Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “It was my daily dose,” Jack said. “I take that same dose every morning.”

  “The doctor said it’s because of your kidneys,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “That’s right,” Jack said. “I’d appreciate it if you told no one.”

  “I have no one to tell,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “Can I come up top in a bit?” Jack asked.

  “In your condition,” Mr. Tesla said, “I would think you would want to remain here below. We are facing grave dangers up top.”

  “I know,” Jack said. “We could all die.”

  “That’s right,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “I’d rather die up top than down here in this bunk,” Jack said.

  Mr. Tesla looked about the room, and then back to Jack.

  “So would I,” Mr. Tesla said. “Rest a bit. When you feel you have the strength, have one of the sailors to bring you up to the pilot’s cabin.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Tesla,” Jack said.

  Mr. Tesla nodded, and then went out of the door.

  Jack lay back in the bunk and closed his eyes.

  “Can you really get us out of here?” Charmian asked.

  I looked over at her. The Martians had just locked me back into the handcuffs on the wall and left us alone in the room again.

  “There are at least three ways I could get us out of here,” I said.

  “Are you going to try at least one of them?” Charmian asked.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m going to get us out. But there’s more to this escape than just slipping a pair of handcuffs. This is going to take some doing. You’re going to have to be patient.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” Charmian said.

  “Right now we need more information,” I said.

  “How are we going to get it?” Charmian asked.

  “I’m going to go down that outside corridor and nose around the ship,” I said.

  “You can do that?” Charmian asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “And in the meantime what am I supposed to do?” Charmian asked.

  I looked at her with her arms locked over her head.

  “Guess for now you’ll just have to hang around,” I said.

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” Charmian said.

  I think Charmian really believed that I could not escape, because when I did, she had an expression on her face that I had never seen during any of my shows on the Orpheum stage.

  The first order of business in extricating oneself from any pair of manacles is in determining the make and exact construction of said manacles. It is a great help if one can glimpse the manacle’s key and remember its configuration. This was the great help I now had. The Martian had flashed that key in front of my face when he had come to unlock the handcuffs. I closed my eyes now and concentrated on that moment— I did my own form of time traveling. I saw the key in the Martian’s ghostly white hand. I saw the configuration of its teeth.

  “What are you doing?” Charmian asked.

  “I’m making a key,” I said.

  “How? With what?” Charmian asked.

  “With my memory,” I said. “I’m making a key out of my thoughts.”

  “You’re going to think us out of here?” Charmian asked. “Good luck!”

  “Watch,” I said.

  I kicked the heel of my left shoe against the metal floor of the room. In the second kick, the heel of my shoe pivoted away from the sole, revealing a small, recessed compartment containing four small lock picks bound together by a loop of thread.

  “What’s that?” Charmian asked, looking down at my shoe.

  “Lock-picks,” I said.

  “What good will they do down there?” Charmian asked.

  “No good down there,” I said. “But they’re not going to stay down there. I will now show you that I am Houdini.”

  I slipped off my right shoe, revealing my sock with its cut-away, leaving my toes free to move— and to grab.

  “Your feet,” Charmian said. “I remember. You can use your feet like hands.”

  “Now if they had handcuffed my legs, this would’ve been a little more difficult,” I said. “But this….“

  I grabbed the lock-picks out of the heel recess with my toes, and then slipped off my right shoe as well.

  “This is a little easier,” I said.

  With my right hand I grabbed the loop of chain where it came down out of the eyelet in the wall and then swung my legs up into the air until my right foot holding the lock-picks was even with my face.

  “Now comes a difficult part,” I said, “finding the right lock-pick. Let’s see, that one looks about right for the key that I saw the Martian use.”

  I brought my selected lock-pick up between my toes and raised my foot toward the handcuffs above my head. My body now formed a loop with my neck and upper back against the wall, my lower back curving away from the wall at a ninety degree angle, and my legs slung back against the wall. I was supporting the whole of my body’s weight with my right hand clinched in a grip on the chain above my head. My right foot approached the handcuffs binding my wrists. Looking up, I brought my toe carefully toward the keyhole of the handcuffs. There was only the one keyhole for the two cuffs. That meant that only one lock had to be defeated to free both of my hands. These handcuffs were made as a single unit, like a bean giant.

  I noticed that the sound of Charmian’s breathing had stopped. She was holding her breath.

  I got the lock-pick to the keyhole and carefully and slowly pushed it in. I closed my eyes and thought of the key that I had seen the Martian holding a few minutes before. I now used that picture of the key to direct the motions of the lock-pick. Carefully, slowly, I pushed the lock-pick along, all the while feeling my way through the metallic channel that now in my mind had grown to the proportions of a vaulted chamber in some massive tomb.

  CLICK! CLICK!

  The handcuffs sprang open. My hands slipped down, my legs swung down to the floor, and I jumped away from the wall.

  “You did it!” Charmian exclaimed.

  “Sh!” I whispered.

  “You did it!” Charmian whispered.

  “I told you I’d show you,” I said. I dropped the lock-picks back into the recess in my heel and then snapped the heel back in place. Then I started putting my shoes back on.

  “Now get me out,” Charmian said.

  “You better stay here,” I said.

  “I want out of these things— now,” Charmian said.

  “I need to poke around this ship,” I said. “I can do that a lot better by myself.”

  I started toward the door.

  “What happens if the Martians come back while you’re gone?” Charmian asked. “What do I tell them?”

  “Um,” I said, “tell them— tell them I went on a coffee break.”

  “Magic Man!” Charmian said in a loud whisper.

  “Sh!” I said.

  I turned to the door and tried to open it. It was locked, and I was almost certain that it had been locked, but I have learned to always try a lock first. Sometimes people neglect to turn a lock and leave it open. I have made more than one escape in my career by simply pushing the door open. No one would believe it.

  This time I was not so lucky. The door had been locked. It was a bolt-type lock, and its mechanism was sealed inside the door behind a metal face-plate that had been fixed into position by metal screws. This face-plate was an access door designed for repairs. I now set to work to make my own repair on the door. I took out a little metal disc I carry on a key chain and used it as a screwdriver blade to remove the screws that were affixing the face-plate to the door. It was slow work, slow for the amount of time I had given myself, but I tried to hurry without hurrying too much. That odd feeling of time speeding up was starting to hit me, and I tried to beat the feeling down. When I had unscrewed the last bolt, I removed the face-plate from the door, and the workings of the interior bolts were revealed to me. I
t was now a simple matter to pull those bolts back. But then I saw something that made me want to laugh. I saw how I could quickly disassemble the bolts themselves from the locking mechanism. I could remove the bolts. Then, when the Martians went to turn the lock in the door again, it would sound just like they had thrown the bolts into the door jamb, but there wouldn’t be any bolts in the mechanism at all, and the door wouldn’t be locked. So I took the extra time to remove the bolts, and then carefully replaced the face-plate and screwed it back into position against the door. While I was busy screwing the face-plate back on to the door, Charmian whispered to me loudly:

  “I thought you were going!”

  “Sh!” I said. “Patience!”

  I finally got the last screw of the face-plate tightened, and then turned to Charmian, and said:

  “Now I’m going.”

  “I still want out,” she whispered.

  “Later,” I said.

  “I feel like a ham in the smoke house,” Charmian said.

  “But you look a lot better,” I said.

  I turned back to the door. Now it was time for me to get out. I slid the door open a few inches and peered around. No one was in sight. I slid the door open a little further, stuck my head out and looked in one direction and then the other. The whole place was empty both ways. All I could see was one long corridor. I stepped out into the corridor and slid the door shut behind me.

  I crept down the ship’s empty corridor and approached a door that I tried to open, but it would not slide. So I left it alone and continued on down the corridor, all the while looking backwards and forwards. I reached another door and applied gentle pressure to its handle. The door gave way and slid back, and I peered through it.

  The room was small, and at my first glance appeared to be empty. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. There was a panel of electrical switches on one wall and against another wall a long cylinder, like the decompression and etheric scanning chambers on board the Cypher. I approached this cylinder and saw that it had a glass window in its top. I looked down through the window and gazed upon the face of an old man— an earthman!

  The old man appeared to be asleep and had a number of wires affixed to his forehead with little discs. I saw the old man’s eyes move under his eyelids and knew that he was alive. He was either awake or dreaming in his sleep. I tapped on the window.

  The old man instantly opened his eyes and looked at me. He stared at me a moment and then his eyes opened wide and he said:

  “Houdini!”

  I could hear his voice through the glass. Even though I did not know the old man, he obviously knew me. Before I could speak to ask him who he was, he spoke again:

  “You’ve come for me!”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “How can you get me out of here?” the old man asked.

  “I’m working on it,” I said. “You must be patient.”

  The old man closed his eyes and nodded.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  The old man opened his eyes.

  “My name?” he asked. “You don’t know my name?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “I’m Dellshau,” the old man said.

  “Dellshau?” I asked.

  “Yes! Yes!” Dellshau exclaimed.

  “Good to meet you, Mr. Dellshau,” I said.

  “If you didn’t know my name,” Dellshau asked, “how could you have known to come for me?”

  “I haven’t really come for you,” I said. “It’s more that I’ve come upon you. I’ve been captured by the Martians and I’m trying to escape. I see that you have been captured also.”

  “Captured,” Dellshau said, “and tortured. They have broken my spirit. They have used me cruelly. But I haven’t given them half the information they wanted. I won’t give them that. They can kill me, but I won’t give them that.”

  Suddenly, I remembered where I had heard the name Dellschau before— it had been in the story of the Aero Club that Mr. Tesla had told me.

  “Are you the Dellshau of the Sonora Aero Club?” I asked.

  “You do know me!” Dellschau exclaimed. “Yes! Yes! That’s me!”

  “Mr. Dellschau,” I asked, “are you all right in there?”

  “I’ll live,” Dellschau said. “I’m determined to see my home again, if there’s any way.”

  “What have they done to you?” I asked.

  “They are using me as a channel,” Dellschau said.

  “A channel?” I asked. “What do you mean— ‘channel’?”

  “A psychic channel,” Dellschau said. “What the Spiritualists call a ‘medium.’ The Martians are using me as a medium for transmitting and receiving information psychically.”

  “Transmitting and receiving?” I asked. “The Martians are having you transmit and receive? From whom are you receiving?”

  “From NYMZA,” Dellschau said.

  My blood ran cold.

  “What is the information?” I asked.

  “Information flows from both sides,” Dellschau said, “from the Martians to NYMZA, from NYMZA to the Martians. It is all about time. The numbers of time. They are trying to find the numbers.”

  “The numbers for what?” I asked.

  “The numbers for the frequencies of time,” Dellschau said. “Time is a complex of cyclical waves forming sequences of frequencies describable by sets of numbers. All of us are entangled and enmeshed in these cycles. Our frequencies are our essential selves, our functional archetypes, our…names. The Martians want the numbers of these frequencies to operate their time machine. The NYMZA want the numbers so they can re-enter our time-line. The NYMZA give the Martians the numbers they need to operate the Bell so they can travel in time and, in turn, the Martians sample time pulses in our universe and transmit that data to the NYMZA who then use that information to reconstruct their lost names— their functional archetypes. Fortunately, the NYMZA are insane and have difficulty remembering some of the numbers. I think this inability to remember the tempo of their functions is something that was locked into their minds long ago to keep them imprisoned. I often have to repeat the numbers to NYMZA over and over. So you see I am the channel for this passage of information between Martian and NYMZA. I convey the numbers, but I do not always convey the right numbers. Sometimes they discover this and they torture me.”

  “Who tortures you?” I asked. “One of the Martians?”

  “No, not a Martian,” Dellschau said. “He’s an earthman, one of the Martian’s allies.”

  “An earthman?” I asked. “What language does he speak? English?”

  “No,” Dellschau said, “not English. He speaks only German.”

  “German?” I asked. “He is a German?”

  “Yes,” Dellschau said. “He works with the Martians.”

  “Do you know this German’s name?” I asked. “Have you ever heard it used?”

  “Yes,” Dellschau said. “I’ve heard the Martians refer to him as Professor Miethe.”

  “Do you think this Professor Miethe is on board this ship now?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Dellschau said. “I think he was taken back to Germany.”

  “How long ago?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dellschau said. “I no longer have a sense of time. I don’t even know how long I’ve been in here. I only recall that what I would believe to be a short time ago I heard the Martians and the Professor talking about taking him back to Germany. I have not seen the Professor since.”

  “Mr. Dellschau,” I said, “I’m going to do the best I can to get you out of here. But for now you must remain as you are and be patient. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Dellschau said. “I am not concerned. I am an old man. I have lived my life, but I would like to see my home one more time. You do the best you can. I know if there is any way out, you’ll find it. Good luck, wonder weaver.”

  “Good luck to you, my friend,” I said.
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  I started for the door, but then turned back and looked down through the window of the cylinder. Dellschau still had his eyes opened.

  “Mr. Dellschau,” I asked, “how did you know who I am?”

  Dellschau smiled.

  “I’ve seen you on stage before,” Dellschau said. “And I also know about your trip to Mars with Nikola Tesla in 1893.”

  “You do know me,” I said.

  “I know you,” Dellschau said. “I know you as know else knows you, for I know your numbers. And I know I now have a fighting chance to see my home again.”

  “You’ll see it again,” I said. “I promise you.”

  Dellshau closed his eyes and nodded. I put my hand to the glass of the window. He opened his eyes. I gave a nod, and then turned away.

  I went to the door, slid it open, looked up and down the corridor, and then went out into it, sliding the door shut behind me.

  I heard footsteps ringing upon metal suddenly. Someone was descending a ladder somewhere. I rushed back to the room where Charmian was locked against the wall, got to the door, opened it, and went back inside, sliding the door shut behind me.

  “What took so long?” Charmian asked. “You were gone a long time.”

  “I found someone,” I said.

  “Who?” Charmian asked.

  “Another human being from earth,” I said. “He was an old man.”

  I went over and locked my wrists back into the cuffs hanging against the wall.

  “When do we get out?” Charmian asked.

  “Soon,” I said.

  “How soon is soon?” Charmian asked.

  I looked over at Charmian.

  “Bess used to ask me the same thing,” I said.

  “What?” Charmian asked.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Soon is not immediately. This is going to take a lot of doing.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Charmian said.

  On board the Cypher Mr. Tesla and his crew worked to convert the vessel from a submarine-airship into a timeship. Electrical cables ran from the room with the etheric scanning chamber down the corridor and a hatchway to the engine room. Inside the etheric scanning chamber a crewman lay in a suspended animation. His body had been isolated in a time system separate from the rest of the ship; he was the time reference from which the ship would depart and return. In the engine room Mr. Tesla, Kolman Czito, Lt. Nimitz and a mechanic worked upon the engines. Jack appeared in the doorway and they all looked over to him.