The Revolt of the Machines Page 6

  I believe, in fact, that I am able to contribute enormously to the prosperity of your newspaper by offering to address exclusively to it all the communications relative to the discovery whose first public manifestation has taken place today. It will thus become, if you are agreeable, a veritable Moniteur of aerial locomotion, the only one authorized and precisely informed. These communications will be frequent and, if I am under no illusion, interesting to the public. The number of your readers and subscribers will be rapidly augmented in considerable proportions.

  As for the service that I will ask of you, it will consist of constituting you the center and intermediary of all the communications that I shall make or receive, both public and private. The public will be informed that a letter-box for my usage has been established in your offices and that everything addressed to me via that channel will be transmitted to me exactly. I will not ask you to transmit the letters that I will have to write myself, for which I shall employ the mail, but you will be kind enough to publish in your newspaper all the communications, without exception, that I wish to render public. In addition, all your collaborators will be invited to set aside, carefully, in order to enable them to reach me, everything that is printed in the newspapers relative to my invention.

  You will be kind enough also to designate to me someone belonging to the administration or editorial staff of your paper in whom I can have the most absolute confidence, and who will consent to become my intermediary, my representative and my delegate for all the administrative tasks that might crop up during the application of my work. If, for example, I needed to open a subscription, he will be responsible for receiving the funds in order to transmit them to me and for making use of those that I address to him in the manner that I indicate. If I wanted to found a company, he would prepare its foundations, its deeds and its statutes, and would take the necessary steps in accordance with my instructions. If I need a property, he will rent it; if I need various objects, he will take responsibility for purchasing them or having them manufactured; if I need workmen or assistants, he will hire them, etc.

  It goes without saying that he will always receive the necessary funds in advance for all the expenses he will have to meet and will be fully compensated for any traveling that his missions might necessitate. I shall reach an agreement with him as to the figure of various remunerative payments, which will be augmented as and when I have to ask him for a more active collaboration, though without that collaboration ever becoming so absorbing as to deflect him from his occupations at the newspaper.

  I will maintain, with him, with you and everyone else, the most absolute anonymity.

  If these proposals are agreeable to you in principle, it will be sufficient for you to publish the enclosed article tomorrow. If they are not agreeable to you, you may consider the present letter as non-existent.

  If the publication of the enclosed article, which you may follow with your own signature, takes place tomorrow, I shall consider my propositions as accepted and will hasten to transmit to you the detailed explanations necessary for the establishment of our letter-box and the security of our communications.

  The first one that I shall address to you will be a scrupulously exact account of the manifestation of the first of June, but without, of course, any revelation concerning my method or my identity. The moment to divulge them has not yet come.

  You will permit me to sign this letter, and those that I shall address to you subsequently, with a fantastic name, without their being treated in consequence like anonymous letters. The initial X, which might be translated as the forename Xavier, signifies in reality the unknown. As for the name Nagrien, it is composed of letters taken, almost at hazard, from the words Navigateur aérien, which will be the sole signature on my communications with the public through the intermediary of your newspaper.

  I enclosed with this letter the sum of 2,000 francs, which I beg you to consider irrevocably acquired, as much in the case of refusal as that of acceptance. You may make use of it as you see fit, either by applying it to the expenses of the installation of our letter-box, in the interests of the newspaper, or for some good work. I have no other objective in giving it to you than to give you a palpable, and probably superabundant sign of the seriousness of my proposal.

  Yours sincerely,

  X. Nagrien

  Two thousand-franc bills were, indeed, attached to the letter with a pin.

  The editor-in-chief did not hesitate for an instant. He was a man of great common sense and much experience, keen-eyed and prompt in decision. He saw in the offer that had been made a fortune for his paper, to the prosperity if which he was devoted body and soul, independently of the personal advantages that he might procure on the rebound. He read the letter to the assembled reporters. They all shared his opinion. There was a clamor of voices offering to serve as the administrator of aerial locomotion. Someone proposed putting it to a vote, and the proposal was immediately accepted. After a first round, in which almost everyone voted for themselves, the ballots were concentrated on the newspaper’s administrator, a former cashier at a large bank, a singularly intelligent man seasoned in business and of unassailable probity.

  The next day, the Universel published the following article on its front page, in a beautiful font:

  The public is informed that the Universel is becoming, from this day forward, the Moniteur of aerial locomotion.

  Alone, it will receive the communications of the author of that prodigious discovery, signed by the words: Le Navigateur aérien.

  These communications will be frequent, and always of a nature to interest our readers keenly. Only they bear a seal of exactitude and, so to speak, authenticity, which no one else can give to information or commentaries on the same subject.

  The first communications will begin to appear two days hence. First there will be an explanation of what might still remain obscure regarding the distribution of the texts and medallions that caused such a stir, and then a relation, as exact as it is detailed, of the great event of June the first.

  Announcements, accounts rendered and explanations relative to aerial locomotion will abound in our newspaper, without any of its normal features being sacrificed. It will be something extra. But that something will consist of everything that will be revealed regarding a discovery destined to change the world.

  People can, in addition, transmit all possible communications to the aerial navigator by addressing them to our offices, and by that route alone. They will be transmitted to him with as much exactitude as discretion, and no one but he will open them.

  We ought to add honestly that no revelation will be made between now and an indeterminate time either about the methods of locomotion or the identity of the aerial navigator. Neither the editor-in-chief of the paper nor any of his colleagues has the slightest indication in that regard. The aerial navigator has taken effective measures to correspond with us in the surest manner, while conserving strict anonymity.

  He informs the public that he will read with great care everything addressed to him without exception, and that he will reply, either by post or in our paper to anyone who merits a reply. He asks people who address correspondence to him to write their names and addresses legibly. He will even read anonymous letters, but will never reply to them.

  He will expose in our paper, when the time comes, his personal ideas regarding the best steps to follow in order that the world can profit from his discovery, and France before any other nation.

  We shall announce imminently a second public manifestation of arrival locomotion, even more interesting than that of June the first. We warn the public now that nothing will be accomplished that might provide a spectacle without our announcing it in advance.

  The present notification will be reprinted tomorrow.

  That article was signed by the editor-in-chief. The two issues in which it appeared were sent to a large number of people in Paris, and especially in the provinces. Posters summarizing it were put up in profusion every
where. The effect was immediate. Already, all of Paris knew about the incident of the letter handed to the editor-in-chief in the view of the dense crowd gathered in the streets. Everything of which he had dared to dream had been surpassed in fabulous proportions. Requests for subscriptions flooded in. It was necessary from one day to the next to double, quintuple and decuple the print run. Advertisements were relegated strictly to the fourth page, which was fortunately not leased; the price was tripled, and three out of four had to be refused.

  On the third of June the editor-in-chief received, through the ordinary post, a long letter signed X. Nagrien, containing carefully detailed indications. A kind of double letter-box, very ingeniously designed, was established in an unused chimney in the Editorial Suite, a space formed by the connection of two rooms whose partition wall had been removed during the installation of the newspaper. The editor-in-chief and the administrator each had a key to a kind of strong-box set up above the fireplace. The aerial navigator had the key to a similar strong-box located at the top of the flue. A simple mechanism served to bring their respective communications up and down.

  The announced publications did not deceive the expectations of the public. An explanation was given of how the aerial navigator had been able to carry out the distribution of texts that had excited so much comment on his own. The prodigious rapidity of his locomotion had permitted him to travel all over Paris between eight-thirty in the evening and three-thirty in the morning. What he had been able to do in seven hours on a dark night was amply explained by what he had been seen to do on the first of June in five hours of daylight.

  He had, in addition, made his arrangements in advance. He had had abundant time to prepare the three thousand copies in envelopes that were thrown into letter boxes the day before, along with the fifty he sent as registered letters; to capture the birds to carry the texts, which he only released on the night itself; and to prepare the garlands for the obelisk so that he could dress it at a stroke, as a priest puts on his chasuble.

  The night before, he had hidden forty large sacks filled with printed copies in inaccessible corners of rooftops, two sacks per arrondissement. It had been easy for him, in spite of their weight, to transport them two by two, suspended from organs of locomotion, and to empty them successively as a sower empties a sack of grain, attaching copies as he went to lightning conductors, spikes, hooks and any projections within arm’s reach, throwing others into chimney pots and openings in public monuments. His pockets had been full of wrapped five-franc coins, which he had thrown into two hundred apartments, breaking windowpanes after having donned a fencing-glove.

  These explanations were followed by a detailed account of the manifestation of June the first, already inflated by popular rumor by so many exaggerations that it had been transformed into a veritable legend, quite miraculous.

  At the same time, the administrator received instructions that he carried out with as much zeal as intelligence, but whose recitation would take too long. It will be sufficient to see their effects.

  VII. The Tour of France

  On the eighteenth of June, the Universel published the following announcement:

  The second public manifestation of aerial locomotion will commence next Sunday, the twenty-second of June.

  Its principal object will be to establish publicly the speed that can be attained by this kind of locomotion and to show the provinces what Paris has seen.

  The aerial navigator would be grateful to the railway companies if they would be kind enough to check his observations and thus give them an undeniable character of certitude and authenticity. It is by the clocks of railway stations that he will note the precise instants of his departures and arrivals, by reason of the uniformity of the hours adopted by the different railway lines.

  He cannot say in advance at exactly what times he will arrive at each station, but he can announce those of his departures. It will be necessary that, from the moment when he leaves a town, the stationmaster and a few employees in the one to which he is heading pay close attention, in order to draw up a kind of official documentation of the precise moment of his arrival.

  Here is the information that he can give in advance of his itinerary:

  Sunday 22 June, 7 a.m. Departure from the obelisk. Evolutions over Paris. At 8 a.m. Departure from the Gare de Lyon railway station.

  Arrival in Dijon. Evolutions. At 10 a.m. departure for Lyon.

  Arrival in Lyon. Temporary disappearance. Reappearance at 11.30 a.m. At 1 p.m. departure for Marseilles.

  Arrival in Marseilles. Evolutions. At 4 p.m. departure for Nîmes.

  Arrival in Nîmes. Evolutions. At 6 p.m. departure for Narbonne.

  Arrival at Narbonne. Temporary disappearance. Monday 33 June, 7 a.m., evolutions in Narbonne. At 8 a.m. departure for Toulouse.

  The itinerary continued thus, indicating as successive stations Toulouse, Bayonne, Bordeaux, Tours, Nantes, Rennes, Rouen, Lille, Strasbourg, Nancy and Paris.

  The railway companies, it is necessary to say, were far from enthusiastic in welcoming the request for collaboration addressed to them. Was it not their ruination that the untoward aerial navigator was bringing them, as they had themselves ruined the mail-coaches and the diligences?

  It is true that the mysterious mode of locomotion in question had only been revealed thus far as applicable to the transport of one person at a time, and no one could tell whether its difficulty, its cost and its dangers might make it a curiosity without the possibility of everyday practical application, but it might equally well be the case that it was as easily practicable as it was inexpensive. It might be the case that it was as appropriate to the transport of nacelles and veritable airships as to that of an isolated individual. If so, the railways would soon be abandoned, their shareholders ruined and their immense personnel unemployed.

  Already, without any sensible basis having arisen, people were no longer buying their shares, which were only holding their prices because their holders could not see far enough into the future to be ready to sell them all at once and at any price. The most prudent, however, were wondering whether it might not be wise to get rid of them discreetly.

  Nevertheless, the companies understood that it would make no difference to the future of the invention whether they welcomed it with more or less sympathy. Their ill will would accomplish nothing and would have no other consequence than to display the ridicule of stupidly mean-spirited sentiments. Besides which, they had the primary interest in knowing exactly what they might have to fear from future competition. The exact establishment of its speed was extremely important from their viewpoint. They therefore played their part by addressing orders to their agents instructing them to note with the most rigorous precision the hour, minute and second of the arrival at and departure from each station and to write detailed reports of everything that they observed.

  The voyage began at the appointed hour on the twenty-second of June. The urgency of the crowd from seven o’clock onwards in Paris and in all the towns indicated in the itinerary can easily be imagined, after the effect produced by the first demonstration. The Universel was already reaching every corner of France, and in any case, no newspaper could dispense with reproducing or summarizing the publications of which their fortunate competitor was the first to print, under penalty of losing subscribers.

  Thus, there was no one who did not know in advance the towns in which the aerial navigator would make an appearance. All the others, like the rural areas, were subject to mass desertions. Travelers arrived from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, England and Belgium. Never had Dijon, Lyon, Marseilles and all the other towns in which a brief station had been promised seen such an influx. Rooms were being let there for two days at the price of an apartment for a year.

  It would be superfluous to go into detail regarding the arrangements that X. Nagrien had made through the intermediary of his administrator for his meals and his overnight accommodation without risking his incognito. The important thing was the es
tablishment of velocity.

  The stationmaster in Paris and all the employees permitted by their service to gather around him observed that the aerial navigator arrived at the station a few minutes after eight o’clock, this time wearing, in addition to the small mask over his eyes, a gas mask doubtless designed to protect his face and eyes from the impression of the air cleaved with extreme rapidity. He circled for a few minutes and left Paris at eight o’clock precisely. Advice was immediately given by telegraph to the station at Dijon.

  There, he was seen to appear and to head straight for the clock tower, whose dial he indicated with his finger. It was nine twenty-four.

  It was revealed later, by the drivers, stokers and travelers in the trains whose paths he had crossed or that he had overtaken en route as well as by the employees at intermediate stations, that he had never ceased to follow the railway line. It was necessary to conclude that he would have gained at least ten or twelve minutes had he traveled as the crow flies.

  He was able to remain in Dijon for more than half an hour, and departed therefrom, as he had announced, at ten o’clock precisely. He arrived in Lyon at ten fifty. He had traveled 197 kilometers in fifty minutes.

  The rest of the voyage went as planned.

  The result of the calculations was a mean velocity of 240 kilometers, or 60 leagues, an hour—four kilometers, or one league, per minute—approximately four times the usual maximum speed of an express train, and almost a seventh of the muzzle velocity of a cannonball, which is estimated at between four hundred and five hundred meters per second, corresponding to twenty-five or thirty kilometers a minute, or four hundred leagues an hour.

  Departing from Paris, one could be in London in an hour and a quarter; in Madrid in five and three-quarter hours; in Vienna in five hours five minutes; in Berlin in three and a quarter hours; in St. Petersburg in eleven hours five minutes, and in Moscow in twelve hours sixteen minutes. One could go around the world in six days, eleven hours and forty minutes.