The Eternal Adam and other stories (33 page)

And let nobody imagine that it had declined
under the administration of Francis Bennett. No! On the contrary, its new
director had given it an equalled vitality and driving-power by the
inauguration of telephonic journalism.

Everybody knows that system, made possible
by the incredible diffusion of the telephone. Every morning, instead of being
printed as in antiquity, the
Earth Herald
is ‘spoken’. It is by means of
a brisk conversation with a reporter, a political figure, or a scientist, that
the subscribers can learn whatever happens to interest them. As for those who
buy an odd number for a few cents, they know that they can get acquainted with
the day’s issue through the countless phonographic cabinets.

This innovation of Francis Bennett restored
new life to the old journal. In a few months its clientele numbered eighty-five
million subscribers, and the director’s fortune rose to 300 million dollars,
and has since gone far beyond that. Thanks to this fortune, he was able to
build his new office – a colossal edifice with four façades each two miles
long, whose roof is sheltered beneath the glorious flag, with its seventy-five
stars, of the Confederation.

Francis Bennett, king of journalists, would
then have been king of the two Americas, if the Americans would ever accept any
monarch whatever. Do you doubt this? But the plenipotentiaries of every nation
and our very ministers, throng around his door, peddling their advice, seeking
his approval, imploring the support of his all-powerful organ. Count up the
scientists whom he has encouraged, the artists whom he employs, the inventors
whom he subsidises! A wearisome monarchy was his, work without respite, and
certainly nobody of earlier times would ever have been able to carry out so
unremitting a daily grind. Fortunately however, the men of today have a more
robust constitution, thanks to the progress of hygiene and of gymnastics, which
from thirty-seven years has now increased to sixty-eight the average length of
human life – thanks too to the aseptic foods, while we wait for the next
discovery: that of nutritious air which will enable us to take nourishment...
only by breathing.

And now, if you would like to know
everything that constitutes the day of a director of the
Earth Herald,
take the trouble to follow him in his multifarious operations – this very day,
this July 25th of the present year, 2889.

That morning Francis Bennett awoke in
rather a bad temper. This was eight days since his wife had been in France and
he was feeling a little lonely. Can it be credited? They had been married ten
years, and this was the first time that Mrs Edith Bennett, that
professional
beauty,
had been so long away. Two or three days usually sufficed for her
frequent journeys to Europe and especially to Paris, where she went to buy her
hats.

As soon as he awoke, Francis Bennett
switched on his phonotelephote, whose wires led to the house he owned in the
Champs-Elysées.

The telephone, completed by the telephote,
is another of our time’s conquests! Though the transmission of speech by the
electric current was already very old, it was only since yesterday that vision
could also be transmitted. A valuable discovery, and Francis Bennett was by no
means the only one to bless its inventor when, in spite of the enormous
distance between them, he saw his wife appear in the telephotic mirror.

A lovely vision! A little tired by last
night’s theatre or dance, Mrs Bennett was still in bed. Although where she was
it was nearly noon, her charming head was buried in the lace of the pillow. But
there she was stirring... her lips were moving... No doubt she was dreaming?...
Yes! She was dreaming... A name slipped from her mouth. ‘Francis... dear
Francis!... ‘

His name, spoken by that sweet voice, gave
a happier turn to Francis Bennett’s mood. Not wanting to wake the pretty
sleeper, he quickly jumped out of bed, and went into his mechanised
dressing-room.

Two minutes later, without needing the help
of a valet, the machine deposited him, washed, shaved, shod, dressed and
buttoned from top to toe, on the threshold of his office. The day’s work was
going to begin.

It was into the room of the serialised
novelists that Francis first entered.

Very big that room, surmounted by a large
translucent dome. In a corner, several telephonic instruments by which the
hundred authors of the
Earth Herald
related a hundred chapters of a
hundred romances to the enfevered public.

Catching sight of one of these serialists
who was snatching five minutes’ rest, Francis Bennett said:

‘Very fine, my dear fellow, very fine, that
last chapter of yours! That scene where the young village girl is discussing
with her admirer some of the problems of transcendental philosophy shows very
keen powers of observation! These country manners have never been more clearly
depicted! Go on that way, my dear Archibald, and good luck to you. Ten thousand
new subscribers since yesterday, thanks to you!’

‘Mr John Last,’ he continued, turning
towards another of his collaborators, ‘I’m not so satisfied with you! It hasn’t
any life, your story! You’re in too much of a hurry to get to the end! Well!
and what about all that documentation? You’ve got to dissect, John Last, you’ve
got to dissect! It isn’t with a pen one writes nowadays, it’s with a scalpel!
Every action in real life is the result of a succession of fleeting thoughts,
and they’ve got to be carefully set out to create a living being! And what’s
easier than to use electrical hypnotism, which redoubles its subject and
separates his two-fold personality! Watch yourself living, John Last, my dear
fellow! Imitate your colleague whom I’ve just been congratulating! Get yourself
hypnotised... What?... You’re having it done, you say?... Not good enough yet,
not good enough!’

Having given this little lesson, Francis
Bennett continued his inspection and went on into the reporters’ room. His
1,500 reporters, placed before an equal number of telephones, were passing on
to subscribers the news which had come in during the night from the four
quarters of the earth.

The organisation of this incomparable
service has often been described. In addition to his telephone, each reporter
has in front of him a series of commutators, which allow him to get into communication
with this or that telephotic line. Thus the subscribers have not only the story
but the sight of these events. When it is a question of ‘miscellaneous facts’,
which are things of the past by the time they are described, their principal
phases alone are transmitted; these are obtained by intensive photography.

Francis Bennett questioned one of the ten
astronomical reporters – a service which was growing because of the recent
discoveries in the stellar world.

‘Well, Cash, what have you got?’

‘Phototelegrams from Mercury, Venus and
Mars, sir. ‘

-Interesting, that last one?’

‘Yes! a revolution in the Central Empire,
in support of the reactionary liberals against the republican conservatives. ‘

‘Just like us, then! – And Jupiter?’

‘Nothing so far! We haven’t been able to
understand the signals the Jovians make. Perhaps ours haven’t reached them?...
‘

‘That’s your job, and I hold you
responsible, Mr Cash!’ Francis Bennett replied; extremely dissatisfied, he went
on to the scientific editorial room.

Bent over their computers, thirty savants
were absorbed in equations of the ninety-fifth degree. Some indeed were
revelling in the formulae of algebraical infinity and of twenty-four
dimensional space, like a child in the elementary class dealing with the four
rules of arithmetic.

Francis Bennett fell among them rather like
a bombshell.

‘Well, gentlemen, what’s this they tell me?
No reply from Jupiter?... It’s always the same! Look here, Corley, it seems to
me it’s been twenty years that you’ve been pegging away at that planet... ‘

‘What do you expect, sir?’ the savant
replied. ‘Our optical science still leaves something to be desired, and even
with our telescopes two miles long... ‘

‘You hear that, Peer?’ broke in Francis
Bennett, addressing himself to Corley’s neighbour. ‘Optical science leaves
something to be desired!... That’s your speciality, that is, my dear fellow!
Put on your glasses, devil take it! put on your glasses!’

Then, turning back to Corley:

‘But, failing Jupiter, aren’t you getting
some result from the moon, at any rate?’

‘Not yet, Mr Bennett. ‘

‘Well, this time, you can’t blame optical
science! The moon is 600 times nearer than Mars, and yet our correspondence
service is in regular operation with Mars. It can’t be telescopes we’re
needing... ‘

‘No, it’s the inhabitants,’ Corley replied
with the thin smile of a savant stuffed with X.

‘You dare tell me that the moon is
uninhabited?’

‘On the face it turns towards us, at any
rate, Mr Bennett. Who knows whether on the other side?... ‘

‘Well, there’s a very simple method of
finding out... ‘

‘And that is?... ‘

‘To turn the moon round!’

And that very day, the scientists of the
Bennett factory started working out some mechanical means of turning our
satellite right round.

On the whole Francis Bennett had reason to
be satisfied. One of the
Earth Herald’s
astronomers had just determined
the elements of the new planet Gandini. It is at a distance of 12, 841, 348,
284, 623 metres and 7 decimetres that this planet describes its orbit round the
sun in 572 years, 194 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes, 9. 8 seconds.

Francis Bennett was delighted with such
precision.

‘Good!’ he exclaimed. ‘Hurry up and tell
the reportage service about it. You know what a passion the public has for
these astronomical questions. I’m anxious for the news to appear in today’s
issue!’

Before leaving the reporters’ room he took
up another matter with a special group of interviewers, addressing the one who
dealt with celebrities: ‘You’ve interviewed President Wilcox?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Mr Bennett, and I’m publishing the
information that he’s certainly suffering from a dilatation of the stomach, and
that he’s most conscientiously undergoing a course of tubular irrigations. ‘

‘Splendid. And that business of Chapmann
the assassin?... Have you interviewed the jurymen who are to sit at the
Assizes?’

‘Yes, and they all agree that he’s guilty,
so that the case won’t even have to be submitted to them. The accused will be
executed before he’s sentenced.‘

‘Splendid! Splendid!’

The next room, a broad gallery about a
quarter of a mile long, was devoted to publicity, and it well may be imagined
what the publicity for such a journal as the
Earth Herald
had to be. It
brought in a daily average of three million dollars. Very ingeniously, indeed,
some of the publicity obtained took an absolutely novel form, the result of a
patent bought at an outlay of three dollars from a poor devil who had since
died of hunger. They are gigantic signs reflected on the clouds, so large that
they can be seen all over a whole country. From that gallery a thousand
projectors were unceasingly employed in sending to the clouds, on which they
were reproduced in colour, these inordinate advertisements.

But that day when Francis Bennett entered
the publicity room he found the technicians with their arms folded beside their
idle projectors. He asked them about it... The only reply he got was that
somebody pointed to the blue sky.

‘Yes!... A fine day,’ he muttered, ‘so we
can’t get any aerial publicity! What’s to be done about that? If there isn’t any
rain, we can produce it! But it isn’t rain, it’s clouds that we need!’

‘Yes, some fine snow-white clouds!’ replied
the chief technician.

‘Well, Mr Simon Mark, you’d better get in
touch with the scientific editors, meteorological service. You can tell them
from me that they can get busy on the problem of artificial clouds. We really
can’t be at the mercy of the fine weather. ‘

After finishing his inspection of the
different sections of the paper, Francis Bennett went to his reception hall,
where he found awaiting him the ambassadors and plenipotentiary ministers
accredited to the American government: these gentlemen had come to ask advice
from the all-powerful director. As he entered the room they were carrying on
rather a lively discussion.

‘Pardon me, your Excellency,’ the French
Ambassador addressed the Ambassador from Russia. ‘But I can’t see anything that
needs changing in the map of Europe. The north to the Slavs, agreed! But the
south to the Latins! Our common frontier along the Rhine seems quite satisfactory.
Understand me clearly, that our government will certainly resist any attempt
which may be made against our Prefectures of Rome, Madrid, and Vienna!’

‘Well said!’ Francis Bennett intervened in
the discussion. ‘What, Mr Russian Ambassador, you’re not satisfied with your
great empire, which extends from the banks of the Rhine as far as the frontiers
of China? An empire whose immense coast is bathed by the Arctic Ocean, the
Atlantic, the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and the Indian Ocean?’