Gregory Benford - Paris Conquers All

VIP免费

2024-11-19 1 0 65.09KB 16 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

GREGORY BENFORD and DAVID BRIN

PARIS CONQUERS ALL

The second of our War of the Worlds stories is the third story in the issue by

columnist. Gregory Benford collaborated with award-winner David Brin in this

tale of yet another writer, Jules Verne, and his encounter with the Martians.

I commence this account with a prosaic stroll at eventide -- a saunter down

the

avenues of la Ville Lumiere, during which the ordinary swiftly gave way to the

extraordinary. I was in Paris to consult with my publisher, as well as to

visit

old companions and partake of the exquisite cuisine, which my provincial home

Amiens cannot boast. Though I am now a gentleman of advanced age, nearing my

70th year, I am still quite able to favor the savories, and it remains a treat

to survey the lovely demoiselles as they exhibit the latest fashions on the

boulevards, enticing smitten young men and breaking their hearts at the same

time.

I had come to town that day believing -- as did most others -- that there

still

remained weeks, or days at least, before the alien terror ravaging southern

France finally reached the valley of the Seine. Ile de France would be

defended

at all costs, we were assured. So it came to pass that, tricked by this false

complaisance, I was in the capital the very afternoon that the crisis struck.

Paris! It still shone as the most splendid exemplar of our progressive age --

all the more so in that troubled hour, as tense anxiety seemed only to add to

the city's loveliness -- shimmering at night with both gas and electric

lights,

and humming by day with new electric trams, whose marvelous wires crisscrossed

above the avenues like gossamer heralds of a new era.

I had begun here long ago as a young attorney, having followed into my

father's

profession. Yet that same head of our family had also accepted my urge to

strike

out on a literary road, in the theater and later down expansive voyages of

prose. "Drink your fill of Paris, my son!" the good man said, seeing me off

from

the Nantes railway station. "Devour these wondrous times. Your senses are

keen.

Share your insights. The world will change because of it."

Without such help and support, would I ever have found within myself the will,

the daring, to explore the many pathways of the future, with all their wonders

and perils? Ever since the Martian invasion began, I had found myself

reflecting

on an extraordinary life filled with such good fortune, especially now that

all

human luck seemed about to be revoked. Now, with terror looming from the south

and west, would it all soon come to nought? All that I had achieved?

Everything

humanity had accomplished, after so many centuries climbing upward from

ignorance?

It was in such an uncharacteristically dour mood that I strolled in the

company

of M. Beauchamp, a gentleman scientist, that pale afternoon less than an hour

before I had my first contact with the horrible Martian machines. Naturally, I

had been following the eye-witness accounts which first told of plunging

fireballs, striking the Earth with violence that sent gouts of soil and rock

spitting upward, like miniature versions of the outburst at Krakatau. These

impacts had soon proved to be far more than mere meteoritic phenomena, since

there soon emerged, like insects from a subterranean lair, three-legged beings

bearing incredible malevolence toward the life of this planet. Riding gigantic

tripod mechanisms, these unwelcome guests soon set forth with one sole purpose

in mind -- destructive conquest!

The ensuing carnage, the raking fire, the sweeping flames -- none of these

horrors had yet reached the fair country above the river Loire . . . not yet.

But reports all too vividly told of villages trampled, farmlands seared black,

and hordes of refugees cut down as they fled.

Invasion. The word came to mind all too easily remembered. We of northern

France knew the pain just twenty-eight years back, when Sedan fell and this

sweet land trembled under an attacker's boot. Several Paris quarters still

bear

scars where Prussian firing squads tore moonlike craters out of plaster walls,

mingling there the ochre life blood of communards, royalists and bourgeois

alike.

Now Paris trembled before advancing powers so malign that, in contrast, those

Prussians of 1870 were like beloved cousins, welcome to town for a picnic!

All of this I pondered while taking leave, with Beauchamp, of the Ecole

Militaire, the national military academy, where a briefing had just been given

to assembled dignitaries, such as ourselves. From the stone portico we gazed

toward the Seine, past the encampment of the Seventeenth Corps of Volunteers,

their tents arrayed across trampled grass and smashed flower beds of the

ironically named Champ-de-Mars. The meadow of the god of war.

Towering over this scene of intense (and ultimately futile) martial activity

stood the tower of M. Eiffel, built for the recent exhibition, that

marvelously

fashioned testimonial to metal and ingenuity . . . and also target of so much

vitriol.

"The public's regard for it may improve with time," I ventured, observing that

Beauchamp's gaze lay fixed on the same magnificent spire.

My companion snorted with derision at the curving steel flanks. "An eyesore,

no enduring value," he countered, and for some time we distracted ourselves

from

more somber thoughts by arguing the relative merits of Eiffel's work, while

turning east to walk toward the Sorbonne. Of late, experiments in the

transmission of radio-tension waves had wrought unexpected pragmatic benefits,

using the great tower as an antenna. I wagered Beauchamp there would be other

advantages, in time.

Alas, even this topic proved no lasting diversion from thoughts of danger to

the

south. Fresh in our minds were reports from the wine districts. The latest

outrage -- that the home of Vouvray was now smashed, trampled and burning.

This

was my favorite of all the crisp, light vintages--better, even, than a fresh

Sancerre. Somehow, that loss seemed to strike home more vividly than dry

casualty counts, already climbing to the millions.

"There must be a method!" I proclaimed, as we approached the domed brilliance

Les Invalides. "There has to be a scientific approach to destroying the

invaders."

"The military is surely doing its best," Beauchamp said.

"Buffoons!"

"But you heard of their losses. The regimants and divisions decimated --"

Beauchamp stuttered. "The army dies for France! For humanity -- of which

France

is surely the best example."

I turned to face him, aware of an acute paradox -- that the greatest martial

mind of all time lay entombed in the domed citadel nearby. Yet even he would

have been helpless before a power that was not of this world.

"I do not condemn the army's courage," I assured.

"Then how can you speak --"

"No no! I condemn their lack of imagination!"

"To defeat the incredible takes --"

"Vision!"

Timidly, for he knew my views, he advanced, "I saw in the Match that the

British

have consulted with the fantasist, Mr. Wells."

To this I could only cock an eye. "He will give them no aid, only imaginings."

"But you just said --"

"Vision is not the same as dreaming."

At that moment the cutting smell of sulfuric acid waited on a breeze from the

reducing works near the river. (Even in the most beautiful of cities, rode

work

has its place.) Beauchamp mistook my expression of disgust for commentary upon

the Englishman, Wells.

"He is quite successful. Many compare him to you."

"An unhappy analogy. His stories do not repose on a scientific basis. I make

use

of physics. He invents."

"In this crisis --"

"I go to the moon in a cannon ball. He goes in an airship, which he constructs

of a metal which does away with the law of gravitation. Ca c'est tres joli! --

but show me this metal. Let him produce it!"

Beauchamp blinked. "I quite agree -- but, then, is not our present science

woefully inadequate to the task at hand -- defending ourselves against

monstrous

invaders?"

We resumed our walk. Leaving behind the crowds paying homage at Napoleon's

Tomb,

we made good progress along rue de Varenne, with the Petite Palais now visible

across the river, just ahead.

"We lag technologically behind these foul beings, that I grant. But only by

perhaps a century or two."

"Oh surely, more than that! To fly between the worlds --"

"Can be accomplished several ways, all within our comprehension, if not our

grasp."

"What of the reports by astronomers of great explosions, seen earlier this

year

on the surface of the distant roddy planet? They now think these were signs of

the Martian invasion fleet being launched. Surely we could not expend such

forces!"

I waved away his objection. "Those are nothing more than I have already

foreseen

in From the Earth to the Moon. which I would remind you I published thirty-

three

years ago, at the conclusion of the American Civil War."

"You think the observers witnessed the belching of great Martian cannon ?"

"Of course! I had to make adjustments, engineering alterations, while

designing

my moon vessel. The shell could not be of steel, like one of Eiffel's bridges.

So I conjectured that the means of making light projectiles of aluminum will

come to pass. These are not basic limitations, you see --" I waved them away -

"but mere details."

The wind had shifted, and with relief I now drew in a heady breath redolent

with

the smells of cookery rising from the city of cuisine. Garlic, roasting

vegetables, the dark aromas of warming meats -- such a contrast with the

terror

which advanced on the city, and on our minds. Along rue St. Grenelle, I

glanced

into one of the innumerable tiny cafes. Worried faces stared moodily at their

reflections in the broad zinc bars, stained by spilled absinthe. Wine coursed

down anxious throats. Murmurs floated on the fitful air.

"So the Martians come by cannon, the workhorse of battle," Beauchamp murmured.

"There are other methods," I allowed.

"Your dirigibles?"

"Come come, Beauchamp! You know well that no air permeates the realm between

the

worlds."

"Then what methods do they employ to maneuver? They fall upon Asia, Africa,

the

Americans, the deserving British -- all with such control, such intricate

planning."

"Rockets! Though perhaps there are flaws in my original cannon ideas --I am

aware that passengers would be squashed to jelly by the firing of such a great

gun -- nothing similar condemns the use of cylinders of slowly exploding

chemicals."

"To steer between planets? Such control!"

"Once the concept is grasped, it is but a matter of ingenuity to bring it to

pass. Within a century, Beauchamp, we shall see rockets of our own rise from

this ponderous planet, into the heavens. I promise you that!"

"Assuming we survive the fortnight," Beauchamp remarked gloomily. "Not to

mention a century."

"To live, we must think. Our thoughts must encompass the entire range of

possibility."

I waved my furled umbrella at the sky, sweeping it around and down rue de

Rennes, toward the southern eminence of Montparnasse. By chance my gaze

followed

the pointing tip -- and so it I was among the first to spy one of the Martian

machines, like a monstrous insect, cresting that ill-fated hill.

There is something in the human species which abhors oddity, the unnatural. We

are double in arms, legs, eyes, ears, even nipples (if I may venture such an

indelicate comparison; but remember, I am a man of science at all times).

Two-ness is fundamental to us, except when Nature dictates singularity -- we

have but one mouth, and one organ of regeneration. Such biological matters are

fundamental. Thus, the instantaneous feelings horror at first sight of the

three-ness of the invaders -- which was apparent even in the external design

their machinery. I need not explain the revulsion to any denizen of our world.

These were alien beings, in the worst sense of the word.

"They have broken through!" I cried. "The front must have collapsed."

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

GREGORYBENFORDandDAVIDBRINPARISCONQUERSALL*ThesecondofourWaroftheWorldsstoriesisthethirdstoryintheis...

展开>> 收起<<

Gregory Benford - Paris Conquers All.pdf

共16页,预览5页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Gregory Benford - Paris Conquers All

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: