The Airlords of Han
Page 8
CHAPTER VIII
Hypnotic Torture
Some twenty minutes later the ship arrived. It settled down slowly intothe ravine on its repeller rays until it was but a few feet above thetree tops. There it was stopped, and floated steadily, while a littlecage was let down on a wire. Into this I was hustled and locked,whereupon the cage rose swiftly again to a hole in the bottom of thehull, into which it fitted snugly, and I stepped into the interior of acraft not unlike the one with which I had had my fateful encounter, thecage being unlocked.
The cabin in which I was confined was not an outside compartment, butwas equipped with a number of viewplates.
The ship rose to a great height, and headed westward at such speed thatthe hum of the air past its smooth plates rose to a shrill, almostinaudible moan. After a lapse of some hours we came in sight of animpressive mountain range, which I correctly guessed to be the Rockies.Swerving slightly, we headed down toward one of the topmost pinnacles ofthe range, and there unfolded in one of the viewplates in my cabin aglorious view of Lo-Tan, the Magnificent, a fairy city of glisteningglass spires and iridescent colors, piled up on sheer walls of brilliantblue, on the very tip of this peak.
Nor was there any sheen of shimmering disintegrator rays surrounding it,to interfere with the sparkling sight. So far-flung were the defenses ofLo-Tan, I found, that it was considered impossible for an Americanrocket gunner to get within effective range, and so numerous were the_dis_ ray batteries on the mountain peaks and in the ravines, in thisencircling line of defenses, drawn on a radius of no less than 100miles, that even the largest craft, in the opinion of the Hans, couldeasily be brought to earth through air-pocketing tactics. And this, Iwas the more ready to believe after my own recent experience.
* * * * *
I spent two months as a prisoner in Lo-Tan. I can honestly say thatduring that entire time every attention was paid to my physical comfort.Luxuries were showered upon me. But I was almost continuously subjectedto some form of mental torture or moral assault. Most elaborately stagedattempts at seduction were made upon me with drugs, with women.Hypnotism was resorted to. Viewplates were faked to picture to me thecomplete rout of American forces all over the continent. With incrediblepatience, and laboring under great handicaps, in view of the vigor ofthe American offensive, the Han intelligence department dug up the factthat somewhere in the forces surrounding Nu-Yok, I had left behind meWilma, my bride of less than a year. In some manner, I will never tellhow, they discovered some likeness of her, and faked an electronoscopicpicture of her in the hands of torturers in Nu-Yok, in which she wasshown holding out her arms piteously toward me, as though begging me tosave her by surrender.
Surrender of what? Strangely enough, they never indicated that to medirectly, and to this day I do not know precisely what they expected orhoped to get out of me. I surmise that it was information regarding theAmerican sciences.
There was, however, something about the picture of Wilma in the hands ofthe torturers that did not seem real to me, and my mind still resisted.I remember gazing with staring eyes at that picture, the sweat pouringdown my face, searching eagerly for some visible evidence of fraud andbeing unable to find it. It was the identical likeness of Wilma. Perhapshad my love for her been less great, I would have succumbed. But all thewhile I knew subconsciously that this was not Wilma. Product of theutmost of nobility in this modern virile, rugged American race, shewould have died under even worse torture than these vicious Hanscientists knew how to inflict, before she would have pleaded with methis way to betray my race and her honor.
But these were things that not even the most skilled of the Hanhypnotists and psychoanalysts could drag from me. Their intelligencedivision also failed to pick up the fact that I was myself the productof the Twentieth Century and not the Twenty-fifth. Had they done so, itmight have made a difference. I have no doubt that some of their mostsubtle mental assaults missed fire because of my own Twentieth Century"denseness." Their hypnotists inflicted many horrifying nightmares onme, and made me do and say many things that I would not have done in myright senses. But even in the Twentieth Century we had learned thathypnotism cannot make a person violate his fundamental concepts ofmorality against his will, and steadfastly I steeled my will againstthem.
* * * * *
I have since thought that I was greatly aided by my newness to this age.I have never, as a matter of fact, become entirely attuned to it. Andeven today I confess to a longing wish that man might travel backward aswell as forward in time. Now that my Wilma has been at rest these manyyears, I wish that I might go back to the year 1927, and take up my oldlife where I left it off, in the abandoned mine near Scranton.
And at the period of which I speak, I was less attuned than now to themodern world. Real as my life was, and my love for my wife, there wasmuch about it all that was like a dream, and in the midst of my torturesby the Hans, this complex--this habit of many months--helped me to tellmyself that this, too, was all a dream, that I must not succumb, for Iwould wake up in a moment.
And so they failed.
More than that, I think I won something nearer to genuine respect fromthose around me than any other Hans of that generation accorded toanybody.
Among these was San-Lan himself, the ruler. In the end it was he whoordered the cessation of these tortures, and quite frankly admitted tome his conviction that they had been futile and that I was in manysenses a super-man. Instead of having me executed, he continued toshower luxuries and attentions on me, and frequently commanded myattendance upon him.
Another was his favorite concubine, Ngo-Lan, a creature of the mostalluring beauty; young, graceful and most delicately seductive, whoseskill in the arts and sciences put many of their doctors to shame. Thiscreature, his most prized possession, San-Lan with the utmost moralcallousness ordered to seduce me, urging her to apply without stint andto its fullest extent, her knowledge of evil arts. Had I not seen thenaked horror of her soul, that she let creep into her eyes for just oneunguarded instant, and had it not been for my conviction of Wilma'sfaith in me, I do not know what--but suffice it to say that I resistedthis assault also.
Had San-Lan only known it, he might have had a better chance of breakingdown my resistance through another bit of femininity in his household,the little nine-year-old Princess Lu-Yan, his daughter.
* * * * *
I think San-Lan held something of real affection for this sprightlylittle mite, who in spite of the sickening knowledge of rottenness shehad already acquired at this early age, was the nearest thing toinnocence I found in Lo-Tan. But he did not realize this, and could not;for even the most natural and fundamental affection of the human race,that of parents for their offspring, had been so degraded and suppressedin this vicious Han civilization as to be unrecognizable. NaturallySan-Lan could not understand the nature of my pity for this poor child,nor the fact that it might have proved a weak spot in my armor. But hadhe done so, I truly believe he would have been ready to inflictdegradation, torture and even death upon her, to make me surrender theinformation he wanted.
Yet this man, perverted product of a morally degraded race, had abouthim something of true dignity; something of sincerity, in a warped,twisted way. There were times when he seemed to sense vaguely,gropingly, wonderingly, that he might have a soul.
The Han philosophy for centuries had not admitted the existence ofsouls. Its conception embraced nothing but electrons, protons andmolecules, and still was struggling desperately for some shred ofevidence that thoughts, will power and consciousness of self werenothing but chemical reactions. However, it had gotten no further thanthe negative knowledge we had in the Twentieth Century, that a sick bodydulls consciousness of the material world, and that knowledge, which allmankind has had from the beginning of time, that a dead body means adeparted consciousness. They had succeeded in producing, by synthesis,what appeared to be living tissues, and even animals of moderatelycomple
x structure and rudimentary brains, but they could not give thesecreatures the full complement of life's characteristics, nor raise thebrains to more than mechanical control of muscular tissues.
It was my own opinion that they never could succeed in doing so. Thisopinion impressed San-Lan greatly. I had expected him to snort hisdisgust, as the extreme school of evolutionists would have done in theTwentieth Century. But the idea was as new to him and the scientists ofhis court as Darwinism was to the late Nineteenth and early TwentiethCenturies. So it was received with much respect. Painfully and withenforced mental readjustments, they began a philosophical search forexcuses and justifications for the idea.
* * * * *
All of this amused me greatly, for of course neither the newness nor theorthodoxy of a hypothesis will make it true if it is not true, noruntrue if it is true. Nor could the luck or will-power, with which I hadresisted their hypnotists and psychoanalysts, make what might or mightnot be a universal fact one whit more or less of a fact than it reallywas. But the prestige I had gained among them, and the novelty of myexpressed opinion carried much weight with them.
Yet, did not even brilliant scientists frequently exhibit the same lackof logic back in the Twentieth Century? Did not the historians, thephilosophers of ancient Greece and Rome show themselves to be the sameshrewd observers as those of succeeding centuries, the same masters ofthe logical and slaves of the illogical?
After all, I reflected, man makes little progress within himself.Through succeeding generations he piles up those resources which hepossesses outside of himself, the tools of his hands, and thewarehouses of knowledge for his brain, whether they be parchmentmanuscripts, printed book, or electronorecordographs. For the rest he isborn today, as in ancient Greece, with a blank brain, and strugglesthrough to his grave, with a more or less beclouded understanding, andwith distinct limitations to what we used to call his "think tank."
* * * * *
This particular reflection of mine proved unpopular with them, for itstabbed their vanity, and neither my prestige nor the novelty of theidea was sufficient salve. These Hans for centuries had believed andtaught their children that they were a super-race, a race of destiny.Destined to Whom, for What, was not so clear to them; but neverthelessdestined to "elevate" humanity to some sort of super-plane. Yet throughthese same centuries they had been busily engaged in the exterminationof "weaklings," whom, by their very persecutions, they had turned into"super men," now rising in mighty wrath to destroy them; and in reducingthemselves to the depths of softening vice and flabby moral fiber. Is itstrange that they looked at me in amazed wonder when I laughed outrightin the midst of some of their most serious speculations?