The Eternal Adam and other stories (37 page)

Unfortunately for the generalisation of the
system, other finds were made. Scattered throughout the whole thickness of the
humus, and even in the most superficial part of the deposit of silt,
innumerable human bones were brought to the daylight. Nothing exceptional in
the structure of these fragmentary skeletons, and Sofr had to give up asking
for the intermediate organisms whose existence his theory asserted: these bones
were human bones, neither more nor less.

However one fairly remarkable peculiarity was
not slow to be realised. Up to a certain antiquity, which could be roughly
evaluated as 2,000 or 3,000 years, the older the ossuaries were the smaller the
skulls within them. Beyond that epoch, on the other hand, progress was reversed
and thenceforward the further one went back into the past, the bigger was the
capacity of the skulls, and the larger therefore were the brains which they had
held.

The very largest were found among the
debris, somewhat scanty to be sure, found on the surface of the layer of silt.
The conscientious examination of these venerable remains admitted of no doubt
that the men living at that distant epoch had a cerebral development far
superior to that of their successors – including the very contemporaries of
Zartog Sofr. So that, during a period of 160 or 170 centuries, there had been
an obvious retrogression, followed by a new ascent.

Disturbed by these strange facts, Sofr
pushed his researches further. The bed of silt was dug through and through; its
thickness showed that at the most moderate computation it could not have taken
less than 15,000 or 20,000 years to form. Beyond, much surprise was felt at the
discovery of the scanty remains of another layer of humus. Then, below that
humus, there was rock, its nature varying from place to place.

But what raised his astonishment to its
height was the discovery of some debris, undoubtedly of human origin, obtained
from these mysterious depths. They were some pieces of bones obviously of human
type, and also some odds and ends of weapons and implements, potsherds,
vestiges of inscriptions in a language unknown, fragments of hard stone
exquisitely worked, some sculptured into statues which were still almost
intact, and some into the remains of delicately worked architecture, and so
forth. Taken together, these discoveries led logically to the conclusion that
about 40,000 years earlier, and thus 20,000 years before the rise – nobody knew
how or where – of the first representatives of contemporary man, human beings
were already living in the same places and had arrived at a high degree of
civilisation.

This was, indeed, the conclusion generally
accepted, though there was at least one dissident.

This dissident was no other than Sofr. To
admit that other races of men, separated from their successors by a gulf of 20,000
years, had at one time peopled the earth, was, to his mind, sheer folly. What
would have become, in that event, of the descendants of ancestors so long
vanished? Rather than welcome so absurd a hypothesis it would be better to suspend
judgment. Although these strange facts were unexplained, it did not follow that
they were inexplicable; sooner or later, they would be interpreted. Until then
it was better to ignore them, and to keep to the following principles, so fully
satisfactory to the reason:

Planetary life might be divided into two
phases: before and during the age of man. During the first the earth, in a
state of perpetual change, was for that very reason unhabitable and
uninhabited. During the second the earth’s crust had gained enough cohesion to
stabilise it. At once, having at last a solid substratum, life had appeared. It
had originated in the simplest forms, and became ever more complicated to reach
its climax in man, its last and most perfect expression. Hardly had he appeared
upon earth than he at once began his endless ascent. At a slow but sure pace he
was on his way towards his goal, the perfect knowledge and the absolute
domination of the universe...

Borne away by the heat of his convictions,
Sofr had gone past his house. He turned round fuming.

‘What!’ he said to himself, ‘to admit that
man – 40,000 years ago! – had reached a civilisation comparable with – if not
superior to – that which we enjoy today? That its knowledge and achievements
have vanished, without leaving the slightest trace, so completely that their
descendants had to start right at the beginning, as if they were the pioneers
in a world as yet uninhabited?... But that would be to deny the future, to
announce that our efforts are all in vain, and that all progress is as
precarious and as uncertain as a bubble of foam on the surface of the waves!’

In front of his house he stopped.

‘Upsa ni!... hartchok! (No, indeed no!...),
Andant mir’ hoë spha!... (man is the master of things...)’ –he murmured as he
opened the door.

When the Zartog was somewhat rested, he
lunched with a good appetite, then stretched himself out for his daily siesta.
But the questions over which he had been pondering as he was coming home still
obsessed him and drove away sleep.

Greatly as he wished to demonstrate the
complete unity of nature’s methods, he had too critical a mind to fail to
realise how weak his system was when it touched on the problem of man’s origin
and development. To adapt the facts to agree with a foregone conclusion, that
is one way of convincing others, but not of convincing oneself.

If instead of being a savant, a most
eminent zartog, Sofr had been classed among the illiterates he would have been
less embarrassed. The people, in fact, without wasting their time in deep
reflections, were content to accept with their eyes closed the ancient legend
which from time immemorial had been handed down from father to son. Explaining
one mystery by another, they had ascribed the origin of man to the intervention
of a Higher Will. There was a time when that extra-terrestrial power had
created out of nothing Hedom and Hiva, the first man and first woman, whose
descendants had populated the earth. After that everything followed quite
simply.

Too simply! As Sofr reflected. When you have
given up trying to understand something, it is only too easy to bring in the
intervention of a deity. But that makes it useless to look for an answer to the
riddles of the universe, for no sooner are the questions asked than they are
suppressed.

If only that legend had even the semblance
of a serious basis!... But it was founded upon nothing. It was only a
tradition, born in the epochs of ignorance, and thence transmitted from age to
age. As for that name ‘Hedom’! Where did that strange vocable come from, for it
did not seem to belong to the language of the Andart’-Iten-Schu?

Confronted only with that trifling
philological difficulty countless savants had worn themselves out unable to
find any satisfactory answer... All nonsense that was, unworthy of a zartog’s
attention.

Sofr was still agitated as he went into his
garden. Still, this was the hour when he usually did so. The setting sun shed a
less scorching heat over the earth, and a warm breeze was beginning to blow in
from the Spone-Schu. The Zartog wandered along the paths in the shadow of the
trees whose trembling leaves murmured in the wind from the open sea, and little
by little his nerves regained their accustomed calm. He was at last able to
shake off these troublesome thoughts and to enjoy the open air, to feel an
interest in the fruits which formed the wealth of his garden, and in the
flowers, its ornaments.

His chance footsteps bringing him back
towards the house, he stopped on the edge of a deep excavation in which were
scattered a number of tools. There, before long, would be laid the foundations
of a new building which would double the size of his laboratory. But on this
general holiday the workers had abandoned their task, and had gone off to enjoy
themselves.

Sofr was rather casually estimating the
extent of the work already done and still remaining to do when in the shadows
of the excavation a shining point attracted his gaze. Interested, he went down
into the depths of the hole, and freed a strange-looking object from the earth
which partly covered it.

Returned to the daylight, the Zartog
examined his find. It was a sort of container, constructed of some unknown
metal of a greyish colour and a granular texture, and whose brightness had been
dimmed by its long stay in the ground. At one-third of its length, a crack
showed that the case consisted of two parts one inside the other. He tried to
open it.

At his first attempt the metal,
disintegrated by time, fell into dust and revealed a second object which it
contained.

The material of which this object was
formed was as great a novelty for the Zartog as the metal which had hitherto
protected it. It was a roll of sheets superimposed and covered with strange
signs, whose regularity indicated that they were written characters of an
unfamiliar type. Sofr had never seen anything like them or even distantly
resembling them.

Trembling with emotion, the Zartog hurried
to shut himself in his laboratory. After carefully spreading out the precious
document he began to study it.

Yes, it was indeed writing, nothing could
be more certain than that. But it was no less certain that this writing
resembled none of those which, since the beginning of historic time, had been
used anywhere on the surface of the earth.

Whence came that document? What did it
signify? Such were the two questions which at once confronted Sofr’s mind.

To reply to the first he had of course to
be able to reply to the second. So it was first a question of reading and then
of translating – for it could be affirmed
a priori
that the language in
which this document was written was as unknown as its writing.

Would that be impossible? The Zartog Sofr
did not think so. Without further delay he set feverishly to work.

The work lasted long, very long, for whole
years. Sofr did not give up. Without letting himself get discouraged, he
continued his methodical study of the mysterious document, advancing step by
step towards the light. At last the day came when he grasped the key to this undecipherable
riddle, the day when, though still with much hesitation and more trouble, he
could translate it into the tongue of the Men-of-the-Four-Seas.

And when
that day came, Zartog Sofr-Ai-Sr read what follows:

I date the
opening of my narrative in this way although it was really drawn up much more
recently and in very different surroundings. But in such a matter order is to
my mind imperiously necessary, and for this reason I have adopted the form of a
‘journal’ written from day to day.

Thus it is May
24th that opens the narration of those frightful happenings which I propose to
describe for the enlightenment of those who come after me – if indeed mankind
is still entitled to count on any future whatever.

In what language
shall I write? In English or in Spanish, which I speak fluently? No! I shall
write in the language of my own country: in French.

That day, May
24th, I had invited a few friends to my villa in Rosario.

Rosario is or
rather was a Mexican town, on the shore of the Pacific, a little to the south
of the Gulf of California. About ten years previously I had settled there to
direct the exploitation of a silver-mine which I owned. My affairs had gone
surprisingly well. I was rich, very rich indeed – that word makes me laugh
today! – and I was intending before long to go back to my own country, France.

My villa, a very
luxurious one, was situated on the highest point of a large garden which sloped
down towards the sea and ended abruptly in a steep cliff, over a hundred yards
high. To its rear the ground rose still further, and by using the zig-zag roads
we could reach the crest of the mountains at a height of more than 1,500 yards.
It was a very pleasant run - I had often climbed it in my car, a fine powerful
open car of thirty-five horse-power, one of the best French makes.

I had been living
at Rosario with my son Jean, a fine lad of twenty, when, on the death of some
relatives distant by blood but near to my heart I welcomed their daughter
Hélène, an orphan totally unprovided for. Since then five years had elapsed. My
son Jean was now twenty-five and my ward Hélène twenty; in my secret heart I
destined them for one another.

Our wants were
attended to by a valet, Germain, by Modeste Simonat, an expert chauffeur, and
by two servants Edith and Mary, the daughters of my gardener George Raleigh and
his wife Anna.

That day, May
24th, there were eight of us sitting round my table, in the light of lamps fed
by electrogenic groups installed in the garden. In addition to the master of
the house, his son, and his ward, there were five others, three belonging to
the Anglo-Saxon race and two to the Mexican peoples.

Dr Bathurst
figured among the former and Dr Moreno among the latter. Both were savants in
the broadest acceptance of the word, but this did not keep them from being very
seldom in agreement. At heart they were splendid fellows and the best friends
in the world.

The two other
Anglo-Saxons were Williamson, the owner of an important fishery in Rosario; and
Rowling, an enterprising businessman who had founded near the town a number of
market gardens from which he was reaping a rich fortune.