Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  And still the moth-man stood for a moment, his wings fluttering in shreds, great shredded holes in a gauze curtain.

  And then the moth-man fell. He fell to the ground in a heap, and his wings fluttered rapidly, then stopped, and were only stirred by the wind.

  I rubbed my horse’s neck, and he calmed, and I heard Charmian’s horse stop moving in the grass. I looked over to her. She still sat astride her horse, but she had her arms around her horse’s neck, and her eyes were wide with terror.

  I turned back around and tried to nudge my horse forward. He finally took a few steps and then stopped again. I nudged him gently with my heel, and he went forward again a few more feet. We were about ten feet from where the moth-man lay in the grass.

  Then my horse shivered and snorted, but I managed to keep him from bolting. The moth-man was stirring in the grass. It was slowly turning upon its side to face me. Its red eyes dimly glowed. I could now see the moth-man’s face clearly in the moonlight where it lay in the dried grass. It was a great, big creature, much bigger than a human, and what had once been its wings, those shredded curtains, must have been enormous. Its body was dark, and long, and muscled much like a human being. The talons were long nails on human-looking hands. It wore no clothes, and I could see that its skin was like that of a bat’s. Its head was large in proportion to its body, larger than human proportions. It had no nose or mouth. It had no ears. It only had those two round glowing red eyes and they looked right at me.

  And then I knew the moth-man’s voice, the voice of its mind. It spoke to me in thoughts and pictures and the communication happened instantly, all at once. What I describe here, I experienced all at once:

  Yes, it said, it was a Sesu-khenti-sha as spoken by the ancient tongues of men. The name meant “Gardener of Time.” It was a creature that cultivated time and grazed upon it. It traveled between universes, sowing seeds of time, and harvesting them. It had the power to create vibrations in space in which stable worlds could form. It was a weaver of space and its vibrations. Its harvest came in knowing and experiencing the feelings of the creatures that lived in the time and space that it had woven. Thoughts and feelings are energy and energy is time. All things have energy, all things have time, but on earth man has had the most time because he has had the most thoughts. Man has the greatest power over time among all creatures and things that live in the time of the earth. The Sesu-khenti-sha had woven the space fabric of earth, and had helped it to become capable of sustaining human life, and the life of the earth, and especially human life with all its joys, fed the Sesu-khenti-sha. They fed on human feelings of joy like honey. And in this sustenance this being and its fellow creatures had a bond with the human race, who they considered their younger brothers. For thousands of years the Sesu-khenti-sha had cultivated the time of the Valley of the Moon, helping those that built the time machine long ago. The builders of the time machine were the Neniu, the Masters of Time, also known as the Finishers, because they were the ones who made final preparation of the earth for its inhabitation by human beings. The Finishers had tuned the time of the earth by positioning the moon in its orbit, and then by establishing fine-tuning centers at points around the earth, such as they had done here beneath Sonoma Mountain. But now all was wrong. Time had been poisoned by the Martians who were under the control of the NYMZA. Just as the NYMZA had taken control of the minds of the Martians, they had also taken control of most of the Sesu-khenti-sha, and now instead of cultivating the fields of destiny, the Sesu-khenti-sha lurk in the shadows preying upon and feeding off the fear of mankind— poisoning the minds of men— poisoning the very ground beneath their feet. Now Sonoma Valley was becoming poisoned. The time machine below the mountain and valley was out of control. The dying Sesu-khenti-sha told me that only I could stop the poisoning by closing the Door of Time which the NYMZA had opened. It told me that I would soon be given the Key to Time, and I must use it to close the door, before all time on earth became corrupted. It had tried to warn me before up on the rock, but I had not understood. Now the Sesu-khenti-sha told me to get off the mountain, get out of the valley before it was too late. It had done all that it could.

  And then the light in the moth-man’s eyes went out, and he died, and I knew that he had died, because I no longer felt his thoughts. And as in the shimmering of a heat mirage, the moth-man’s body and the burnt bones and carcass of the saber-toothed tiger wavered upon the ground, faded into transparency, and ceased to exist in our universe.

  I sat upon my horse looking down upon the dried grass. It still bore the crushed imprint of where the moth-man and the tiger carcass had lain. I turned in my saddle and looked over at Charmian. She was still staring, wide-eyed, holding on to the neck of her horse.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” I whispered. “Get off this mountain.”

  Charmian continued to stare out across the clearing.

  “Charmian!” I said in a sharp, loud whisper. She snapped her head up to look at me.

  “The shortest trail down,” I said. “Which way?”

  She kept looking at me.

  “Which way?” I asked again.

  “The lake,” Charmian finally said. “On the other side of the lake.”

  I knew what she meant. Jack and I had taken that trail earlier in the day.

  “Come on,” I said, and I started to rein my horse around to go back to the lake. Just as I did, Charmian cried:

  “Watch out!”

  I looked up across the clearing. A giant wall of colored light, like a transparent, glowing drape descended from out of the sky, dropped into the clearing, and then parted to reveal a mass of moving shapes on the other side. The shapes came forward into the clearing and I could see their complete form. They were dinosaurs— great beasts with massive jaws and walking forward on their hind legs.

  “Now!” I shouted, and I dug my heels into my horse’s sides and reined him all the way about. He started off into the trees, and as my horse and I moved forward, I glimpsed out of the corner of my eyes Charmian on her horse starting off along with me.

  We galloped into the thick stand of trees. I could hear the loud foot-falls of the dinosaurs in the clearing, and I could hear a rushing sound of something else coming up from behind us, but I didn’t turn around to look. I was concentrating on the trees ahead.

  Suddenly Charmian cried:

  “Limb!”

  Just at the last second, I ducked my head before smashing into a tree limb looming in the darkness. My horse broke through the stand of trees and we were back at the lake. I kept my horse in a gallop along the lakeshore, and then took him up over a rise on my left and down a trail. I could hear Charmian coming behind me, her horse in a gallop.

  Down we went on the trail as fast as we could. I had no experience in trying to gallop down hill, and so now I pulled back on the reins of my horse before he threw me to the ground. Charmian came up beside me on her horse and then passed me by. We twisted down the mountain trail through the dark of the forest. In only moments it seemed we were off the mountain and galloping at full speed along the dirt road that led around the lower pasture.

  We reached the turn in the road and kept riding fast until we were clear of the woods and completely out in the open, and then we drew our horses to a halt and looked back up at the mountain. The whole mountainside was lit up with those strange colored lights, as if a giant, glowing curtain hung in the air.

  “It’s like an aurora borealis,” Charmian said.

  “Now we know Jack wasn’t seeing things,” I said. “Don’t we?”

  “He told you about that giant bat and the dinosaurs?” Charmian asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “and a lot of other things. What do you know about it all?”

  “Jack said it was a secret and I shouldn’t talk about it,” Charmian said.

  “You didn’t believe him,” I said.

  “No,” Charmian said. “I thought he was imagining things— maybe even losing his mind. He had geologists up here studyi
ng something. He said it was earthquakes at first. Then he started talking about dinosaurs. Then he refused to discuss the matter at all. He told me to forget what he said, which I was only too glad to do.”

  “Now you’ll believe him,” I said. “As you can see all this is very real. This was what the scientists were up here studying.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” Charmian asked.

  “I came to visit you and Jack,” I said. “Now I don’t know why I’m here. I think I’ve overstayed my welcome. I think I’ve made some big mistakes tonight. I think you’ve made some big mistakes tonight. And I think we’re all in for a whole lot of trouble. I think we should all get out of here.”

  “This is my home,” Charmian said.

  “A little while ago you were trying to destroy it,” I said. “And now— now I think it’s about to blow up in all of our faces.”

  Suddenly the glowing lights along the side of the mountain blinked off, just as if someone had thrown an electric switch. The absolute silence in which we had been wrapped I suddenly noticed, for when the lights went off over the mountain, the crickets and the frogs started singing again.

  “It stopped,” Charmian said.

  “For now,” I said. “It stopped for now. No telling when it might start up again. We should all get out of here.”

  “And go where?” Charmian asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you and Jack should go back to Oakland.”

  “It has stopped,” Charmian said, looking up at the mountain lit only by the moonlight. “I don’t think anything else will happen tonight. I’m going back to the cottage. We can decide what to do in the morning.”

  She looked over to me.

  “Decide what we’ll tell Jack,” Charmian said.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll go back.”

  “To the cottage?” Charmian asked.

  “To Bess,” I said, “where I belong.”

  Charmian reined her horse around and trotted off down the road. I followed on my horse after her.

  We kept on along the dirt road and came up behind the cottage and the other buildings behind it, and then down across the meadow and up to the barns again. The kerosene lights inside the horse barn still blazed. We rode through the barn door and both of us dismounted.

  “Go on back to the house,” I said. “I’ll take care of the horses. Go on. I used to groom the horses in my circus days. Go ahead, they’ll be all right.”

  Charmian handed me the reins of her horse.

  “Magic Man— “ Charmian started to say.

  “Go on,” I said. “We’ve said enough for one night.”

  Charmian dropped her head, turned, and went out of the barn.

  I led the horses to their stalls, took off their saddles and blankets, and rubbed down both of them. I then went over and snuffed out the kerosene lanterns, and then went out the barn door, closed the door, and latched it.

  I turned to go back to the house and was met with yet another amazing sight.

  Above the little dell that lay between the horse barn and the cottage hovered a long, dark cylinder. It hung silently in the night sky, its shape outlined by a glow of reflected moonlight. For an instant I gave a start— and then settled back on my feet. I had recognized the aerial object: it was the U.S.S. Cypher.

  The cylindrical ship lowered down toward the earth, tilting down on one end and then the other, tracing a ‘z’ in the night sky, like a leaf falling through the air. One end almost touched the earth, and then the other end came down until the whole body of the ship floated above the ground by only about four or five feet. A door on the side of the ship suddenly slid open, revealing a view of the ship’s brightly lit interior. A set of steps telescoped out of the side of the ship from beneath the door’s threshold and the silhouette of a man appeared in the doorway. Two legs on the steps contacted the ground and the man at the door descended the steps and came walking toward me. As he approached I could see that he was a civilian, dressed in a suit. As he came even closer I recognized the cast of his face. He was bald-headed, had a mustache, and wore glasses. It was Kolman Czito.

  “How long has it been, Mr. Czito?” I asked.

  “Twenty-two years,” Mr. Czito said, shaking my hand. “Twenty-two years and counting.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “We haven’t seen each other in twenty-two years.”

  “That’s right,” Mr. Czito said.

  “Once I thought twenty-two years was a long time,” I said.

  “When was that?” Mr. Czito asked.

  “When I was twenty-two,” I said.

  “Are you ready?” Mr. Czito asked.

  I nodded, and said, “As I’ll ever be.”

  We walked back to the airship, and I followed Mr. Czito up the steps and through the door to the ship’s brightly lit interior. We passed along a corridor where several sailors worked at control boards.

  Mr. Czito went to a steel ladder and started climbing it. I followed him up to the top deck. There I was met by Lt. Nimitz.

  “Where’s Captain Wilson?” I asked.

  “He’s on the bridge,” Lt. Nimitz said. “He’s assigned me to your operation tonight.”

  “I see,” I said.

  We went down the corridor to the escape trunk and came upon the two navy divers who had accompanied me into the ocean before. They were in the middle of putting on their diving suits— brand-new diving suits that looked very unusual.

  “Hello, boys,” I said.

  “Hello, sir,” one of the divers said.

  “Sir,” the other diver said with a nod.

  “Going to show me the way out again, eh?” I asked. They nodded.

  “Well,” I said, “let’s hope the dive goes better tonight than it did the last time.”

  “Mr. Tesla wants to make sure of that,” Mr. Czito said, “and to insure it we have a shiny new toy for you.”

  Lt. Nimitz slid open a large metal door, revealing a compartment containing several diving suits. These were no ordinary diving suits; they were just like what the two navy divers were in the process of putting on. They looked more like air-pressure suits designed for activity in the vacuum of interplanetary space. They were made of a copper-hued metal. The joints in the shoulders, arms, waist, and legs of the suits were composed of sections of metal which could telescope and pivot with the movements of the wearer. Copper-hued helmets hung next to each of the suits, and their visors were made of a red glass-like substance, just like on the visor of the helmet that I had used two nights earlier.

  “These suits come straight from the fabricators,” Lt. Nimitz said. “We’ve had no time to fully test any of them. You and the other two divers will be giving three of them their first full field test tonight.”

  “Diving suits,” I said.

  “Much more than just diving suits,” Mr. Czito said. “These are complete environmental suits, and can be used underwater or in outer space. They carry their own oxygen supply, their own gravity fields— and their own time generators.”

  “Time generators?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” Mr. Czito said. “You won’t have to deal with the time distortion problem you had the other night. The field generated by your suit will maintain the rate of time passage that exists aboard this ship— ‘ship time’ we call it. You don’t have to worry about taking compression stops, either. You can go straight down to the bottom of the ocean and come straight back up again. And you won’t have to worry about any problems arising with an air hose.”

  “Oh,” I said, “I like this. I like this very much. These are like the pressure suits we used on Mars.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Czito said, “only these are quite a bit more sophisticated.”

  “I can see that,” I said.

  “Now here is the switch that you will install,” Mr. Czito said. He went over to another door, slid it open, and revealed a cylindrical shaped object about three and a half feet long. It was constructed of an outer framework of white
rods sealed off by sections of long, transparent panels that looked like glass. (I later found out the panels were not glass but some kind of synthetic dielectric.) Through the transparent panels I could see a row of red crystals flashing rapidly with a brilliant light, and at the end of the red crystals, a white crystal flashing light in a brilliant rainbow spectrum.

  “A Master Crystal,” I said.

  “Yes,” Mr. Czito said. “On the end there. On the opposite end from the Master Crystal is an electrical receptacle which you will plug into one of the ports of the Bell. I’ll show you on a diagram over here.”

  Mr. Czito led me to a table and unrolled a scroll of paper. It was a detailed blueprint of the Bell, drawn by Mr. Tesla. There was also a drawing of the three and a half foot long control switch, and a picture showing a figure in a pressure suit fitting the end of the control switch on to one of the protruding ports on the Bell.

  “You see?” Mr. Czito asked. “You simply approach the Bell and plug the long switch into one of these metal knobs protruding all along the circumference of the device. Those knobs are spark gap electrodes. We call them the ‘ports.’”

  “Does it matter which port I plug the switch into?” I asked.

  “No,” Mr. Czito said. “That’s the beauty of it. It’s so simple. Just go down and plug the switch in, and come back up to the ship. The switch will do all the rest.”

  “I think I can handle that,” I said.

  “I’m certain you can,” Mr. Czito said. “Only one thing. Mr. Tesla told me to warn you. That thing you encountered down there— that creature.”