The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (71 page)

“You are trespassing,
Sir,” Robert Lecoeur greeted him.

For a moment, Jean stood
transfixed, his jaw hanging. His father could never have been that young! He
looked just like the family portrait, taken when his older brothers were little
and he not even thought of. The anger, however, was familiar.

“Please, Sir!” he
begged. “I must speak with you. I know that you plan to send the meteor into
the ocean. You cannot do this!”

“What are you talking
about?” Robert stared at him. “Why should I wish to lose all that gold?”

“I . . . I don’t
understand,” Jean stammered. “Aren’t you planning to buy mining stock and
resell it at exorbitant rates when the meteor is lost?”

Robert drew himself up
proudly. “I have no such intention,” he said stiffly. “My godson, Zéphyrin, is
the owner of the meteor. I have a responsibility to protect his property.”

“And you aren’t worried
that it will be taken from you by some government?” Jean asked.

“I have spent my life
learning how to keep money out of the hands of the government,” his father
responded. “I shall do the same for M. Xirdal, the owner of this land and the
meteor.”

Jean gave a great sigh
of relief. “Yes, yes!” he grabbed his father’s hand and shook it with
enthusiasm. “You must do that! Don’t forget.”

He spun about and nearly
danced his way back to the town. He had always heard that it was his father who
had agreed to let the meteor sink. But now he would refuse to do so. War would
be averted and the family would still retain their wealth.

As he drew closer to Upernevik,
his steps began to drag.

It shouldn’t have been
that easy. This was the nineteenth of August. The meteor hadn’t been pushed
over the cliff into the ocean until the third of September. What if something
happened between now and then to change his father’s mind?

The thought of spending
several more days in Greenland, in the past depressed Jean considerably.
However, he must be certain that the meteor remained on land so that it could
be divided fairly among the nations. Otherwise all his efforts would be in
vain.

The next few days made
him increasingly alarmed. As the world waited for the meteor to cool enough to
plant a flag on it, gunboats began arriving from every country. Marines from
America, France, Argentina, Japan, Italy, Chile and other nations marched into
the town of Upernevik, all under orders to protect the meteor from thieves and
to preserve the peace.

Jean began to fear that,
instead of stopping the Great War, he had caused it to begin ten years early.
What was he to do? Mr Wells had warned him that tampering with time was
dangerous. But there was no turning back now.

His training in
international banking meant that Jean spoke several languages and was
accustomed to the use of diplomacy. He offered his services as a translator to
the French and American delegations. Although he could produce no references,
he had an air of confidence and authority that impressed the admirals. His
talents were soon apparent to them, as well. For the next twelve days he talked
his throat sore in an attempt to convince the representatives of the various
countries that the meteor should be put in a trust and administered by an
international council, such as the one already meeting in Washington.

“Think how much goodwill
you would earn,” he pleaded, “if each nation used a share of the gold to set up
an institute for the eradication of disease or to promote scientific research?”

His conviction impressed
the various representatives enough that telegraph messages began flying back to
capital cities with his proposal. The conference in Washington was disposed to
agree to it. Jean had some hope that his efforts were succeeding. Then, on the
second of September, came a shocking announcement.

“The meteor is moving!
It is heading for the cliff!” “No!” jean cried. “It can’t be!”

Unlike the rest of the
observers, he knew what was causing the sudden movement. Zéphyrin Xirdal had
activated his machine again and was pushing the meteor to its doom. But why? He
had always assumed that the plan had been totally his father’s. What could have
changed his mind?

Arriving at the hut,
Jean heard the whir and clatter of Xirdal’s machine. He pounded on the door.

“Let me in!” he shouted.
“You must stop! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

The door remained shut.
Jean looked about for a way in.

On one side of the hut
was a crude window. It only took a moment to shatter it and carefully climb in.

“You again!” Robert
Lecoeur exclaimed. “Zéphyrin, it’s that madman I told you of. The one who
thought we were going to destroy the meteor. The one who gave me the idea to
buy up the mining stock first.”

The inventor looked at
Jean calmly. “If he knew that before we did, he’s not mad but gifted with
amazing foresight. Tell me, Monsieur, how did you know I would decide to get
rid of it? I only made up my mind when I saw how unhappy those two Americans
were. They couldn’t be married as long as the meteor was a source of dispute
between their families.”

Jean had no time to
fabricate a lie.

“I know because I have
seen the result of your action,” he said. “You and my . . . M. Lecoeur become
tremendously wealthy since you alone controlled, that is, will control the gold
market. You upset the economic balance of the planet. Monsieur Lecoeur, if you
allow this to happen there will be a war the like of which the earth has never
seen. Philippe and Marc will both be killed in it.”

“What?” Robert Lecoeur
went pale at the mention of his sons. “How do you know about my boys? What
madness is this?”

“I know it sounds
insane,” Jean was weeping. “But you must believe me; I’ve seen it.”

Zéphyrin stared at Jean
for a long time. He hadn’t much experience of emotions but he recognized the
passion in the man before him. He looked at Robert Lecoeur.

Robert patted Jean
gingerly on the shoulder.

“There, there,” he said.
“Perhaps you have had some sort of vision, but there’s no reason to think it
will come true.”

Jean raised his head and
gazed into his father’s eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “It
will. I am your third son, Jean, named after your grandfather. I have come back
in time to save the lives of my brothers and millions more. Only leave the
meteor as it is. You can still make money from it. Your lives won’t change. I
beg you. Please!”

Zéphyrin Xirdal
considered a moment, then turned around and twiddled knobs on his machine. The
whirring slowed and then stopped.

“Zéphyrin!” Robert
cried. “You can’t do that now. It will ruin us! My gold mine stocks will be
worthless! This man is clearly a saboteur, sent to thwart us.”

He rounded on Jean.

“Speak up, young man! Who sent you?”

One by one the lights
went out on the machine. Jean felt a surge of joy.

“Father,” he said. “I’m . . .”

He vanished.

Jean had neglected to
learn the first rule of time travel: never do anything that might prevent your
own birth.

Herbert Wells thought he
heard someone at the door. When he opened it, no one was there. The paper was
on the stoop. He bent and picked it up, glancing at the headlines. Crown Prince
Edward had just become engaged to a princess of Greenland. The writer seemed
delighted that the matter was settled. There had been talk of marrying him to
the Grand Duchess Anastasia but the relationship was too close, especially with
the spectre of haemophilia in the family. She had made do with a duke from
Austria-Hungary.

Wells sniffed in
disgust. Royalty! They seemed to be taking over the earth. It was all because
of that damned meteor. With all the fancy talk about doing good with the gold,
it had only made the rich, richer and the powerful, more powerful. Countries
that had once freed themselves from oppression were now colonies again. There
was even talk in the United States of rejoining the Empire for the trade
advantages.

He sighed. It would have
been better for everyone if the thing had fallen to the bottom of the ocean.

Verne’s other late novel
of interest is
Le Secret de Wilhelm Storitz,
serialized
in 1910, but not translated (unless later research proves otherwise) until
1963. The novel had been completed in 1904 but Michel Verne thought it paled in
comparison to H. G. Wells’s
The Invisible Man
(1897) and so delayed its
publication. Once again Verne considered man’s misuse of science, in this case
a somewhat archaic creation of an elixir of invisibility. Here Michel Pagel
explores the links between Verne’s and Wells’s stories.

Spremberg, 18 May 1754

My dearest son,

I take advantage of a
respite in my fever to write you these lines. By the time you read them, I will
have succumbed to the illness which is eating me away. I cannot tell you how
much it pains me to leave this world when, far from being an old man, I could
still have served Germany through my work. But it is God’s will, and since I
have enjoyed a full and pleasant life, I suppose that I should not complain. My
last months in particular have counted among the happiest and most eventful of
my whole life, and this thanks to a marvellous discovery which I wish to
bequeath to you today. Indeed, who else but you, my beloved Wilhelm, whose
character is so akin to mine, who else would know how to make the most
profitable use of it?

As much as my pride
suffers to admit it, I cannot claim this discovery for myself, although it does
owe certain of its refinements to me. The manner in which I came into
possession of the original formula is so extraordinary that I must recount it
to you in a few short words.

This all came about a
little more than a year ago, when you had just settled in Hungary. One winter’s
evening I was returning to the château after having dined with Dr Hebäcker,
when I surprised a burglar in the dining room. At least, I believed him to be a
burglar. This strangely-dressed man entreated me, first in English, then in a
stumbling German, not to be afraid of him. Although he did not appear menacing,
I was unwilling to take any risk: the poker from the fireplace was within my
reach and I dealt him a vigorous blow to the head. Luckily, he was only
stunned.

I was on the brink of
ringing for Hermann so that he could go and fetch the police when I discovered
the incredible sight which my initial surprise had concealed from me:

there, in a corner of
the dining room, sat an enormous machine whose function I could not guess at.
It had evidently been conceived to carry a man, for a padded seat occupied its
centre. Apart from that, it posed a complete mystery — and no less mysterious
was the means by which the stranger could have brought it here, for it
possessed no wheels and was far too heavy for a single man to lift. I’ll spare
you the preposterous story he later told me in order to justify his presence
here: this man was either a liar or a madman, maybe even both.

Nonetheless he was a
scholar; I was convinced of this by my search of the baggage strapped to his
machine. Aside from several changes of clothing, just as excessive as those he
was wearing, there were predominantly books on science and philosophy — some
were known to me, others were not — and three large manuscript notebooks full
of diagrams and mathematical or chemical equations. These latter above all
caught my attention, for, although myself a chemist — plague upon modesty! — a
brilliant chemist, I failed to surmise what kind of experiment they concerned.

My curiosity aroused, I
set about returning my visitor to consciousness, if not to reason, with the aim
of questioning him. He never revealed his true name to me. “Call me Ishmael”,
was all I could gain from him, and the tone he used suggested that this was a
quip beyond my understanding, something which contributed to the annoyance he
quickly provoked in me.