The Viner Dimension

The Frenchman's Journal - Investigation

Investigator's report

The above translation by Mr Aloysius Porter is, we are assured, a faithful reproduction of the content of the journal received at our Institute from our agent in France, four weeks past.

As will be seen in the final paragraph, the journal was not complete; it seems to have been rescued from a fire, as the binding is deeply charred, and the final page available to us much obscured by smoke. The probability is that we have barely a quarter of the original document available to us. From the text above, however, we have been able to identify the author, and also, with some certainty, his unfortunate fate.

As confirmed by crosschecks on the details given in the journal, his name is - or was - that of M. Emile D'Aubert, of a well-to-do and long-established family of farmers close by to an eponymous town by the name of St Aubert. Subsequent to his meetings with the Earl of Leicester, as described above, the records show that he spent two days with academics and laboratory-staff at Cambridge, and a further two days in deep if convivial conversation with members of our Institute here. Inquiries of the commercial records of viners in Colchester indicate that he was indeed provided with viner-seeds and more, before catching his ferry at Harwich; and again on a subsequent visit to our shores in the autumn of the following year.

From then on, we are forced to rely somewhat upon conjecture; yet it seems likely that, against all the odds, he did indeed manage to grow at least some of his viner-seeds, and produce viable and operable viner-beasts from them - a most remarkable achievement under the circumstances.

He was surrounded, where he lived, by the farms of other members of his own family, which would have afforded him some protection and the safety of obscurity. Even so, our agent identified that there had been rumours in the town, as early as late 1887, that "something strange was going on" at his farm. It had been noted, for example, that an unusual "eight-legged hayrack", of a very different pattern than those of the district, had been seen standing in various of his fields, although it had no obvious purpose, and he had no obvious means to move it. It seems likely that this would have been a lightweight Wagon, in fully functional form - and again, we must stress just how remarkable an achievement this would represent.

For at least a year, the rumours remained just that - as rumours, no more - and hence he no doubt felt safe enough to continue with his experiments. But in the summer of 1889, there was a violent thunderstorm in the district, and his young cousin was thrown from his horse, with injuries so severe that it was clear to all that his life was in grave danger. The horse having bolted, it seems that M. D'Aubert must have decided that use of the Wagon was the only option available to get the young man to hospital with appropriate despatch - heedless of the risk to himself of exposure.

His action saved the young man's life - there was no doubt on that. Yet the sight of M. D'Aubert, careering through the town at the Wagon's full speed of thirty to forty miles per hour, with all the ferocity of the tempest at his heels, and with the young man strapped to the Wagon's back, crying out in pain, all seems to have caused a relapse of the locality into the most atavistic madnesses of the Moyen Age. The town's Catholic priest demanded, and obtained, a sessions of the supposedly long-defunct Court of Spiritual Inquiry, otherwise known to us as the Inquisition, of ancient infamy. That ecclesiastical court, which in France should have long since relinquished any judicial authority, duly convicted M. D'Aubert of the crimes of "blasphemy and consorting with demons", and for which its sentence was death. I am sorry to report that on the following Sunday - 14th July, the nation's day of celebration - he was publicly burned at the stake in the town square. We may presume that the Wagon would also have been used as part of that pyre.

No such form of judicial murder has been carried out in France for more than one hundred years.  The state took no action to prevent any of this from happening, or to prosecute any of the perpetrators; indeed, its only efforts seem to have been those of censorship, to prevent the spreading of any news of the event, in newspapers and elsewhere.

It was only at the urgent protestation of the town's mayor, and the fact that a man's life had been spared by M. D'Aubert's selfless actions, that it was proved possible to overrule the priest's demand that M. D'Aubert's wife and two young daughters should share the same fate as he. As it was, they were rendered destitute when the mob, again urged on by the priest, razed their home to the ground, and destroyed what little chance they had of any further livelihood. They fled the district, and at present we have no record of their whereabouts.

Our agent was able to inspect the ruins of M. D'Aubert's nursery, and found indications that he had been able to raise a quite extraordinary range of viner-beasts: the Wagon, of course, but also one or more Sweepers, at least two varieties of Pump, probably also a low-profile Harrow, a Type-II Plough and other agricultural utilities, and, most worryingly, possibly even a Sentinel.

By what obscure means he could have obtained both seed and nutrient-medium for such a military-class viner-beast is a matter of grave concern, and one that warrants urgent explication. But the probability that he did indeed do so is borne out both by the local stories of a strange dog-like creature that had been seen to frequent at nighttime his grave-site at a nearby cross-roads, and also by the subsequent fate of the priest. The latter was found dead some two months later, stretched out face-down in front of the altar of his church, dying supposedly in the agonies of religious fervour. The cause of death was recorded as congestive heart-failure, which would not be unexpected in a man of the priest's advanced years; yet the autopsy-report also noted that embedded in his upper back were several short thorns, each no more than half an inch in length, and each the termination of oddly-metallic plant-tendrils that had been burnt off at some six to twelve inches from the point of impact. I will not elaborate further, but those of our members who work with classified viner-beasts will recognise the import of those facts.

I am assured by its designers that an undirected Sentinel should eventually settle down within a hidden hedgerow and put down its permanent roots, in effect reverting to its static natural rootstock. But if not, or if it acquires a new director before that time, then we face the possibility of a fully-armed self-active Sentinel roaming that region, or beyond, for at least a decade. Despite the French government's public pretence that viner-beasts do not and cannot exist, we may be at real risk of an international incident here; at the very least, we must notify the Foreign Office of our situation in this matter, and set up whatever surveillance we can in that country.

This Investigation Committee would also recommend that the name of M. Emile D'Aubert should be entered into the Scroll of Honour for this Institute; and that we should instruct our agent to locate M. D'Aubert's family and offer an honorarium-for-life, as we would do for any other overseas viner's family in distress. It is the least we could do to honour the courage and skill of this unfortunate young man, whose heinous and untimely death represents such a loss to our esteemed profession.