions a great deal; but, preoccupied by my scientific endeavors, I was unable to listen to the debates, and besides which, I cannot, informed as I now am of the mores of our satellite, adopt an opinion in that regard without giving the lunar race the advantage over us or taking it away from it, and I do not want to reduce myself to that extremity.

  Alongside Vespertilios and with them we have seen Beavers working the land. Their number was always more considerable than that of the Vespertilios. We concluded from that observation that the latter never took part, in all the orders of industrial functions, in any but the less tedious and less coarse work, that they were like the foremen of the Beavers, who were themselves unable to escape all that manual labor presents of the rudest and most fatiguing.

  Fishing and hunting are the favorite occupations of the Selenians, of which they have the exclusive privilege. Fishing in rivers is the only kind we have observed. In the lunar planet, bristling with mountains and fissures, we have encountered few rivers in the sense that we give to that word; we have accorded that denomination to streams and ravines whose course in sometimes interrupted by the steepness of the slope and sometimes transformed into a deep pool.

  Fish are scarce there but crustaceans pullulate. Those animals, whose incoherent and multiple forms are difficult to describe, appear to us to be almost all armed with pincers or jaws, and powerful means of defense, and in spite of the dexterity of the Selenians, as they only ever make use of their fingers in fishing, we have perceived that they are bitten quite frequently.

  In spite of our humanity, we experienced satisfaction one day when that accident happened to a fisher who had been the object of all our attention for some time, and whose image stood out very clearly in the objective. We owed it to that accident, in fact, to remark for the first time that the blood of lunarian humans is not red like ours but a milky blue; the extent of the wound caused a quantity to flow sufficiently considerable to remove all doubt in that regard.

  Although the ravines are not very profound, they end in basins whose bed is very deep. One night I perceived a Selenian diving into one of these basins and, curious to see the result, I waited for his return to the surface. He took his time; I even thought momentarily that he had drowned; but after twenty minutes he reappeared, holding in his hand two fish, round in form and passably stout, which seemed to us to have a considerable analogy with marine turtles. I renewed my observations in that regard and have been able to convince myself that Selenians are amphibious.

  We have collected few documents on hunting; that which is done in the mountains has remained unknown to us, so difficult is it to penetrate by gaze, at such an enormous distance, the masses of trees and rocks of which those mountains are composed.

  On 7 February, at eleven o’clock in the evening, regions thought to be uninhabitable having entered our field of view, we discovered on the rocks that we were disposed to examine a multitude of winged beings who were mingling and colliding without our being able to determine whether they were Selenians or Vespertilios, so abrupt and rapid were their movements.

  After half an hour, the crowd being less dense, we recognized that they were, in fact, Vespertilios, who were fighting against another species of winged beings. The latter offered the most astonishing similarity to the Verspertilios. Their organic constitution was the same, and a more attentive examination soon forced us to agree that they were identical, of the same race.

  We perceived, in fact, in the midst of Selenians, Vespertilios of the species already known, and the result of the comparison was as I have just said. These, however, were naked, unlike the latter, which, without being dressed like the Selenians, are covered by a kind of loincloth and a vest that extends from their waist to their chin. These garments had prevented us until then from knowing for certain whether the Vespertilios were hairy, even though we could conclude it from the presence of an enormous beard extended over the whole face, just as we had concluded, with regard to Selenians, from the absolute privation of facial hair, an absence of hair over the rest of the body. Furthermore, the nudity that had initially astonished us in the Vespertilios of the new species, ceased to surprise us when we saw that it was in harmony with the dirty and repulsive exterior of those beings, whose hair is matted with ordure, and whose physiognomy is simultaneously bloodthirsty and stupid.

  From that mass of observations we concluded on the same day that there is between the two sorts of Vespertilios the same difference as there is between civilized humans and savages. It seemed, in addition, that the former were the enemies of the latter, since, as we have already said, they fought in the same ranks as the Selenians. But what was the cause of the battle? What role did the Vespertilio savage play in the lunar world? That was what we could only hope to discover after long observation.

  We recognized subsequently that those battles were frequent, but not always as terrible. The first time, the confusion was so great that we were unable to distinguish anything, whereas in subsequent observations, there were little more than skirmishes, in which the savage Vespertilios usually succumbed under the blows of an ever-alert enemy difficult to take by surprise. However, if it happened that a Selenian was killed, the Vespertilios immediately took possession of the body, after having divided it into pieces in order to reduce the weight, which caused us to presume that they were androseleniphages.

  The savage hordes appeared to have another goal as well as that of war. They were often seen rising from the
ground and carrying away various roots, like marauders. A few Selenians pursued them, but they, however numerous, did not even think of putting up a futile defense and were content to flee. They always headed in the same direction—which is to say, as far as our field of view permitted us to follow them, toward the part of the Moon that is invisible for us, and in which we suppose that little exists except for volcanoes, precipices and marshes.

  That is perhaps where the savage Vespertilios live, and it is necessary to agree that the abode is worthy of them. It is doubtless to shelter them from pillage that the Selenians have established in that direction forts of a kind, in which civilized Vespertilios are placed as sentinels. The latter, even more relentlessly opposed to the savages than the Selenians, give the signal.

  We have not, in the course of our observations, seen savage prisoners taken, from which it can be concluded that the distinction has existed for a long time between the two Vespertilio races that makes one the enemies of the Selenians and the other their most devoted servants. The existence of that barbaric race is perhaps the sole obstacle to the development of Selenian civilization.

  That is only offered as a humble supposition.

  It was necessary to wait for sixteen days before being able to study the curious phenomena that occur on the surface of the Moon during the night—which is to say, when it is only illuminated by the Earth. Ashen light has permitted us to make observations of the obscure disk for nine days in each lunation, so the state of our knowledge of what happens among our neighbors during their long fourteen-day nights leaves nothing to be desired, although it required nocturnal observations for no less than three entire lunations to coordinate the facts, classify them entirely and obtain a theory sufficiently complete for the explanation of the various phenomena that I proposed during the second lunation to seem convincing to my collaborators.

  When the Sun has ceased to illuminate a mountain and its valley on the lunar surface for two days, objects begin to become obscure; a kind of excessively white fleecy matter forms, which we mistook at first for snow covering the lunar ground. Its movement, sometimes slow and sometimes rapid, did not take long to accuse our hypothesis of falsity. The matter in question, which seems to descend from the mountain-tops, is evidently held in suspension in the atmosphere; the central peak is gradually effaced, and the mists thicken so much that one can no longer perceive anything but the mountain crests, which then form a series of unified crowns designed in black against a mat white background.

  On 17 March a very large number of black dots was distinguished on the horizon; some seemed to be moving with great rapidity, and it did not take us long to observe several that were circulating with rapidity above the valley on which all our attention as fixed. Suddenly, those black dots disappeared as if they had plunged into the ocean of mist. The chronometer marked 2:11. At 2:34 they reemerged from the valley, but Dr. Grant, who had counted 79 of them, found 116 in the second enumeration.

  After that simple observation the phenomenon began to be less embarrassing, for it was obvious that the black dots we had seen initially were individuals of the savage Vespertilio race; they had doubtless come to carry out some atrocious actions, and the Selenians were pursuing them. In fact, the black dots were coming together continually in the air and appeared to be colliding violently; numerous combatants, doubtless wounded, disappeared into the thick vapors covering the valley. Finally, the Selenians appeared to be put to flight, and the Vespertilios came to settle on the crests of the mountains, for they ceased to be perceptible as soon as their shadows were projected on the dark crowns that dominated the valley.

  We had been reflecting for a few minutes on the nocturnal combat in order to determine its cause when the tympanum of the Observatory was struck by a violet-tinted red light comparable to that given by the flame of strontium salts. Our doubts were removed at that moment and several of our suppositions were, unfortunately, only too well confirmed. A number of Vespertilios were lying on banks of volcanic rock; one of them was dividing up the limbs of a child and distributing them to his hideous companions.

  Three other children were a few paces away from that cannibal feast; they were agitating their wings and appeared to be crying out; their feet were trapped beneath an enormous stone, and a cord passed around their wings bound their arms behind the head. By the whiteness of their skin and the bright colors of their wings, we could not doubt that the children belonged to the Selenian race.

  The luminous meteor that traversed the atmosphere of the Moon was a stroke of luck for me because, while all attention was fixed on the revolting scene that I have just described, I was surprised to see the fuliginous masses that were covering the valley emerge from a kind of crevasse situated about four hundred feet from the crest and extending around the entire perimeter of the mountain. I advanced the opinion—to the great surprise of my companions, who had not observed the same phenomenon—that all those mountains were as many volcanoes, no longer launching ardent lava, ash or smoke, but vapor at a high temperature. That opinion was admitted by everyone when a sufficient number of observations and a more attentive study of the mountains when they were directly illuminated by the Sun had enabled us to see that those craters existed everywhere.

  Fourth Fragment: SELENOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS

  A few nights went by between the last proofs and those which remain for us to consign.

  Vapors enwrapped the Moon with considerable persistence—an extraordinarily rare accident—and that veil was only lifted on 5 March at 10:34. I had been careful to mount lens Zz, designed for minute observations; and at the time indicated above, the very considerably crystals with which Cleomenes is bristling were displaying their colors and accumulated crests in the field of view.

  That lunar region, situated thirty degrees south of Endymion, which corresponds to N2 on Blunt’s map, presents the aspect of sterility commonplace in regions neighboring the sea. The reefs with which it abounds have a darker tint, and constantly affect the form of little mounds rounded at the top.

  The crystals are irregular; they are often encased in dull matrices, with which they form a body, and which present to the eye a considerable analogy with mercury and lead sulfides.

  A few rocks have shown us the specific characteristics of metallic oxides analogous to those of iron, without, however, our being able to affirm on that subject anything except our visual impressions, for no appearance of iron is clearly designed, in a compound analogous to our knowledge of that metal.

  It is probable that the element in question, which plays such an important role in the terrestrial world, is not identified in the lunar clime, and our fortunate discovery regarding the blood of the Selenians comes to the aid of that hypothesis. That constant observation obliges the search for another origin for the ferruginous masses known as aeroliths, which scientists have attributed thus far to the fall into the sphere of terrestrial attraction of matter ejected by lunar volcanoes.

  Another natural product of that soil appears to us to be worthy of attention. It consists of crystalline blocks of a beautiful translucency and a magnificent crimson color, the examination of which has led us to suppose that copper protoxide, so resistant to human efforts to incorporate it into glass, is mingled by the Creator with those diaphanous masses, which effect the form of polyhedra derived from hexagonal prisms.

  We are, of course, only placing that classification in the category of probabilities. In fact, it would be imprudent to assign positive values to the various figures of everything lunar, and to make them enter into account with admitted reasoning. We have encountered dry strands, silky to the eye, which made us think of asbestos. Some rocks have appeared to us to be calcareous, others flint-like; those characteristics only serve as instruments of comparison, nothing more.

  At the extremity of the aforementioned reefs, the earth—we cannot find any other word—becomes humid and descends for a long time in a gentle slope. The strand in question is gray, and there, as throughout the satellite,
the tint of ocher is only found once. Beyond that ground a sea begins whose extent our objective cannot encompass.

  That liquid plain offers us a singular sight: the totality of the waves turned in the direction of our world affect a conical form like the mountains; the waters present a mass raised in the middle as if drawn into the air by an invisible force, which is terrestrial attraction, much more powerful on the Moon than that of the latter on our planet.

  No traces of navigation on the part of the winged inhabitants are evident on that sea. As for the aquatic population, our ignorance on that subject is understandable. We have, however, seen gliding over the surface of the water, without plunging into it, reptiles of large dimension. Those creatures of an extraordinary length might be more advantageously compared to Vibrions—such as hydrated acetic acid contains—considered under a solar microscope, albeit with infinitely multiplied proportions.4 Their head is armed with two pincers similar in shape to a cow’s horns, but smaller and incisive, which they doubtless bring together in order to lacerate or seize. A shiny envelope like that of scales covers their back, separated by membranous ventral fins bristling with a kind of mossy fur like that of a sea-spider.

  No marine plants carpet the shores—those, at least, that we have examined.

  Among the animals of those regions we ought not to forget an amphibian reminiscent of a seal but much more voluminous. Further inland we have encountered many mastodons; there are some that are similar to elephants, with the difference that they sometimes have white patches on the rump, and always have larger ears than those of the world we inhabit.

  Birds are very rare in that region of the Moon; most of the time their wings are only short feathered stumps that they use for rowing in the air, which imparts an incomparable rapidity to their running.