THE DEMOISELLE (3)
By:
November 6, 2024
In Raymond Roussel’s 1914 proto-sf novel Locus Solus, Professor Canterel takes visitors on a tour of the so-rational-they’re-crazy inventions to be found on the titular estate. In this excerpt, translated by HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn, we discover a flying mechanism programmed to create a truly outré work of art.
Having allowed us sufficient time for a thorough examination of the demoiselle, our group followed Canterel as he retraced his steps, and a few seconds later we were all positioned as before at the edge of the cord, which we had stepped back over.
Soon the sound of a faint shock attracted our gaze towards the underside of the hovering device; the gray washer and the blue washer, having been thrust together rapidly by the rod, was now also held firmly in place by the “claw.” The instant the two washers met, the brown tooth over which the apparatus floated — obeying some mysterious magnetic attraction — flew up and adhered to the blue washer. The collision of washer with washer, and tooth with washer, happened in such rapid conjunction that one’s ear could only detect a single sound.
A moment later, a beam of light emanated from the lens, which, having suddenly completed a quarter-turn pivoting on the axis of its horizontal diameter, now cut perpendicularly the light-beam (following a downward oblique) emitted by the mirror pointed to the south.
The result of this maneuver? The two rays, passing through the special glass, were now concentrated powerfully on the entire area of the yellow substance spread over the circular dish suspended beneath the aerostat; some of the fine lower cords of the net streaked this sudden shimmer with nearly imperceptible shadows. Under the influence of the intense heat thus produced, the ocher material apparently — because the balloon gradually bulged — released a light gas that penetrated into the balloon via its flared opening. Soon there was sufficient upward force to lift the entire apparatus, which gently leapt into the air, while the lens, making another quarter-turn in the same direction, ceased to concentrate the solar rays upon the yellow paste, which cooled off.
The wind had shifted, while we’d stood behind the barrier cord, and the demoiselle was carried back towards the tooth-painting; but its return trip was made at a fairly wide angle vis-à-vis its original trip, and it was towards the darkest corner of the crypt where the old soldier slumbered that the apparatus was directed.
Underneath, as the flight progressed, one of its claws extended itself — thanks to an internal needle that descended half a centimeter.
Suddenly the balloon deflated noticeably, and the device, as it descended, settled its two un-extended claws onto an array of dark teeth used to depict one of the banks of the underground pond, while the recently extended needle touched down on a toothless spot in the middle of this unfinished section of the artwork. As the device landed we saw, on the top of the aerostat, the still-gaping valve, which, having leaked the necessary quantity of gas, close noiselessly thanks to its shutter, a simple aluminum disc capable of first hiding then reappearing — by rotating, without changing plane, on a pivot attached to a point on the disc’s extreme edge. By analogical deduction we could now comprehend how the earlier flight we’d seen the paver make had been effected — i.e., by means of the lens and the valve, the respective actions of which had until now escaped our untutored notice. Now, between the three claws the gray washer was pulled apart from the blue washer by the rod, and once again a millimeter of empty space separated the two. Clearly this action had broken the magnetic field, because immediately the nicotine-stained tooth that had been carried there dropped from the blue washer and slotted exactly into an unfinished portion of the mosaic. The newly fitted tooth-piece’s color harmonized perfectly with its neighbors, and the perfect placement of this minuscule addition advanced the overall composition ever so slightly.
The device’s lens made a quarter-turn in the now familiar direction, and the emanations of the ocher substance, heated by solar rays, again inflated the balloon. Up sprang the device into the air, the lens pivoted again, and the extended needle was retracted back into the claw which served as its sheath. The breeze having continued to blow in the same direction, the demoiselle continued its course in a straight line until it reached a solitary and distant pink root, fine and pointed, on which an operation of the device’s valve made her descend and land.
*
At this point, Canterel explained to us how he’d come to invent this strange aerial vehicle.
The professor had pushed the science of meteorology to the very limits of what was possible. Thanks to an array of prodigiously sensitive and precise instruments, he was able to predict — ten days in advance, for a specific locale — the direction and power of each gust of wind as well as the timeline, dimensions, opacity, and rain-potential of even the slightest cloud.
Seeking to demonstrate just how precise his weather predictions had becom, Canterel dreamed up a device capable of creating — through the combined efforts of solar power and wind power — a work of art.
He constructed the demoiselle that we saw before us, and provided it with its five upper chronometers. These were responsible for regulating all the device’s evolutions — the highest opened and closed the valve, while the others, by operating the mirrors and the lens, were tasked with inflating the aerostat’s balloon thanks to the action of solar rays on the yellow substance, which, due to a special preparation, exhaled (whenever its temperature increased) a precise quantity of hydrogen. Naturally the yellow paste was itself one of the professor’s inventions; its balloon-lifting gases were produced only when the device’s lens focused the sun’s bight rays upon it.
Thus it was that, without any outside assistance besides for the sun’s rays, Canterel had developed a device that — by calculating each puff of wind far in advance — could follow a carefully plotted route.
Only then did the professor turn his attention to the question of what medium he ought to employ in crafting his work of art. A device that moved back and forth constantly, he decide, ought to produce… a mosaic. Furthermore, it was crucial that the mosaic’s multicolored fragments should — by means of intermittent magnetization — adhere to and then drop away from the device. Racking his brains, Canterel at last recalled yet another discovery of his — one that had worked perfectly, but for which he’d found no practical use.
What he’d discovered was a curious means of extracting teeth painlessly — thus obviating any need for potentially dangerous and harmful anaesthetics.
[end of excerpt]
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.