Locus Solus Read online

  In the present vicinity of the punner the teeth were densely grouped so as to form a veritable picture, as yet unfinished, by the alteration of their colors alone. The whole represented a warrior drowsing in a dark crypt, sprawled out on the bank of a subterranean pool. A tenuous puff of smoke begotten by the sleeper’s brain showed, as if in a dream, eleven young men half-crouching, stricken with terror inspired by an almost-transparent aerial globe, which traced out a light shadow on the ground enclosing a dead bird and which itself seemed to be the destination of a white dove soaring above it. An ancient book lay closed beside the warrior, lit up faintly by a torch planted upright in the crypt’s floor.

  Yellow and brown predominated in this peculiar mosaic. The other, rarer shades struck vivid and attractive notes. The dove, made of splen­did white teeth, was poised in quick and graceful momentum. Skillfully arranged roots played their part in the warrior’s accoutrement, employed on the one hand in a special red plume adorning a dark hat that had fallen beside the book and on the other in a great crimson cloak fastened by a copper buckle composed of an ingenious assortment of gold caps; a complex amalgamation of blue teeth formed his blue trousers, which disappeared into large boots of black teeth — the soles, much in evidence, consisted of a collection of nut-brown teeth with numerous fillings representing regularly spaced nails.

  At that moment the punner was halted over the left boot.

  Outside the limits of the picture the teeth were lying everywhere in utter confusion, scattered rather thinly without any pictorial effect. Encircling the imaginary boundary, the circumference of which was marked by the teeth furthest from the center, there was an empty zone bounded in turn by a slender cord fixed at wide intervals to the tops of thin pegs several centimeters high. We were all gathered in front of this polygonal barrier.

  Suddenly, of its own accord, the paving beetle rose into the air and, propelled by a gently breeze, made a slow, straight flight of some fifteen to twenty feet, alighting not far from us upon a smoker’s tooth browned by tobacco.

  Beckoning us on, Canterel stepped over the cord, crossed the empty border and approached the aerial device. We all followed him, taking great care not to displace the scattered teeth, whose apparent disorder was undoubtedly the outcome of deep and laborious study. From close up our ears made out a ticking sound coming from the paving beetle as it shimmered in the sun.

  Canterel drew our attention to the various components of the apparatus, sparing no pains to provide us with a wealth of fascinating commentary. Right at the top of the aerostat, left bare by the netting which formed a kind of flat collar at this point, there was an automatic aluminium valve, consisting of a circular opening with a plug, and next to it a little chronometer, whose dial was visible to us. Under the balloon, the slender vertical cords forming the lower part of the net, made entirely of light, fine, red silk, were attached to holes perforated in the very low, straight rim of a round aluminium tray which served as a gondola. This tray, resembling a lid turned upside down, contained an ocher-yellow substance spread out in a thin layer upon its horizontal bottom. The underside of the tray was riveted by its center to the top of a vertical aluminium bar shaped like a narrow cylinder, which formed the main body of the object.

  A long rod, also of aluminium, was fixed to one side of the top of the bar, rising obliquely upward to a point above the circular tray where it terminated in a triple ramification. Each of its three branches held upright at its tip a rather large chronometer backed by a round mirror with the same circumference. The three dials, disregarding one another, looked outward in three divergent directions, whereas the three discs of silvered glass confronted a common central area, facing approximately west, south and east respectively. At that moment the first mirror was catching the sun’s image directly and throwing it full on to the second, which transmitted it to the gondola tray — while the third seemed to have no role to play. Each mirror was attached to its chronometer by four finely cogged rods, separately fixed to the top, bottom, left and right sides of its rim, at the back; in all three cases these rods passed right through the chronometer and projected from the other side on the peripheral edge of the dial, at a diameter slightly less than that of the clockwork.

  By means of a wide variety of backward and forward movements, the rods, set in motion by invisible cogwheels geared to the chronometer’s mechanism, were capable of inclining the mirrors in any direction. The front of each rod consisted of a small metal ball two-thirds-enclosed within a hollow, incomplete sphere fitted to the back of the operative mirror; this mode of attachment made it easy to adjust the reflecting disc in the most varied directions.

  The triple system followed the sun’s course every day from sunrise to sunset. At first, during the morning, the mirror facing east collected all its sparkling beams, but this became stationary after the sun had passed the meridian and the opposite one took over its function. The southward-looking mirror, in operation from dawn to dusk, always reflected second, aiming the radiant effluvia, which one or other of the shining discs nearby incessantly flashed upon it, in a constant direction.

  From the center of the rod with three branches at its tip, there rose a short, straight support dividing almost at once into two curved arms in the form of a semicircle with its horns pointing to the zenith. This semicircle, in the ideal vertical plane of the oblique rod, partially framed a powerful round lens having the same horizontal diameter as itself and secured inside it by two pivots at the tips of the curved arms. The lens was placed precisely in the path of a pencil of light on its second reflection by the furthest mirror and rested parallel to the rays that were flooding over it. A minute chronometer, whose dial adorned the top exterior part of one of the curved arms, had the task of turning the lens at certain very definite times, by means of an artful connection between its movement and the contiguous pivot.

  To ensure the stability of the whole structure, there was a horizontal rod ending in a globular counterpoise, like half a dumb bell, which was screwed into the side of the aluminium bar directly opposite the lens and the mirrors.

  An enormous magnetic needle, seeming to belong to some gigantic compass, traversed the bar at right angles halfway up. Being the same length both sides, its magnetism served to hold the aerial device constant while in flight, in an unchangeable orientation. Its northern point was situated directly above the mirror looking south, whereas its southern spike coincided with the spherical counterpoise in the same way, though at closer range.

  By way of a base there were three small aluminium claws which supported the bottom of the bar; they were quite smooth and curved, resembling miniature feet of a piece of furniture. Each rested its tip on the ground and supported the paving beetle firmly enough, while displaying, right at the bottom of its smoothly bulging curve, the dial of a minute chronometer hardly wider than itself. Halfway up each of the three claws, three thin horizontal nails were firmly fixed so as to converge inward. Their points sank very slightly into the rim of a blue metal disc, which was thus held flat and isolated in space exactly beneath the axis of the bar. A second disc, similar in shape but of light gray-colored metal, was positioned just above the other and about a millimeter away from it. It was suspended by a slender, vertical rod attached by one end to the center of its upper surface and vanishing into the bar. Just above the level of the claws’ attachment, the dial of a final chronometer was mounted at a peripheral point on the very bottom of the bar.

  Having given us time to examine the punner thoroughly, Canterel retraced his steps, followed by our group, and a few moments later we had recrossed the cord and ranged ourselves along it in our original positions.

  Soon our eyes were drawn toward the bottom of the apparatus by the sound of a slight impact: the gray disc, between the three claws, had been thrust down by its rod, quickly joining the other, and now both were pressed tightly together. At the precise moment when they touched the brown tooth lying beneath them left th
e ground and adhered to the back of the blue disc, obeying some mysterious magnetic attraction. To our ears the two collisions appeared simultaneous, making a single, united sound.

  Shortly afterward a flash of light darted from the lens, which had abruptly made a quarter-turn by pivoting on the axis of its horizontal diameter and was now perpendicularly intersecting the oblique, descending path of the light-beam emitted by the mirror pointing south. As a result of this maneuver, the rays passed through the special glass and became powerfully concentrated on the whole area of the yellow substance spread out on the circular tray beneath the aerostat; a few of the delicate lower threads of the netting striped this suddenly glistening expanse with imperceptible shadows. As an effect of the intense heat thus generated, the ocher material must have released a light gas which entered the balloon through its bell-mouthed opening, for the envelope gradually began to swell. The upward force was soon great enough to lift the whole apparatus, which leapt gently into the air — while the lens made another quarter-turn in the same direction and darkened the yellow mixture by ceasing to concentrate the sun’s rays upon it.

  While we were standing beyond the rope barrier the wind had changed and the punner was conveyed back to the picture made of teeth, but this second journey was made at a rather wide angle relative to the first and the instrument betook itself to the darkest corner of the crypt where the warrior was drowsing. During the flight the bottom of one of the claws was automatically lengthened by the lowering of an internal needle by half a centimeter.

  Soon the balloon deflated appreciably, and as the apparatus de­scended it tackled with its two unextended claws a group of dark teeth belonging to one bank of the subterranean pool, while the needle that had just come into view was set down right upon the ground in the middle of an empty space. At the moment of touch-down, we saw the still-gaping valve on top of the aerostat soundlessly closed by its plug, after letting the required amount of gas escape. This plug was a plain aluminium disc capable of appearing or disappearing alternately as it revolved round a pivot attached to a point on its very edge, without changing its plane. Reasoning by analogy, we now understood how the paving beetle had performed its first journey by means of the lens and the valve, the respective operations of which had at that time escaped our inexperienced eyes.

  The gray disc between the three claws had just been lifted again by its rod and a one-millimeter gap once more separated it from the blue one. Proving that the magnetic effect had been thereby destroyed, the nicotine-stained tooth, which had accompanied the apparatus through the air, at once quitted the back of the blue disc and fell to the ground, where it helped to fill in an unfinished part of the mosaic. The new arrival’s color harmonized with that of its neighbors, its tiny contribution in the right place making the picture slightly more complete.

  The lens made a quarter-turn in the usual direction and the em­anations of the ocher substance, as the light warmed it, inflated the skin. The balloon rose, while the needle extension reentered the claw which performed the function of a sheath. Since the breeze had retained its latest direction, the punner pursued its course in a straight line to a slender, pointed pink root lying some distance away by itself, upon which an operation of the valve made it descend and come to rest.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Then Canterel began to speak, explaining to us the purpose of the strange aerial vehicle.

  The professor had developed the art of weather-forecasting to its furthest possible limits. Examination of a mass of fantastically sensitive and accurate instruments enabled him to determine the direction and force of every breath of wind at a given spot ten days in advance, as well as the time of arrival, dimensions, opacity and condensation potential of the smallest cloud.

  In order to throw the extreme perfection of his forecasts into striking relief, Canterel conceived a device capable of creating a work of aesthetic merit solely due to the combined efforts of the sun and wind. He constructed the punner that stood before our eyes and provided it with five very accurate chronometers whose task was to regulate all its operations. The top one opened or shut the valve, while the others, working the mirrors and the lens, were employed in using the solar rays to inflate the aerostat’s envelope by means of the yellow substance. The latter, due to its special preparation, released a certain quantity of hydrogen whenever there was an increase in temperature. The ocher compound had been invented by the professor himself and its lightening exhalations were evolved only when the lens concentrated the sun’s burning rays upon it. In this way Canterel possessed an instrument which could make use of a particular air current foreseen long before to perform an accurate journey, with no other assistance than that of the more or less unobscured sun.

  Then the professor looked round for a material to use in the begetting of his work of art. It seemed to him that only a fine mosaic could give rise to the frequent and captious flights of the apparatus to and fro. Now it was necessary that the multicolored pieces should be first attracted, then released by the lower part of the paving beetle, by some intermittent magnetism. At last Canterel decided to avail himself of a discovery he had made all by himself several years before and which had always yielded excellent results in practice.

  This concerned a curious system for the extraction of teeth, which avoided the dangerous and harmful use of anesthetics. After long research Canterel had obtained two highly complex metals: when these were brought into contact, they instantly created an irresistible and specialized magnetic force operating exclusively on the calcareous element of which human teeth are made.

  One of the metals was gray; the other had a steel-blue luster. From each of them he cut a disc of one millimeter radius, then fixed the gray one to a slender, rigid handle slightly oblique to its plane — and drove the tips of three short, horizontally diverging rods into the blue one’s rim at symmetrically equal distances. The other ends of these were attached to the upper circumference of a small cylinder fitted with a slender handle. When the time came, he used both hands independently to introduce the cylinder into the patient’s mouth, resting its thick, blunt, lower rim on the two teeth either side of the one to be removed — then brought up the gray disc and laid it accurately against the blue one. At once the magnetism came into play, so abruptly and powerfully that the decayed tooth left its socket in answer to the summons without giving the person concerned time to notice the slightest shock of pain. It entered the cylinder, which, being made entirely of platinum like the three rods, was capable of withstanding any ordeal, and flew to the blue disc. When dealing with the lower jaw the cylinder was placed upright, with the blue disc above; on the other hand, when the upper jaw was involved, the operation, though similar, made it necessary to place the cylinder and the gray ring in reverse position. For mouths ill-provided with teeth, if there was no support on one side because a tooth was missing, the professor would make use of a very simple device, selecting a right-angled parallelepiped, high enough to provide the best substitute, from a varied collection made of solid ivory. In this way the cylinder, supported by a tooth on one side and the ivory on the other, offered the necessary resistance. Two parallelepipeds were required when the decayed tooth was surrounded by a complete void so that it was doubly isolated. Confronted by two supporting teeth of unequal size, Canterel had recourse to an assortment of small ivory squares of various thicknesses; a single one of these laid on the lower tooth made their levels perfectly equal during the critical moment.

  An intentional consequence of the special atomic combination which generated the magnetism was that it only operated on the darkened inner side where the cylinder began, strictly within the field of a flawless imaginary tube of indefinite length, with its axis passing through the center of the two discs and with a diameter equal to theirs. So there was no danger of the gray disc attracting a tooth from the wrong jaw, and the blue one only exerted its effect on part of the tooth at which it was aimed, without causing the slightest disturb
ance to its neighbors. In view of its extraordinary intensity, this circumscribed action was sufficient to produce the desired result, quite painless because so sudden. When the tooth had been extracted and was adhering to the blue disc, Canterel immediately took the gray disc away; for the magnetism would have produced its effect in spite of the obstacle — as he had ascertained from his experiments — and he was afraid of it accidentally wreaking havoc on a healthy part of the jaw should the patient, or he himself, make a false move.

  The process, which soon became well known, brought a stream of visitors suffering from toothache to Locus Solus, who all went away delighted by the comfort and dispatch with which the cause of their suffering was removed, without their experiencing the slightest painful jolt.

  The discarded teeth loosened by the professor’s skill were piled up higgledy-piggledy, and he had never had an opportunity to deal with this embarrassing stock, the disposal of which had been constantly postponed.

  After hatching his new scheme, he blessed the successive delays that had put a usable and practical medium within reach. He resolved to devote his supply of teeth to the execution of his mosaic. They were varied enough in shape and color to lend themselves to this fantasy, and an enriching complexity would be provided both by the more or less vivid bloodstains on the roots and the brilliant luster of the gold caps and fillings.