A cold sliver of fear ran down Con’s spine. It was inhuman, he thought, the way she turned herself off and on. A human light switch.
“We have an awareness of our past lives,” Danny said.
“You mean our hereditary fears, traits? Is that what you mean?”
“Possibly. That’s part of it anyhow. But there are other things.”
“Such as?” she asked specifically. Scientifically, Con thought. Like he was on the witness stand, Danny thought.
“I can tell you a better reason for not knowing about our past lives,” he wiped his perspiring forehead with a handkerchief. “Pardon,” he said. “Suppose we could remember everything about our past lives exactly as we remember this one. Being what we are, the way we are, we would carry all our strengths and weaknesses, hopes and prejudices, from our former lives into this one. We’d make a bigger mess of this living over our now active concern of the mess we made of our other livings. We wouldn’t advance. We wouldn’t be putting ourselves to any new test. Would we?
“The conscious mind is the record of a single life. The sub-conscious of all lives. ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he’ Christ said. Not in his mind but his heart. By heart I believe he meant both minds. What you are really, the character of you shines through as much from the sub as from the conscious. So you really shouldn’t be astounded when you have a sudden spiritual knowledge that is so immense you fear to mention it; that is so all-knowing that it is actually what you might call spooky. Because you don’t really know what spiritual heights you have attained previously. What should astound you, actually, is that your subconscious mind is that articulate.”
Carla was thinking of this morning.
“And you have been spiritually astounded, haven’t you, Carla?” Danny asked.
She gave Con a quick impervious sidelong glance, then gradually her eyes settled on Danny: “You’ve made quite a study of it, haven’t you?” And that ended that.
Danny was grinning his silly pixieish grin. “I’m working on Con now. I haven’t decided who he was yet. Alexander, Lord Byron, John the Baptist, or one of the sons of the Great Khan.”
“But I know who Danny was,” Con smiled. “He’s always been attracted to horses. Among other things he’s quite a polo player. Being a royal-born Englishman he has a flair for politics, and you’re witness to his talent for religion. The only historical figure I know of with comparative talents was Rasputin, the horse-thief monk turned politician. So I’m convinced Danny’s really Rasputin.”
She was laughing that earthy unorganized laugh that should never have belonged to her. Again it charmed Con.
“You know,” Danny said to Con, “I think Carla might be Helen Blavatsky, herself.” He winked.
“But I’m Hungarian.”
“Immaterial,” Con said.
“And Gusto,” she said enthusiastically. “You know who Gusto was?”
“Henry the Eighth,” Danny said.
“Exactly,” she laughed earthily.
They played their little game of who everyone was in their past lives and finished their tea. They rode three abreast up the main trail, then cut off, and spread into a long single file on the narrow trail to the caves.
Carla felt good. It was really silly of her, she was thinking, to have spent so much time these past two rainy days regretting her promise to ride with them; for being peeved at Gusto for the sly way he had gotten her to make the promise.
She had to admit she was enjoying it. Danny was interesting. Perhaps a little too esoteric, she thought, but extremely bright and he did stimulate one’s mind even if you couldn’t tell when he was serious and when he wasn’t. And Con hadn’t seemed to be pressuring her with any of his underlying maleness. She had heard only yesterday through Gus, via Danny, that Con had lost one of his men; it was inconsiderate of her not to have considered why he had acted as he did. Con was really odd. Hard to place. He didn’t seem American or European. At least not like any American she had known. At first she remembered she had thought him a soldier of fortune type. But he wasn’t. Of that she was sure. She really had never met anyone like him. He seemed to serve no real purpose. Yet he radiated that wired purposefulness.
You had to hand it to them both. It had been nervy of them to ride like they had over that trail as strange as it was to them. In fact, she thought suddenly, it was foolish on her part to have started it at all. Again what was she trying to prove? And why must she always be trying to prove it?
Then she saw smoke rising from the forest of the valley below, and reined in. Yes, Danny knew of the strange rain clouds that would form and liquidate the brush fires of this magic land and explained it to an utterly fascinated Con while they dismounted and witnessed nature’s exhibition.
Then they rode on, down into the valley and up a small running river bed, then through a forest of tall trees; cool and damp and dark. And then abruptly they were in a clearing looking up at the side of the foothill of the caves.
There were about twenty-five or thirty caves in all at various heights up to two hundred feet on the half-mile face of the foot-hill, with a network of precarious paths leading from each cave to sub-trails down the hill. Danny explained that the young sadhus like the Catholic Trappists did not speak and only left their caves to beg their one meal of the day with their only possession, a wooden begging bowl.
Danny explained further that for centuries men had come to this land to meditate and perform these rites, that some came and never left, that folklore said that many of the deserters of the Genghis Khan’s armies had sought refuge here. And presently those that weren’t enlightened usually returned to some civilian occupation; that no fakir or terrorist of any proportion had ever developed here. Quite the contrary.
The sadhus were very young, fifteen or sixteen, and scantily clad with shaven heads. Danny told how they survived in the cold season with very little fire; seemingly generating their own heat within their bodies. And of how this strange phenomena had baffled the British medical men that came to investigate.
Con noticed that Danny was very pale and sweating profusely. Carla said, indeed, he looked quite feverish and he finally admitted to being alternately flushed and chilled. They decided they would leave shortly.
But Danny had spotted an old guru encamped by the small stream that ran at the base of the caves. He had met him once, he couldn’t place where, and insisted he take him the silver rupees for distribution among the sadhus or for purchase of food. While he was gone, he suggested, Con and Carla might investigate the ancient hieroglyphics embedded in the huge red rock to their right, they would find them interesting.
Danny returned shortly and they started back to town. Right before they reached the main Simila Trail, Danny reined in, dismounted, and stepping into the brush began to vomit.
“Aren’t you going to help him?” Carla asked.
“When Danny wants help he’ll ask for it,” Con said, slightly irritated. “He’s not proud.”
She eyed him coldly for a moment and swung off. She came out of the brush. “He’s burning up,” she said concernedly.
Con dismounted and Danny came whitely out of the brush.
“Help me up, old boy,” he smiled feebly.
“Sure, Danny. Steady his horse, Carla,” he felt Danny leaning half-weight hotly on him, then he collapsed, his breath coming hard, foaming slightly at the mouth.
Quickly, skillfully, Con rested his head, shoved a twig in his mouth after checking his tongue, loosened his belt, and pried the monocle from his eye.
He stripped Danny’s horse, wrapped him in the blanket, then with a tenderness that seemed to well all through him he lifted Danny, Carla saw, like a mother taking a babe to her arms, holding him with an almost inhuman effortlessness as if he had compounded all his strength for this very moment, the shepherd and the lamb, his voice soothing, steadying his pony as he lay Danny crossways across his saddle, then mounting carefully at the rear of his saddle so as not to disturb him. Then fixin
g him belly down with that overwhelming gentleness, carefully taking the twig from his foamy mouth and replacing it with his fingers instead; all with that same single purposed sensitivity, she saw.
He looked down at her: “Ride like hell and get a doctor,” he commanded.
She felt the bone chilling, intent penetration of his eyes and in a moment passed him at full gallop seeing in one rush the picture they made: his eyes straight forward contemplative, Danny draped wobbly, the grey Arabian walking slowly, head bowed with the weight; it was like something from another age that had been or had not yet come. It was an unearthly sight. She came down harder, harder with the crop, then shouting in Urdu to the natives to clear the trail ahead.
Con was almost to the town gate when she appeared with the Hindu M.D. walking rapidly beside her mount. He had never ridden before, he had said, and refused her now. Con wouldn’t let him examine Danny there. His pulse had settled considerably, Con said, and since he was breathing well there was no sense in taking him down, they would only have to mount him again.
They took him to their suite at the Princess Hotel. They were settling him in the bed when there was a knock on the door. The Manager had misconstrued Danny’s condition and Con not bothering to explain yanked him fiercely, bodily into the room and told him to move his ass and open a line to the American Base Hospital at Delhi; the startled manager departing with obsequious apologies.
Con returned to the bedroom and helped Carla strip Danny to his shorts.
“If you will leave the room,” Dr. Bagtu said, “I will perform the examination.”
He was very young and nattily neat in a dark suit with perfect Aryan features and feminine hands.
“I’ll stay,” Con said.
“I think it would be best …” Carla started to say.
“I’ll not leave,” Con was glaring at the Doctor remembering how he had refused to mount to come to Danny’s aid. “If you’re a competent man I shouldn’t bother you. Let’s not waste any more time,” he ordered.
Carla stayed too. The Doctor was precise; very calculating and very precise. He hadn’t practiced long it was easy to tell. But he was thorough, Con noted. He was having considerable difficulty locating Danny’s vein with a syringe for a blood specimen when the phone rang.
Con finally got the C.O. of the New Delhi Base Hospital. Colonel Wysor Blair complete with the slight roll edge of New York accent and the bored, “This is Colonel Blair.”
Con was very polite. He introduced himself first. He explained his organization and knew at once the Colonel had never heard of it. He told in detail of what had occurred and the Colonel asked the name, rank, and serial number of the patient.
“He’s English,” Con replied to the phone.
“Well, why don’t you call the English, young man?”
“Because he’s working for us.”
“I don’t see what I can do.”
“Dispatch a medical man. That’s what you can do.”
“By what authority, may I ask.”
“You’re a colonel, aren’t you. Isn’t that authority enough?”
“Now Captain. You know the army better than that,” the voice soothed.
Con was gripping the phone hard, thinking.
“Captain?” the voice questioned.
“This man’s a cousin of the King; a cousin of Mountbatten.”
There were seconds of silence.
“What did you say the diagnosis was?”
“I didn’t,” Con said. “We don’t have one. They’re making tests now.”
“What did you say the patient’s name was?”
“De Mortimer.”
“Oh, yes. Well certainly the British have a man. Give it a try, will you, Captain,” the voice directed pleasantly. “When you have a diagnosis, something concrete, feel free to ring me again. Will you?”
That puts him in the clear. He wanted to throw the phone at the wall. “Thank you,” Con said absently.
Anyhow it was good advice to call the British. There was a hospital at Dehra Dun. He put in a call there. Yes, they would get up a man as soon as possible, tomorrow or the next day, but one of their outposts on the Arakan had been raided and the wounded were coming in by the plane loads, their hospital was presently under full emergency conditions. Con didn’t press them at all as to who Danny was.
He sent a wire to Colonel Pearson and told the manager to get him Allied Headquarters. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that Danny was a very sick man, he was thinking, when he heard Carla yelling for him.
He rushed into the bedroom. Danny was standing up wild eyed trying to put on his pants. The Doctor was standing behind Carla who was trying to coax Danny back to bed.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Con smiled.
“Out of my way, man. They need me,” Danny said not recognizing Con.
“Go in the other room and strip the sheets from my bed Carla,” Con said still looking at Danny.
“Get in bed,” Con ordered.
“They need me. No one can stop me,” he was buckling his belt.
“You wouldn’t go without your monocle, would you?”
Danny groped to his eye. “Where is it?” he asked fiercely, wildly.
“I think it’s under your pillow,” Con said.
Danny began to tear away at the bed clothes, searching. Carla came in ripping sheets. Con sprang and locked Danny from behind with a full nelson. Carla finally got one arm tied down and Con released his hold partially and concentrated on the other arm while Carla went after his flailing feet. One foot caught her hard high up on the cheek and she began to bleed. Finally Con ordered the Doctor into helping and they got him tied down; but twisting, turning, hollering in the bed, then suddenly quiet and breathing heavily.
“Watch him. Close,” Con said and took Carla by the arm and into the bathroom.
He helped her to remove her riding jacket and saw that she was trembling slightly, the jut of her lower lip a pale purple.
“I can take care of it,” she said coolly looking at the cut in the mirror, frightened that she was here. Somehow grateful that she was able to help. “It’s really nothing.”
He ignored her and she felt him taking her chin in his hand and dabbing a cold wet towel on her numb cut cheek; feeling, rapturously for a moment, the gentleness of him, all the great tenderness of him, her fingers trembling from the shock of the blow. Then, suddenly, hating him for the advantage that he had gained, for getting her involved the way he had. Didn’t he know? Didn’t he know she had had her quota of complication? Then seeing the dark hairs of his forearms loom up suddenly, exceedingly large, weaving a spidery silken weave, spelling upon the flesh: Doom. Never. No, she said to herself.
“I never knew Danny was so strong,” his voice soothed.
You no-good, she wanted to yell. You male animal. You’re like all the rest. I know how you will act for love. I know the ordinary character beyond the act. I’ve seen the knife of love. It’s sharp. It cuts and poisons all at once. I loved one man like that. Not another. Never, she thought half terrified, shocked from the blow of Danny’s foot. Of course. The blow. Then the taut controlled rigidness welling through her making her suddenly empty dead.
Impervious, she sighed inwardly. Her hands no longer shook. What had come over her? Whatever made her leap to such conclusions? Who was he that she had to run away from him. She never ran. Never.
But his eyes were concerned with the wound and would not meet hers. Then he felt the rigidness too and he thought how the cold water must be stinging her.
The phone rang again. Without a word he handed her the towel. He got a Stilwell aide that he had met at the Gwalior conference and explained the situation. Yes, they would requisition a man from the medical pool at once. The very best man. Yes, and wire his ETA at Dehra Dun so he might be met.
Certainly Con told him, he would be glad to keep them fully informed. Yes, Con realized that Lord Louis would be concerned. Of course Con understood that f
or the sake of Anglo-American relations no expense would be spared. Every possible advantage made available. Yes, of course, a full effort. Every avenue covered. He was very relieved that Con understood. The average officer wouldn’t, he said. He was very, very relieved that Con was handling it as he had. Really, he was. He would personally see that a letter was placed in Con’s file to that effect. Would Con please repeat his extension number. Yes, that was correct. Of course, Con said, he realized it would be best to contact only him; he understood fully that it was best to keep it quiet. Yes, Con would like to see him again too.
My God, he finally put the phone down. Oh my God. He was staring at the phone.
Carla holding the towel to her cheek came in with the Doctor.
“He has typhus,” she said.
She made no grimace, Con saw. She just stated it. “You’d better get on,” Con said to her.
“I’ll stay,” she said evenly, before she realized she had said it. Why? She could have ended it all right there, she knew. Why? Was it for the same reason that forced her to challenge them on the trail? Was that it?
She was staring at him with those cool, calm impersonal eyes. He turned to the Doctor. “You’re wrong,” he said. “He hasn’t got typhus.”
“That’s all, Captain. That’s the final insult,” the Doctor said huffily. “I don’t have to put up with this sort of thing,” he said, his lips pursed femininely.
Con wanted to laugh in his face. “That’s no insult. That was my opinion,” he smiled. “Merely my opinion.”
“At Iowa I remembered doing research on a similar case for a semester paper.”
“I went to Iowa at the same time you did,” Con said. “I remember you.”
“You didn’t,” Dr. Bagtu grinned whitely. “Really?”
“I was only there a year but I remember. You carried a black umbrella and wore winged collars and a black derby. You tried unsuccessfully to introduce cricket to the campus and wrote articles on India for the Des Moines Register. How could I forget.”
The Doctor beamed.
“Now for the old school’s sake,” Con conned him.
“Of course, typhus was only a preliminary conclusion. I will have to make tests. But he has symptoms.”
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