The Navigators of Space Read online

  “He’ll never be able to talk!”

  My mother looks at me compassionately, convinced that I am a little simple-minded. The domestics and farmhands are no longer even curious about the little violet monster; the Friesian woman returned to her homeland some time ago. As for my sister, who is two years old, she is playing beside me, and I have a profound affection for her.

  When breakfast is over, my father goes off to the fields with the farmhands, and my mother makes a start on her daily chores. I follow her into the farmyard. The animals come to her. I watch them with interest; I like them. The other Kingdom is, however, moving all around us, and captivates me more; it is a mysterious domain known to me alone.

  A few forms are extended over the brown earth; they move, they stop, they vibrate at ground level. There are several sorts, different in shape, in their movement, and especially in the arrangement, design and color of the linear features they display. These features constitute, in fact, the major part of their being; even as a child, I can take account of them very well. While the bulk of their form is dull and dark, the lines are almost always sparkling. They form exceedingly complicated networks, emanating from centers, radiating outwards until they become blurred and fade away. Their hues are innumerable, their cures infinite; those shades vary even in a single line—as, to a lesser extent, does their form.

  As a whole, each creature is made up of a somewhat irregular but quite distinct border, by centers of radiation, and by multicolored lines that intersect profusely. When it moves, the lines quiver and oscillate, and the centers contract and dilate, while the outline scarcely varies.

  All this I can already see quite well, although I am incapable of defining it; an adorable charm possesses me as I contemplate the Moedigen.36 One of them, a colossus ten meters long and almost as broad, passes slowly through the farmyard and disappears. That one, with a few stripes as broad as cables and centers as large as an eagle’s wing, interests me greatly, and almost frightens me. I consider following it momentarily, but others attract my attention. They are very various in size; some do not exceed the length of our smallest insects, while I have seen others more than 30 meters long. They advance over the surface of the ground, as if solidly attached to it. When a material object—a wall or a house—presents itself, they move over it by molding themselves to its surface, always without any significant modification of their shape—but when the obstacle is living matter, or matter that was once alive, they pass directly through it. Thus, I have seen them a thousand times over emerging from a tree, or beneath the feet of an animal or a man. They can also pass through water, but prefer to remain on its surface.

  These terrestrial Moedigen are not the only intangible beings. There is an aerial population of a marvelous splendor, subtlety and variety, incomparably spectacular, compared with which the most beautiful birds are dull, slow and ponderous. Here too, there is an outline and linear features, but the background is not dark; it is strangely luminous, sparkling like sunlight, and the lines stand out as vibrant veins, the centers throbbing violently. The Vuren,37 as I call them, are more irregular in form than the terrestrial Moedigen, and generally navigate with the aid of rhythmic dispositions, increases and decreases of which, in my ignorance, I cannot keep track, and which confuse my imagination.

  Meanwhile, I am making my way through a recently-mown meadow; a conflict between one Moedig and another attracts my attention. These conflicts are frequent; they interest me passionately. Sometimes, there is a battle between equals; more often, a strong individual attacks a weak one—the weaker one is not necessarily the smaller. In the present instance, the weaker, after a brief defense, is put to flight, hotly pursued by the aggressor. In spite of the speed at which they are traveling, I follow them and contrive not to lose sight of them before the moment when the fight is resumed. They hurl themselves at one another, solid to one another—hard, even rigid. As they collide, their lines glow, heading toward the point of impact, their centers fade and shrink.

  At first, the struggle is fairly equal, the weaker one deploying the more intense energy, even succeeding in forcing a truce from its enemy. It takes advantage of that to flee again, but is rapidly overtaken, forcefully attacked and finally gripped—which is to say, maintained in an indentation in the other’s outline. That is exactly what it was trying to avoid, in responding to the stronger one’s thrusts with less forceful but more rapid thrusts of its own. Now, I can see all its lines shivering and its centers throbbing desperately. Gradually, the lines fade and thin out, the centers blurring. After a few minutes, it is set free; it draws away slowly, dull and debilitated. Its antagonist, by contrast, is gleaming more brightly; its lines are more colourful, its centers clearer and more active.

  The battle has impressed me profoundly; I think about it, comparing it to the contests I have seen between our animals and their smaller kin; I am vaguely aware that the Moedigen, on the whole, do not kill one another—or very rarely—and that victors are content to absorb strength at the expense of the vanquished.

  The morning wears on; it is nearly 8 a.m.; the school at Zwartendam is about to open. I run back to the farm to get my books—and here I am among my peers, none of whom is aware of the profound mysteries that are happening around them, and none of whom has the vaguest idea of the living creatures through which all human beings pass, and which pass through human beings, without any indication of that mutual penetration.

  I am a very poor student. My handwriting is no more than a hasty scrawl, formless and illegible; my speech remains incomprehensible; my distraction is manifest. The master continually shouts: “Karel Ondereet, have you finished watching the airborne flies yet?”

  Alas, my dear master, it’s true that I watch the airborne flies, but how much more interested I am in the mysterious Vuren passing through the room! And what strange sentiments obsess my childish soul in observing everyone’s blindness—especially yours, earnest shepherd of minds!

  V.

  The most painful phase of my life was between the ages of 12 and 18. Initially, my parents tried to send me to secondary school; I found nothing there but misery and frustration.

  At the cost of exhausting labor, I succeeded in expressing the most commonplace things in a vaguely comprehensible fashion. Slowing my speech down considerably, I enunciated the syllables awkwardly and with the intonation of the deaf. As soon as anything complicated came up, though, my speech resumed its fatal speed, and no one could any longer follow what I was saying, so I could not make my progress manifest orally.

  On the other hand, my handwriting was atrocious; my letters sprawled over one another and, in my impatience, I omitted syllables and whole words; it was monstrous gibberish. In any case, to me, writing was a torture perhaps even more intolerable than speech, of an asphyxiating ponderousness and slowness. If, sometimes, by dint of effort and much sweat, I succeeded in starting an assignment, I soon ran out of strength and patience and felt faint. Then I preferred my masters’ remonstrations and my father’s fury, punishments and privations to the horrid labor.

  I was, therefore, almost totally deprived of means of expression; already an object of ridicule because of my thinness and bizarre complexion, and my strange eyes, I was also taken for some kind of idiot. It was necessary to take me out of school, and become resigned to making me a farm-laborer.

  On the day when my father decided to renounce all hope, he said to me, with an unaccustomed gentleness: “You can see, my poor boy, that I’ve done my duty—everything I can! Never reproach me for your fate!”

  I was profoundly moved; I wept profusely; I had never felt my isolation in the midst of humankind so bitterly. I dared to embrace my father tenderly, and murmured: “It’s not true that I’m an imbecile, though!”

  In fact, I felt superior to those who had been my fellow pupils. For some time, my intelligence had been developing remarkably. I read, I understood, I deduced, and I had immense subjects of meditation—far more than other human beings—in the universe
that was visible to me alone.

  My father could not make out what I said, but he was softened by my embrace. “Poor boy!” he said.

  I looked at him. I was in frightful distress, knowing only too well that the gulf between us would never be bridged. My mother, thanks to the intuition of love, saw at that time that I was not inferior to other boys of my own age; she looked at me tenderly, and said naïve and sweet things to me from the bottom of her heart, but I was condemned nonetheless to cease my studies.

  Because of my weak muscular strength, I was put in charge of the sheep and cattle. I acquitted myself marvelously; I had no need of a dog to look after the flock and the dairy herd, and no colt or stallion was as agile as me.

  From 14 to 17, therefore, I lived the solitary life of a herdsman. It suited me better than any other. Free to observe and contemplate, and also to do a certain amount of reading, my brain never ceased to develop. I compared the elements of the double creation I had before my eyes incessantly, extracting therefrom ideas as to the constitution of the universe, vaguely sketching hypotheses and theories. Although it is true that my thoughts were not perfectly ordered at that time, not forming any lucid system—for they were adolescent thoughts, uncoordinated, impatient and enthusiastic—they were nevertheless original and fecund. That their value depended exclusively on my unique constitution I shall certainly not deny, but they did not derive all their force therefrom. Without the slightest vanity, I think I may say that they surpassed considerably, in subtlety as in logic, those of ordinary young people.

  They alone brought a certain consolation to my sad life as a semi-pariah, devoid of companions or any real communication with those around me, even my adorable mother.

  At 17, life became quite unbearable to me. I was weary of dreaming, weary of vegetating on a mental desert island. I fell into idleness and ennui. I sat motionless for long hours, disinterested in the entire world, inattentive to everything that was happening in my family. What good did it do me to know about things more marvelous than other men knew, since that knowledge was bound to die with me? What was the mystery of living organisms to me, or even the duality of the two vital systems that passed through one another without knowing it? These things might have intoxicated me, filling me with enthusiasm and excitement, if I had some way of communicating them or sharing them—but what could I do? Vain and sterile, absurd and miserable, they contributed instead to my perpetual psychic quarantine.

  Several times, I thought of writing down some of my observations, to make a permanent record anyway, even at the cost of continual effort—but since I had left school I had abandoned the pen permanently, and I was already so poor a scrivener that I barely knew how to trace, with difficulty, the 26 letters of the alphabet. If I had still had any hope, perhaps I would have persisted—but who would take my wretched efforts seriously? Where was the reader who would not think me mad? Where was the sage who would not treat me with disdain or irony? What was the point, then, in devoting myself to that vain task, that irritating torture, not so very different from that of an ordinary man obliged to engrave his thoughts on marble tablets with a coarse chisel and a titanic hammer? My writing would have to be a kind of shorthand, so far as I was concerned—and a shorthand even more rapid than usual!

  I did not have the courage to write, therefore—and yet, I longed fervently for something to happen, some strange and fortunate eventuality. It seemed to me that there must exist, in some corner of the world, impartial, lucid, inquiring minds capable of studying me, of understanding me, or of extracting my great secret from me and communicating it to others—but where were these men? What hope did I have of ever meeting them?

  And I fell back into a vast melancholy, into the desire for immobility and annihilation. For an entire autumn, I despaired of the Universe. I languished in a vegetative state, from which I only emerged to utter long groans, followed by painful protests.

  I became even thinner, to the point of becoming fantastic. The people of the village called me, ironically, Den Heyligen Gheest—the Holy Ghost. My silhouette was as tremulous as those of young poplars, as slight as a shadow—and I attained, along with that, the stature of a giant.

  Slowly, I formulated a plan. Since my life was sacrificed, since none of my days was joyful and everything was darkness and bitterness to me, why stagnate in inaction? Even if no mind did exist that could respond to mine, was it not, at least, worth the effort of making sure? Was it not, at least, worth leaving my bleak homeland to go in search of scientists and philosophers in the big cities? Was I not an object of curiosity in myself? Even before calling attention to my extra-human knowledge, could I not excite a desire to study my person? Were not the physical attributes of my being worthy of analysis in themselves: my sight, and the extreme agility of my movements, and the peculiarity of my nutrition.

  The more I thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed to hope, and the firmer my resolve became. When the day arrived that it became unbreakable, I confided in my parents. Neither of them understood it very well, but they both ended up yielding to my repeated insistence; I obtained permission to go to Amsterdam, free to return if things did not work out for me.

  I left the next morning.

  VI.

  The distance from Zwartendam to Amsterdam is about 100 kilometers. I covered that distance easily in two hours, without any other incident than the extreme surprise of passers-by on seeing me run at such a speed, and a few crowds gathering on the edges of little villages and larger towns that I shorted. To ascertain my route I spoke to solitary old men on two or three occasions; my sense of direction, which is excellent, did the rest.

  It was about 9 a.m. when I reached Amsterdam. I went into the city resolutely, going along the beautiful canals where merchant fleets are quietly maintained. I did not attract as much attention as I had feared. I walked quickly, in the midst of busy people, enduring the occasional gibes of a few street-urchins. I decided, however, not to pause. I had gone back and forth through the city in every direction before I finally resolved to go into an inn on one of the quays of the Heerengracht.

  It was a pleasant spot; the magnificent canal extended, full of life, between shady rows of trees, and among the Moedigen that I saw circulating along its banks, I thought I perceived a new species. After some indecision, I crossed the threshold of the inn and, addressing the proprietor as slowly as I could, I asked him if he would be so kind as to direct me to a hospital.

  The landlord looked at me with amazement, suspicion and curiosity, took his stout pipe out of his mouth and put it back again several times, and eventually said: “You’re from the colonies, no doubt?”

  As there was no point in contradicting him, I replied: “Indeed!”

  He seemed delighted with his perspicacity, and asked me another question. “Perhaps you come from that part of Borneo that no one has ever been able to get into?”

  “Exactly.”

  I had spoken too rapidly; is eyes widened.

  “Ex-act-ly!” I repeated, more slowly.

  “You’re having difficulty speaking Dutch, aren’t you? So it’s a hospital you want? Presumably, you’re ill?”

  “Yes.”

  Customers were drawing nearer. The rumor was already going round that I was a cannibal from Borneo; even so, they looked at me with far more curiosity than antipathy. People were coming in from the street. I became nervous and anxious. Nevertheless, I put on a brave face, coughed, and added: “I’m very ill.”

  “It’s the same with monkeys from that region,” said a fat man, benevolently. “The Netherlands kill them!”

  “What funny skin!” said another.

  “And how does he see?” asked a third, pointing to my eyes.

  The circle drew closer, enveloping me with 100 curious stares—and newcomers were still coming into the room.

  “How tall he is!”

  It was true that I was a head taller than the tallest of them.

  “And thin!”

  “Can
nibalism doesn’t seem to be very nutritious!”

  Not all the voices were malevolent. A few sympathetic individuals defended me: “Don’t crowd him like that—he’s ill!”

  “Come on, friend, be brave!” said the fat man, observing my nervousness. “I’ll take you to a hospital myself!”

  He took me by the arm; taking it upon himself to clear a way through the crowd, shouting: “Make way for an invalid!”

  Dutch crowds are not very aggressive; they let us pass, but went with us. We went along the canal, followed by a compact multitude, and people called out: “It’s a cannibal from Borneo!”

  Finally, we reached a hospital. It was visiting time. I was taken to an intern, a young man with blue-tinted spectacles, who greeted me sulkily.

  “He’s a savage from the colonies,” my companion told him.

  “What do you mean, a savage?” the intern exclaimed. He took off his spectacles to look at me. Surprise immobilized him momentarily. “Can you see?” he asked me, abruptly.

  “I can see quite well.”

  I had spoken too rapidly. “It’s his accent!” said the fat man, proudly. “Again, friend!”

  I repeated the words, and made myself understood.

  “Those aren’t human eyes,” the student murmured. “And that skin-color! Is that the color of your race?”

  Making a terrible effort to speak slowly, I said: “I’ve come to be examined by a scientist.”

  “So you aren’t ill?”

  “No.”

  “And you’re from Borneo?”