The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04

by Anthology

  But Croft could do nothing in his disembodied state. There was one hope only, that of entering and taking over the body of a man who had just died. In his travels, he found one young man, Jasor of Nodhur, healthy but weak of spirit and slow of mind. Croft returned to his own body, as he must do every now and then, and plunged into intense study of the technique of possession of a body from which the spirit has departed. He returned to find Jasor dying; the young man was hardly sick, but no longer wanted to live.

  It was a great struggle in that room where Jasor lay dying, attended only by a priest of Zitu, one Abbu; but when Jasor died, Croft was able to enter into and revive his body. It seemed to Abbu and the others that a miracle had occurred, for they were certain that Jasor had died but a few moments before.

  He was not playing upon mere ignorance and superstition, Croft told me; everything indicated that the events had occurred under true providence, of which he was a willing instrument; and this is how the religious leaders of Aphur accepted the situation. It was obvious that the Jasor who had returned from death was a truly different person. Under these circumstances, Jason Croft, as a Jasor who had been returned to life touched by the finger of Zitu, was able to combine his knowledge of Palosian civilization and Earth's science to introduce motors and other technical inventions to Aphur. Jadgor accepted him gladly as one sent by Zitu and co-operated with him in every way; and Croft won the friendship of Jadgor's son, Robur, and the admiration of Lakkon and his daughter. Croft established that, at times, he would seem to go to sleep for long periods, communing with Zitu, wherein he learned matters of urgent importance; and in his astral explorations, he learned of the plot whereby Aphur would be gulled into war. More immediately important was that Naia and her father would appear to have been lost in a shipwreck, but actually, Naia would have been kidnapped and made the slave of an ally of Kyphallos, who had never intended to marry her. Through the aid of Zud and Abbu, Croft and Lakkon were prepared. Rifles and hand grenades had been introduced to Aphur, and the ship on which Naia sailed was well armed. The accident that had been planned was averted and the Aphurians overcame the attack that followed.

  But when this failed, Zollaria discarded all masks, and invaded Cathur; Kyphallos, as long agreed, made but token resistance, opening the way to Aphur. But Aphur was ready with the new weapons, which included crude tanks, and the invading armies were virtually annihilated. Helmor, Emperor of Zollaria, was forced to surrender; Kyphallos was tried for treason and exiled to Zollaria where, learning that he counted for nothing in Kalamita's eyes now that he was no longer useful, he committed suicide.

  All this, Jason Croft told me; and now, he said, he was ready to leave Earth forever. The body of Jason Croft, here on Earth, would die; henceforth he would live in the body of Jasor, who had been created a Prince of Aphur and was legally qualified to marry the woman of his heart. I was not surprised, therefore, to learn soon after that Jason Croft had died. And that, I thought, was the end of this wonderful story so far as I would ever know.

  I learned my mistake when I went to examine a new patient one night, at the State Hospital for the Insane. He was a physical wreck, but something about him gave me the oddest sensation I had ever known in my life. I sent the nurse away, hardly knowing why, and then the man spoke and asked me if I didn't know him.

  Jason Croft had returned to Earth.

  Chapter One

  "I didn't expect to come back when I left, Murray, and I don't wonder it surprises you to find me speaking to you with the lips of this poor hunk of flesh. Oh, this is an incipient wreck that I'm holding together simply for my own use. It will suffice, even if it has a pair of lungs badly engorged because of a very shaky heart. You laboratories will show the kidneys infected, too. I had to take it, because I wanted to get down here with you."

  "With—me?" I faltered.

  He smiled slightly. "Yes—you, of course. You were the only man on Earth who knew my story. So when I needed certain information which I couldn't gain save in the flesh, I knew you were the man to help me get it. But in order to reach you, I had to limit my choice of Earthly bodies. That's how I came to choose this thing at which you're looking.

  "Murray, it's your job to keep me alive until I can gain what I came for—to help me, if you will. Earth possesses knowledge I need on Palos for my work—you can help me gain it just as well here as anywhere else. I want you to prescribe a certain course of study as a part of my treatment and discuss the things I'm after with me. Do you catch my plan?"

  Oh, yes, I caught it. I made an effort to rally my staggering senses. "Just how is the Princess Naia?" I asked.

  Croft nodded. He seemed to find acceptance of my part in my question. "The Princess Naia is very much all right."

  And then I remembered what he had told me before he went to Palos for what I had thought a definite stay. "Or perhaps I should have asked for Mrs. Croft—you said that you expected to be married immediately upon your return to Palos."

  Croft frowned. "What one expects and what one meets are not always one and the same, friend Murray," he rejoined. "I retuned to Palos after my conversation with you, to encounter a situation of which I had never thought."

  "You mean that it interfered with your marriage to the princess?" I exclaimed.

  He made a grimace. "You remember Zud the high priest of Zitra, the imperial city of which I told you—who sponsored me with Tamhys before the Zollarian war. And you recall that I left the body of Jasor of Nodhur in Zud's apartments in the pyramid of Zitar when I came back here for the last time, and that Naia was quartered during my absence in the rooms set apart for the Gayana—the Vestals of Ga the Virgin in the pyramid, too. Murray, when I got back there, I found that Zud had proclaimed me the Mouthpiece of Zitu himself."

  "The Mouthpiece of Zitu!" I drew a chair close to the bed and sat down.

  I cast back in my mind for what Croft had told me concerning the religion of Tamarizia. Zitu was God in their belief. Ga was the woman—a virgin. Azil was her son—known as the Giver of Life. And if Croft had been proclaimed by the high priest of the central state of the empire, the head of the clerical college, as the Mouthpiece of Zitu, it was just about the same as naming him the representative of the Divinity in the flesh. From what Croft had told me of his claiming while in Tamarizia to do all that he did by the grace of Zitu—which was, of course, no more than the truth in a sense—I could see how his very words might have laid the foundation for the high priest's act.

  Yet, Croft had said that he had induced the Tamarizians to adopt a republican way of government rather than their system of allied principalities, and had declared that when he went back he expected to be elected president. "Rather changed your plans, I suppose," I said.

  "Changed them?" he returned, with an almost whimsical expression. "Murray, it almost wrecked them at the start—the most important part of them, that is. Remember why I did what I did do really—that all I had done up until that time was in order to win the woman who meant more to me than anything else in life—and then picture if you can my mental condition when I found myself trapped, as it were, by my own acts."

  "Your own?" I queried.

  He nodded. "Oh, certainly yes—my failing to take into account what a terrible impression I had managed to make on the high priest. I—hand it all, Murray—I knew so entirely what I was up to that I didn't give proper consideration to the effect my words and acts must have on less well-informed minds. I failed to put myself in the place of Zud, and Magur, the head of the church in Aphur, whom I first enlisted in my aid at Himyra.

  "At that time, I couldn't have been more absolute if I had been the Mouthpiece of Zitu indeed. Perhaps if I'd stayed there and rushed things through, everything would have been all right. But, as you know, I returned for a final visit to close up all matters pertaining to my Earthly life before I snapped the astral chord which until then had kept my original body alive. And there was where I made my mistake.

  "As I've told you, I left my Palosian body in
Zud's quarters, rather magnificently placed. Zud saw to that. I suppose now he was turning the elements of what he fancied the truth in his old brain. My form was stretched out on a golden couch, covered with a sheet of orange-colored silk, in the apartment set apart for my use. And I'd been planning, as you know, many things I wanted to do. I'd drawn plans—designs for things common enough on Earth, but never before dreamed of on Palos. And I left the drawings I had made in that room in a golden chest. You remember I told you gold was as plentiful on Palos as iron on earth and used as freely in the metal working arts.

  "Night and day a guard was kept in the chamber where I lay in what they believed was my knowledge-gaining sleep. But—the guard was a priest. He would do anything Zud said, of course.

  "So you see I fell into the error of not considering old Zud's thoughts or his interpretation of my claim that everything I did was by Zitu's grace. I should have taken Zud more fully into the truth of the facts.

  "The high priest had opened that golden box. He had examined my working charts. He had dimly sensed them as designs for things I meant to make—and his wonder knew no bounds. I am convinced the old many only thought he was doing what was absolutely right, according to his lights."

  "And Naia?" I asked. "How did she view your elevation to such a lofty state?"

  Croft gave me a glance. "I told you Zud messed everything up," he replied. "But—it's a long story. Murray, this ramshackle carcass I've seized won't last out a great many days. The weakling soul who once possessed it broke it down by every sort of abuse, including drugs. But, I've got to learn certain things before I can abandon its use.

  "Suppose you send me up the latest works you have on internal medicine and surgery and therapeutics, and drop in tonight. If you're willing to sacrifice a few hours' sleep, I'll spin you the whole yarn."

  "All right," I agreed as I rose. "I don't think I was ever more startled in my life, but I'll send up the books, and I'll be right here after nine myself."

  "Right," he accepted. "My physicians wouldn't let me have tobacco, though this body craves it. Bring some cigars when you come, and we'll have a good long talk."

  Before, however, I enter upon Croft's actual story, I think it better perhaps to briefly describe, in some part at least, those details of the Paosian world with whicch he had put me in touch on the occasion of our former meeting.

  And toward a fuller understanding of that world itself, I think it best to take up the geography of that part of Palos Croft visited first. Mainly that which has to do with the Tamarizian nation—a series of allied principalities surrounding the shores of a vast inland sea, with the exception of a central state—the seat of the imperial capital, embracing the island of Hiranur, located in the sea itself, and the kingdom of Nodhur to the west and south.

  From the central sea a narrow strait led west toward an outer ocean beyond the continent on which the several principalities found place. To the north of this strait, known as the Gateway, was Cathur, a mountainous country and the seat of the national university at its capital city Scira. East of Cathur was Mazhur, known at the time of Croft's arrival as the Lost State, since in a former war it had been wrested from the original Tamarizian group by the Zollarians. *

  [* East of Mazhur, and circling the central sea to the east, was Bithur, and Milidhur joined Bithur on the south. West of Milidhur was Aphur, completing the circle about the sea and terminating at the Gateway on the south. Nodhur lay south of Aphur, gaining an outlet to the central sea by means of the River Na. This river had carried commercial craft driven by sail and oar until Croft revolutionized transportation with alcohol-driven motors.

  North of Tamarizia lay Zollaria, inhabited by a far more warlike race. Its government was a despotism organized on militaristic lines. Controlling the gateway to the west, Tamarizia had remained the master, even after the fall of Mazhur, still collecting toll from the Zollarian craft on her rivers, despite the foothold gained by her foeman on the northern coast.

  East of Zollaria and Tamarizia in the hinterland of the continent lay Mazzer, populated by an aboriginal people of a complexion distinctly blue. Due to an ancient conquest many of these people were now constituted as a working caste in Tamarizia.

  Each of these states was governed by an hereditary king.]

  And now a word as to the Tamarizians themselves. They were a white and well-formed race. In their social structure women held an equal place with men. They believed in the spirit and a future life and the resurrection of the dead. In the sciences and arts they had made considerable progress.

  The clothing of the women consisted of a single garment, falling to the knees or just below them, cinctured about the body, caught over one shoulder by a metal or jeweled boss, and leaving the other shoulder and arm exposed. To this was added sandals of leather, metal, or wood, held to the foot by a toe-and-instep band and lacings running well up the calves. Men of wealth and caste and soldiers and nobles, instead of these sandals, generally wore metal casings, which amounted to a sandal and leg piece jointed to allow the ankle full play and reaching nearly to the knees.

  The men of caste also wore a soft shirt or chemise beneath a metal cuirass or an embroidered tunic, as the case might be. Save on formal occasions, the serving classes, men and women, wore either a narrow cincture about the loins, supporting a small phallary or apron, or went nude about their tasks.

  Agriculture was highly developed, and as a people they had advanced far in architecture, painting, sculpture, and similar arts. They lavished much time and expense in beautifying their houses—making of each a small palace, if the owner were rich. The highways along which the sarpelca caravans and the gnuppa-drawn carriages and chariots passed were models of engineering.

  [The gnuppa is a creature seemingly half deer and half horse. The sarpelca is not unlike some weird Silurian lizard, twice the size of an elephant, with a pointed tail, a scale-armored back, a long neck somewhat resembling that of a camel, and the head of a marine serpent having a series of fleshy tentacles about the mouth. They are driven by reins affixed to these latter appendages, and stream across the Palosian deserts bearing merchandise upon their enormous backs.]

  All these things I knew from Croft's previous talks. He had told me he could go to Palos as quickly as I could think of it myself, and here I was anticipating a resumption that night of his story.

  Meanwhile I sent him the books he had said he wanted, together with a box of good cigars. And along about eight forty-five, when I had finished my evening round of patients, I went up myself.

  I lighted up a cigar and took a chair, tacitly preparing for a stay of some considerable time, and then as Croft continued to smoke in an almost meditative silence, I opened the matter myself.

  "Even supposing that Zud did get at your plans, I hardly see why he should have taken the step he did before your return."

  Croft nodded. "It wasn't only the plans," he said. "You must recall Abbu, the priest of the pyramid at Scira—the one who was present when I entered Jasor's body and made it my own.

  "I told you that to Abbu I had acknowledged that my spirit was not Jasor's, but that what I was about to do was for Tamarizia's good, thereby enlisting his aid in my undertakings. At the time I swore him to secrecy, of course, and I honestly believe that up until the time I left Jasor's body for the purpose of making a final trip to earth, he was the only man who knew that the spirit within it was not the same as the one it had held at birth.

  "Abuu, after the war with Zollaria, had been brought to Zitra and raised to a higher rank, because of his part in first assisting me. Naturally Zud was acquainted with all such facts, and one can hardly blame him for wanting to know more in view of what I can well understand were the tremendous changes I had brought about in Tamarizia's affairs."

  I began to understand what must have happened. "He pumped Abbu?"

  "Exactly." Croft smiled dryly again. "He absolved him from his oath and learned all the facts with which Abbu was acquainted. You can easily understan
d the rest. Jasor of Nodhur dies. His body comes back to life. Its lips speak to Abbu, the priest. He hears that a new spirit inhabits Jasor's body. Immediately after strange things—but things aimed wholly for Tamarizia's good—begin to happen.

  "Shall the dead live again, save by divine intervention? Shall undreamed of things appear save by Zitu's grace? And if in addition the revivified body shall fall into strange sleeps at times and upon waking seem possessed of a supernatural knowledge, what more natural to the priest—unendowed with a full understanding of what was taking place, unaware that the things that excited his unlimited amazement were but copies of things existing on another planet—than to consider that those things he witnessed were the result of divine ordination and to regard the individual who brought them about as the mouthpiece of his god in the flesh? Oh, frankly, Murray, I don't blame that puzzled old man in the least. As a matter of fact, I blame myself for not having foreseen the effect of all that had happened on his brain."

  Croft put out a hand and selected a fresh cigar. He set it alight and got it to going nicely while, as it seemed to me, he marshaled his thoughts. And then—all at once he began speaking again, and this is the story he told.

  Chapter Two

  The Palosian day—or "sun"—is twenty-seven hours long. Dawn was on the verge of breaking when Croft, having severed the astral link with his Earthly body, opened Jasor of Nodhur's physical eyes in the room of the Zitran pyramid. A slightly unsteady radiance of a yellow color filled the room. It came from the blazing wicks in oil-filled sconces fixed about the walls.

  His glance fell upon one of the lay brothers of the priesthood, clad in a brown robe, from which peeped his toe-splayed, naked feet. He sat on a stool of molded copper, with down bent head. He appeared to be asleep. But suddenly as though aroused by Croft's slight movement, he jerked to attention and encountered the sleeper's eyes. Instantly he sprang erect, approaching with a soft, quick shuffle and pausing by the golden bed.