Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  TAR-A-GAL stood, gripping Charmian about the waist, studying Jack, waiting for the moment of pleasure when he saw fear and suffering flash over Jack’s face. But Jack just kept standing there, with his head slightly bowed, his chin down just a bit, his eyelids half closed, his lips slightly parted.

  Then Jack smiled. TAR-A-GAL no doubt did not understand this, or he would have acted immediately. Instead, TAR-A-GAL slightly loosened his hold on Charmian to study Jack’s face closer. This was TAR-A-GAL’s mistake.

  Charmian saw Jack standing there one instant, and the next there was a sudden blur, and in the instant following that, suddenly, somehow, Jack had leapt upon TAR-A-GAL, leapt with his hands outstretched like claws, his teeth like fangs, his eyes wild, his face contorted with the snarl of an animal. Jack’s fingers sank deeply into TAR-A-GAL’s throat and gripped until the fingertips disappeared into the white flesh. Blood shot from TAR-A-GAL’s juglar vein— his grip upon Charmian weakened— and she broke free and ran. The toe of her boot caught upon an outcropping of rock and she plumeted face down into the grass. When she rolled over, she saw Jack riding upon the back of TAR-A-GAL, his hands gripped around TAR-A-GAL’s bloody throat. Jack had torn TAR-A-GAL’s hat and goggles from his head, and the Martian squinted his eyes shut, blinded by the full glare of the sun.

  TAR-A-GAL fired his ray-gun wildly into the air, and tried to swing his arm around to fire at Jack, but was so weakened by Jack’s choking assault that he could only stumble in circles. Jack kept clinging to TAR-A-GAL’s back while the Martian made choking sounds for air and flailed his arms.

  Then TAR-A-GAL’s legs gave way and he collapsed on to the surface of the volcanic rock with Jack still atop his back.

  Jack got off of TAR-A-GAL and stood up. He looked down at the Martian who lay upon the rock, reaching up to his blood-soaked throat, gasping for air.

  Then a strange gray mist came up out of TAR-A-GAL’s mouth and floated up into the air. This mist was followed by little black specks, like tiny insects, flying out of TAR-A-GAL’s mouth. The muscles of the Martian’s face relaxed and he said:

  “I…I’ve been possessed…possessed by…NYMZA. Beware NYMZA.”

  And then TAR-A-GAL heaved a breath and stopped moving.

  Jack got up and turned away from TAR-A-GAL and started toward Charmian where she still lay upon the ground.

  “Jack!” Charmian shouted.

  Jack spun back around. Charmian had seen the mist go back into TAR-A-GAL’s mouth and TAR-A-GAL leaping to his feet. TAR-A-GAL was now standing with his ray-gun raised and aimed at Jack.

  “For NYMZA lives!” TAR-A-GAL growled.

  Charmian saw the revolver in the grass where Jack had dropped it. She grabbed it, aimed it at TAR-A-GAL and fired— and kept firing rapidly until the pistol would only click.

  TAR-A-GAL fired his ray-gun into the air as he went backwards, his body riddled with bullets. He fell off the edge of the pit and struck the bulge of the giant red sphere with his back.

  A peel of sound split the air reverberating from the giant metal sphere— it rose in such volume that Jack thought the sound could carry beyond the earth and out to distant worlds. The ringing continued, undulating like the trump of archangels.

  Jack pulled Charmian up from the ground and they held each other close as the sound moved through them, ringing with the forces of the gods.

  “Jack, Jack, Jack,” Charmian cried, crushing her face against his chest.

  They held each other there at the edge of the jungle, at the edge of the sphere, immersed in the unending trumpeting of the sphere, immersed in the mystery of powers, and worlds, and destinies unguessed.

  I kept looking up at the ceiling of the cavern. Something within me hesitated, and I could feel this hesitation come from my parallel self as well.

  “Do not doubt your powers!” the voice of Djudhi declared. “This is your destiny and the destiny of two parallel worlds! Focus your thoughts! Act as one! Be as one! And NYMZA will no longer be able to confuse your karma, and your silver cords will be freed! Focus and move! Focus and move! Move as one!”

  Djudhi’s words galvanized our will. My parallel self and I looked up to the cavern’s ceiling with a penetrating gaze. In the next moment we were flying straight up, and passed through layers of solid rock, rock which I could see and feel as I passed through it; it was a feeling of passing through sand, of sand passing through one’s body.

  Then we came up to the surface, my parallel self and I. We were inside the stone tower, flying straight up. Then we came up to its top and out, and we could see the jungle below, the volcano, and the red sphere gleaming upon its slope. An undulating sound, like the shimmering scintillation of an enormous gong filled all space around us. The sound kept pealing forth, reverberating and ringing and clanging endlessly as if it would never stop. The sound came from the red sphere, and we flew toward it and the flashing light hovering above it. We flew over the clearing and saw the two airships landed there below, and people now running across the clearing, entering both of the ships.

  My parallel self and I approached the red sphere with its long aerial pointing skyward, the aerial’s tip punctuated by that point of flashing light. In another moment we saw that the point of light was the Bell, spinning around in mid-air, and the flashing light was the control switch which I had attached to one of the ports, the long rod of crystals enclosed in a housing of steel covered with a coating of ceramic. We, my parallel self and I, knew that what we were seeing was the astral counterpart of the Bell and the control switch. But these astral objects were no less real. In truth, they were more real.

  “We must go down and remove the control switch,” my parallel self and I said to each other in unison.

  And with that, a shape began to emerge from the top of the Bell and form out of twinkling lights. The lights formed into the fish-head, the monster, the thing that I had come to think of as the King of NYMZA.

  “You will not touch the Bell,” the fish-head said to us.

  My parallel self and I flew straight down. Before we could reach the Bell, a flurry of objects came out it, came out of the fish-head, and flew straight toward us. As they approached, we saw that they were some kind of monstrous hybrids— bat-winged, red-eyed gargoyles. They swooped in front of us and slapped us with their leathery wings. My parallel self and I punched our way through the monstrosities and kept flying forward.

  Then a space opened up before us and we could see into that strange dimension again where the two-lobed entity spun about. The thing came toward us. Some kind of magnetic pull drew us toward it.

  “Look away from it!” my parallel self and I said to each other.

  We turned our heads away but kept flying forward.

  We reached the Bell and put our hands on the control switch— and were suddenly stunned by a massive electric-like shock that sent us flying back into the air. Then we felt a pull upon our astral cords and looked up.

  The fish-head began rising above the Bell. The whole of the fish-monster was emerging from the Bell. First its shoulders came up, and then its arms, and then we saw that it grasped our entwined astral cords in its hand. The monster kept rising up until it came completely out of the Bell, like a genii emerging from a bottle, and then it hovered there in mid-air.

  “Now I will collect your soul!” the fish-monster said, and it began pulling upon our astral cords, drawing us toward it. We could see into the eyes of the monster that grew in size above us. Its eyes were cold and hateful— and insane.

  “What’s wrong, Mr. Tesla?” the doctor asked.

  Mr. Tesla had been sitting next to him as he examined Mr. Dellshau who lay in a bunk. Mr. Tesla had suddenly jumped to his feet and crossed the room.

  “It’s the bird,” Mr. Tesla said. “It has just collapsed.”

  The doctor turned about to see Mr. Tesla peering intently down upon the white pigeon that now was lying motionless on a table top.

  “It’s just a bird, sir,” the doctor said.


  “No,” Mr. Tesla said. “It is much more than an ordinary bird.”

  Mr. Tesla gently reached out and touched the bird.

  “Her heart is beating normally,” Mr. Tesla said. “It is as if she has just suddenly fallen asleep. What could cause this?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the doctor said. “With all due respect, I just work on people, not birds.”

  Mr. Tesla did not know what was happening with the white pigeon, but my parallel self and I, at that moment, were learning. As we hung in mid-air from our astral cords gripped by that giant fish-monster, the astral body of the white pigeon Mr. Tesla had brought with him suddenly flew down upon us, swooped about, and lifted my parallel self and me upon the back of its wings— just as Nip and Tuck had done for Ed Morrell and me that day at San Quentin. Like Nip and Tuck, this pigeon’s astral body had projected to many times its normal size.

  The pigeon’s mind spoke to my parallel self and me:

  “I come from among the stars your people call the Pleiades to assist your battle with NYMZA. Stay upon my wing and I will take you down to the Bell.”

  Upon the back of the pigeon my parallel self and I swooped back down toward the Bell, passing those gargoyle beings in the air. A bright ray of light shone out from the eye of the pigeon, and the gargoyles fled before us.

  We reached the Bell, and my parallel self and I stretched our arms out beyond the wings of the pigeon, and grasped the control switch rod where it protruded from the side of the Bell. We pulled on the rod and it came off the Bell’s port, and the crystals within the rod went dark. My parallel self and I had the astral control switch rod tightly grasped in our hands.

  A horrific scream split the air.

  It was that fish monster, the NYMZA king, looming before us in the sky.

  “Take us up to the monster’s head,” my parallel self and I said to the pigeon, and the bird flew up in a great arc, circling the NYMZA king, that fish monster who kept constantly growing in size.

  “Fly! Fly!” the NYMZA king shouted. “You cannot fly high enough to reach my throne— to equal my power!”

  My parallel self and I stood upright on the wing of the pigeon. We were flying about the waist of the NYMZA king, a wall of scales that in the physical world would have been thirty stories high. The fish monster kept growing in size and the pigeon kept flying higher.

  My parallel self and I looked out upon the land below us. The jungle and the volcano lay far below. The glistening red sphere was now only a small, bright red circle upon the black of the volcano. I could now see the white pyramids of Mu on the other side of the volcano of which Djudhi had spoken. My parallel self and I looked back toward the monster. He had now grown so huge that we were now flying about the thing’s legs. The monster continued to grow and the pigeon continued to fly upward.

  Now below us the earth flattened and I could see a coastline and the blue horizon of the ocean and the sky beyond and above it hung darkness.

  “You insects cannot reach me!” the fish monster shouted in a booming voice of thunder.

  The white pigeon kept flying higher, circling up toward the fish monster’s shoulders.

  “I can stretch myself out beyond the heavens!” the fish monster shouted. “I am a god! You are mortal! I can stretch myself up to the Moon and the sun!”

  And suddenly the fish monster’s growth exploded, and its body went up past the clouds of earth and into outer space. And still the white pigeon flew upward, and my parallel self and I kept our feet upon the pigeon’s wing and our grip upon the crystalline rod.

  Now we were in outer space, suddenly approaching the surface of the Moon. The pigeon circled the Moon, the earth slipped out of sight, and when we came around up on the other side, we saw the head of the fish monster, the NYMZA king, rise over the surface of the moon, its body stretching all the way back in a long, diminishing line to the surface of the earth.

  And NYMZA screamed:

  “You little thing! You annoyance! It will be easy to crush you and take your soul! It will be as easy to destroy you as it would be to break a butterfly upon a wheel!”

  “And as easy to destroy you as it would be to slay a giant with a stone,” my parallel self and I said in unison, and we threw the crystalline rod like a javeline, and the rod traveled through space, diminished to a point between the eyes of the cosmically giant fish monster— and disappeared.

  The fish monster did not move, did not reply. The thing seemed to become as still as a photograph.

  And then NYMZA screamed a roar that would shatter worlds. It was not just the sound of the fish monster, but of all NYMZA, the uncountable NYMZA, trapped and nameless. They screamed out in rage and horror.

  Then my parallel self and I saw an explosion upon the head of the giant fish monster, an explosion precisely upon the spot between the eyes of that monster where we threw the crystalline rod. The explosion was a flash of red and white light and an actual crumbling of the fish monster’s astral body. He was burning up inside and collapsing inward.

  Suddenly the collapse became an avalanche, and the fish monster’s body fell back to earth at a tremendous speed, and my parallel self and I and the white pigeon were drawn downward with the collapsing fish monster, as if we had been caught in a cyclonic vacuum of force. My parallel self and I kept standing upon the pigeon’s wings, riding the collapse downward in a great spiral toward the earth, and as we swooped downward we could hear the astral body of the monster explode and break in great cracking booms as the voices of NYMZA screamed incoherently.

  We swooped down upon the surface of the earth, circling about the collapsing wreck of the NYMZA king’s astral body. We descended to the red sphere of metal as the fish-monster shrank and collapsed like a balloon raging with an internal fire. The monster kept shrinking until it was perhaps only twenty feet tall, hovering above the Bell. We saw that the monster still grasped our entwined astral cords in its hand. The crystalline rod was impaled between the monster’s black eyes.

  Suddenly the fish-monster, King of NYMZA, opened its hand which grasped our entwined astral cords, and the cords slipped away from the monster and up into the air.

  “Fly!” my parallel self and I said to each other, “fly!”

  We flew off the wing of the white pigeon and toward our astral cords which were beginning to unwind from each other. I suddenly saw my parallel self flash by me as I flew through the air. We were flying in circles about each other, rapidly unwinding our cord from the cord of the other.

  And then we were free.

  I saw my parallel self fly up and away from me, his astral cord trailing single and free behind me, and as I looked at him, he looked at me.

  A wall of grid lines instantly appeared between us— we both knew it was the wall separating the universe we were in from the universe of our parallel self. I knew that my parallel self was in my home universe, and he knew that I was in his. At the instant of that realization we both flew toward each other through one of the squares of the grid, and as we passed through the grid we said to each other in unison:

  “Goodbye Houdini Number Two!”

  And then my parallel self flashed away, and I flashed back— back— back…

  I flashed back into my home universe!

  My amazement was disrupted by the sound of the fish-monster behind me. I spun about in the air. The remnants of the monster were being pulled into the crystalline rod which floated before me in the air.

  Then suddenly the whole of the fish monster was sucked into the end of the rod, whereupon, immediately, all manner of things that had escaped along with the monster was also pulled back in a great whirling vacuum, the flapping gargoyles and other winged things and geometric objects, all of these entities and matter came funneling inward in a great rush and were distorted, shrunk, and swallowed by the end of the crystalline rod. Then the rod itself shrunk toward its tip to the Master Crystal and then the Master Crystal itself blinked out of existence with a thunderous crack of sound.

 
Instantly the Bell which had been levitating above the giant sphere toppled downward through the air, struck the top of the sphere, setting off another tremendous peal of sound, and then the Bell rolled, bounced into the air, came down upon the sphere a second time, set off another thunderous gong, and then rolled off the surface off the sphere and tumbled down into the pit.

  I hung there in space in my astral body, immersed in the ringing thunder of the sphere.

  The white pigeon flew in front of me. It had returned to its normal size. It spoke to me:

  “It is accomplished.”

  And then the pigeon disappeared in a flash of light.

  In the next instant I felt myself being drawn back toward my body. I turned about. A tunnel composed of grid lines was forming below me. I went down through it rapidly and suddenly found myself back in my physical body floating above the caldera of molten lava! The sudden return shocked me, and I started to try to open my eyes, and this very action made my will falter— and I felt myself falling into the molten fire below….

  Lt. Nimitz was retreating back into the stern of the Cypher with what was left of his men. They all flew into the escape trunk and its big door started to slide shut. Just then, Jack and Charmian came running forward from across the clearing as bolts of electric rays shot all about them.

  “Well I’ll be damned! Get in!” Lt. Nimitz called out from the speaker on his helmet.

  Charmian and Jack climbed into the escape trunk and the door closed up behind them.

  “I’ve just had ten of my men incinerated by Martian ray guns while wearing suits with force-field shields,” Lt. Nimitz said. “Just what did you have to protect you out there, London?”

  Jack looked over to Charmian, grinning, and then back to Lt. Nimitz and said, “Bluff.”

  “Both of you are covered in blood,” Lt. Nimitz said.

  “Martian blood,” Jack said.

  “Get to sick bay immediately and have the medics clean you up,” Lt. Nimitz said.