Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  The place was filled with people in white robes, marching and singing, marching in a circle. Djudhi led me through these people and on the other side of them I saw—

  A great crowd of men levitated in mid-air above the blazing, white-hot surface of a caldera of molten lava!

  I stood watching these men, who were wearing nothing but those wrappings of white cloth, hang upside down in the air, their eyes shut, their mouths shut, their arms folded across their chests. None of them moved from their place in the air fifty feet above the surface of molten lava.

  “The test of fire,” Djudhi said. “If they lose concentration for even a moment— they plunge to their deaths in the molten rock below. It is a test of courage, of will, of faith— and of thought-form!”

  I kept staring at the upside down floating men, listening to the chants, the singing, the drumming. It seemed the greatest madness and the greatest inevitability, all at once. Finally, I found my tongue, and asked:

  “Why do you show me this?”

  “Because,” Djudhi said, “you yourself must soon take this test of fire.”

  “Captain!” a sailor in the control room shouted. “We have an image off the port bow coming this way fast!”

  Lt. Nimitz snapped the binoculars to his eyes and looked out the window.

  “It’s the Martians, all right,” Lt. Nimitz said. “Coming right at us. Alert all hands!”

  The Martian airship plummeted out of the sky and fired an electric ray at the Cypher. All the men on the Cypher were nearly thrown out of their chairs or off their feet by the resounding explosion.

  A sailor reported: “That just took down fifty percent of our force-field!”

  Mr. Tesla ordered: “Fire at will!”

  An array of electric beams shot out from the prow of the Cypher and struck the Martian airship in a brilliant explosion.

  “We’re getting a wireless transmission from the Martians,” the communications officer said.

  “Put it on the speaker,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “This is TAR-A-GAL,” the voice sounded from the control room’s communications desk. “I am the Captain of this ship. I will speak to your Captain.”

  “This is the Captain speaking,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “You are the Captain?” TAR-A-GAL asked over the speaker. “What is your name?”

  “You know my name— Nikola Tesla.”

  “You are not the Captain of that ship,” TAR-A-GAL said.

  “Why do you say that?” Mr. Tesla asked.

  “Because I know,” TAR-A-GAL said. “You are not a military officer. Where is the military officer in command of that ship?”

  “Do you refer to Captain Wilson?” Mr. Tesla asked.

  “Let me speak to Captain Wilson,” TAR-A-GAL said.

  “Captain Wilson is not available,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “Make him available,” TAR-A-GAL said. “I will speak to Captain Wilson only.”

  “Captain Wilson has a new assignment,” Mr. Tesla said, “in this ship’s brig. He is being held on a charge of espionage. Would you know anything about that?”

  No sound came from the speaker.

  “You do not wish to discuss the espionage?” Mr. Tesla asked. “Very well. Let us then discuss your surrender.”

  “I will only discuss your surrender,” TAR-A-GAL’s voice sounded again on the speaker.

  “On that subject,” Mr. Tesla said, “there is nothing to be said.”

  “Perhaps you will find much to say once you know who I have confined aboard this ship,” TAR-A-GAL said.

  “I am well aware who is on board your ship,” Mr. Tesla said. “It is Charmian London and Harry Houdini.”

  TAR-A-GAL’s laughter erupted from the speaker.

  “Not correct!” TAR-A-GAL intoned. “Your information is unreliable. I do have the London woman, but not Mr. Houdini. He has managed to elude us for the time being. I am letting him play out his little stunt to only demonstrate its futility when we recapture him very shortly. No, I do not refer to the woman or to Houdini. I refer to another person who you will find even more interesting: an elderly gentleman and an old acquaintance of yours, Tesla. A very fine old man who has proven very useful to me, but now I may consider releasing him from his services in exchange for your Captain Wilson.”

  “Now why would you be interested in our Captain Wilson?” Mr. Tesla asked. “Could it be because he is not our Captain Wilson— but a Martian?”

  TAR-A-GAL’s laughter erupted over the speaker.

  “I know him only as Captain Wilson,” TAR-A-GAL said. “I would like to see him and talk to him. I believe he is a remarkable man.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Tesla said. “He is a remarkable impersonator. I am afraid we cannot make any exchange.”

  “No?” TAR-A-GAL asked. “You refuse my generous offer before I even tell you the name of the kindly old gentleman? Would you be so ungracious?”

  “What is the man’s name?” Mr. Tesla asked.

  “Finally you ask,” TAR-A-GAL said. “His name is Dellschau— one C.A.A. Dellschau, formerly of the Aero Club of Sonora, California. Do you know him? He says he knows you.”

  “I will take this matter under consideration,” Mr. Tesla said, “and reopen communications in five minutes.”

  “No more than five minutes,” TAR-A-GAL said.

  Mr. Tesla turned to Lt. Nimitz, and said, “Come with me to the brig. Mr. Czito, take command of operations. If the Martian airship moves one inch, fire on it.”

  “What about my wife?” Jack asked.

  “I’ll do all I can,” Mr. Tesla said. “But I can make no guarantees. You must understand that.”

  Mr. Tesla went out of the control room with Lt. Nimitz following behind him. They descended a ladder to the deck below and went down the corridor to the brig. On the way they came upon the ship’s doctor.

  “Come with us,” Mr. Tesla said to the doctor. “I want your opinion.”

  They went up through a door and into a small room with a dark window. Lt. Nimitz closed the door behind them, flipped one switch that turned off the ceiling light and another switch that sent a panel sliding aside behind the glass window. They could now see into an adjacent room through a two-way mirror. In that other room the Martian that had been impersonating Captain Wilson paced back and forth like a wild animal in a cage.

  “He’s been doing that ever since they put him in here,” the doctor said.

  “What do you make of him?” Mr. Tesla asked.

  “You mean: my medical opinion?” the doctor asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “I think that he is insane,” the doctor said.

  “Not just angry?” Mr. Tesla asked.

  “No,” the doctor said. “Something has deeply affected his mind. I had suspected that something was wrong with him even before his impersonation was discovered, but my suspicions had no firm evidence, so I never voiced them to anyone. But I sensed that he was not in control of his moods. His attitude would shift suddenly for no apparent reason. Once I observed him laughing uncontrollably when he thought no one else was present. It almost seemed as if his mind was under the control of some outside intelligence.”

  “What about his physical condition?” Mr. Tesla asked.

  “It is normal, as far as I can tell,” the doctor said.

  “As you know, he has a superficial skin wound on the side of his face.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “He is a Martian, of course,” the doctor said. “He appears to have undergone some kind of cosmetic surgery, probably to make him look more human and specifically more like Captain Wilson.”

  “And what do we know of the real Captain Wilson?” Mr. Tesla asked. “Lt. Nimitz? What do you know?”

  “Captain Forrest Wilson,” Lt. Nimitz said. “He was two years ahead of me at the Naval Academy. He was selected for secret training program before he graduated, his records were sealed, and today there aren’t even any public records of his attendance at the A
cademy— or anywhere else for that matter. He was captain of the Daedalus for three years before taking on the development of the Cypher.”

  “And he was a member of the Wilson family, was he not?” Mr. Tesla asked.

  “The Wilsons of the Sonora Aero Club, you mean?” Lt. Nimitz asked. “Yes, I’ve heard that his uncles were members.”

  “Do you have any idea about what happened to the real Captain Wilson?” Mr. Tesla asked.

  “I can only tell you,” Lt. Nimitz said, “that I noticed Captain Wilson start wearing those white kid leather gloves about three weeks ago— and it really bothered me.”

  “Why?” Mr. Tesla asked.

  “He wore them all the time,” Lt. Nimitz said. “It just wasn’t like him.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Tesla said. “I had heard about the gloves, and then a few other things as well. And then I initiated an investigation.”

  “And that’s how you knew he was a Martian?” Lt. Nimitz asked.

  “No,” Mr. Tesla said. “I received my conclusive information about the impersonation from another source.”

  “It came to you suddenly,” Lt. Nimitz said.

  “You might say it flew to me on wings,” Mr. Tesla said. “We will make the prisoner exchange— this Martian for Mrs. London and Mr. Dellshau.”

  “We get two for the price of one?” Lt. Nimitz asked.

  “It’s a bargain,” Mr. Tesla said. “Let’s just hope that the Martians don’t see it that way.”

  I stood staring at the men floating upside down above that white-hot caldera.

  “The heat,” I said. “How can they possibly withstand the heat?”

  “For them there is no heat,” Djudhi said. “Your deeper mind remembers and understands this, but your conscious mind is amazed. You must understand what we are doing here. I must explain to you our work. We are the Keepers of the Time Modulator— the Keepers of Time itself in this region of the earth. We have been left in custody of the Modulator by the Neniu, the Masters of Time. Our lineage must maintain the Modulator here on Mu. When you were my father, you knew the Work and the Window of Time. Come now with me and I will show you the Window of Time in the Chamber of Destiny.”

  Djudhi walked along the periphery of the cave room. The circular caldera of molten lava was two hundred feet wide and ringed all about by a wall four feet in height. On the other side of this wall the surface of the caldera lay some thirty feet below. The priests of Mu floated upside down above that blazing surface by a full fifty feet. The air in this cave room was so stifling hot that it seemed to me that a person would suffocate to death if they remained there more than a few minutes, but the people moved about in what seemed complete comfort, as if they felt no heat at all.

  I followed Djudhi around the edge of the caldera, weaving through the lines of marching singers and the priests beating the drums. We reached an opening in the wall of rock and Djudhi went through it and I followed after him.

  We were in another narrow tunnel that twisted in a serpentine course a few feet and then branched in two directions. Djudhi took the tunnel to our right. Again we walked along an undulating course. and then, after many feet, reached what appeared to be the end of the tunnel: a solid vertical wall of volcanic rock.

  I looked around, but saw only walls of rock.

  “We’ve come to the end,” I said.

  “And the beginning,” Djudhi replied.

  Then Djudhi raised his hand, and the vertical wall of rock in front of us went upward like a theatre curtain. The raising wall revealed a vast cavern beyond filled with light and swirling multi-colored mists. Djudhi beckoned with his hand for me to follow him, and said:

  “The end and the beginning, both.”

  Then Djudhi went forward into the swirling mist. His figure was obscured for a moment, and then reappeared. He was still steadily walking away. His bald, shaved head was illuminated in an amber flash, and in the next instant became a black silhouette against a haze of purple. Then Djudhi lit up again in another pool of light. He raised his hand. Somehow he knew I was not following him.

  I stepped forward, passing underneath the upraised curtain-wall of rock, looking up all the while. On the other side of the curtain-wall I could see that the whole massive block was simply poised against the inside wall of the cavern. Perhaps it was only floating mid-air. I looked down toward where Djudhi was walking; he was approaching a swirl of colored lights. Again he raised his hand for me to follow.

  I walked forward into the mist and was enveloped with a tingling sensation all over my body. A strange music filled the air; it seemed to come from all directions, but I could see no musicians. Then, as I continued toward Djudhi, I looked upward and saw rows of red metal cylinders protruding from the rock ceiling of the cavern, and I could now perceive that these cylinders were producing the music. I looked back down. Djudhi had stopped walking. I continued on and came up beside him.

  “We are in the Chamber of Destiny,” Djudhi said. “Only the worthy enter here.”

  “You consider me one of the worthy?” I asked.

  “One need not be perfect,” Djudhi said, “to be worthy of the Path through the Chamber of Destiny. Humanity is not perfect, but through the Fires of Time it shall become perfected— either through the Path of Asar or the Path of Heru. The Path of Asar is the Work of the Father, the cycles of rebirth, reincarnation. The Path of Heru is the Mediation of the Son, the Word. You and I are on the Path of Asar, the cycles of rebirth, the male force of Asar planting the soul in the Fields of Time, and then reaping the soul in the Astral Fields. Here, in Time, we live many lives, experience many things— learn many things— forget many things. We become wise— and then foolish. We amass great earthly riches, and then lose them in death. We are reborn as paupers, as beggars even. We die in sickness and poverty, only to be quickly reborn as infants who just as quickly die— and then only to be reborn to long lives of material prosperity and great renown. And then in the next life all these material riches and the beneficence of the crowd are lost to us yet once again.”

  “What’s it all for then?” I asked.

  “All is for All,” Djudhi said. “God requires that which has been, and God requires that which will be, and the Complete Desire of God lies within His Bosom. God lies beyond man’s limited conceptions of morality. He allows the rain to fall upon both the good and the evil. He allows the lion to devour the lamb. This is the nature God has given the material universe, the universe of eating. For us mortals, we can only follow the Path. We can only fulfill our destinies, for we are all a part of the Completed Word— the Completed Destiny. Behold.”

  Djudhi raised his hand, and the swirling lights of the cavern room dimmed into a solid black, the blackest black I have ever experienced. Then, from what seemed an infinite distance, an intensely bright point of light appeared and expanded into a white sphere. Then, another point of light exploded to the left of the first. This point too expanded into a brilliant white sphere. The surface of the two spheres met, touched, and interpenetrated.

  “The First Time and the Second Time,” Djudhi announced.

  The spheres continued to expand until they engulfed each other and their surfaces joined to form a single sphere. Now this single sphere of light continued its expansion, until its surface reached Djudhi and me and we were immersed in its brilliant white interior. The moment we entered the sphere the space around us reverberated with the roar of thunder.

  “Time as we know it,” Djudhi said.

  And then within that brilliant white, concentric circles of darkness formed, something like the patterns found on a Fresnel lens. The individuated circles of white were concentrically nested spheres, and they expanded, contracted, rotated, and separated. The continuous roar of thunder broke apart into an infinite echo of cracks and booms.

  “The weighing and measuring,” Djudhi said. “The First Operations: Worlds upon worlds forming concentrically, parallel, interpenetrating. Separate times forming. And within each time, a system of Destiny
— and within that Destiny— life takes on material form. The first life— the life of the stars.”

  Now those moving spheres of light separated further and began spinning and flattening. The space between them expanded and darkened and the spinning, flattened spheres resolved into the form of spiral galaxies.

  “We are now in our material universe billions of years ago,” Djudhi said. “We move forward in space and time to that pinwheel of stars before us— our galaxy.”

  At great speed Djudhi and I approached the glowing spiral. Now I could perceive individual stars at its edge. We reached that edge and plunged into it and were immersed in a field of stars.

  “And now we approach our solar system as it was many millions of years ago,” Djudhi said. “At that time a giant planet circled our sun, this planet which we approach.”

  We sped toward a planet that looked much like earth, a sphere of glowing blue and white, but surrounded by several moons.

  “This is the earth?” I asked.

  “No,” Djudhi said. “This was a planet that was much bigger than earth. It was destroyed in a great conflict.”

  Suddenly I saw the planet shimmer in a halo of light— and an instant later the planet was rent asunder in a massive, fiery explosion. It split in one great crack, revealing the planet’s glowing interior which faded from a blazing white to the red of embers as the planet continued to disintegrate in space. The two halves crumbled into pieces, and then yet smaller pieces that slowly spread out through space forming a field of floating rocks.