Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “We haven’t much time,” Mr. Tesla said. “We are approaching the exact instant in 1915 when the time-lock occurred in Sonoma Valley. I have instructed Lt. Nimitz to bring the ship down into the meadow next to Mr. London’s house.”

  The sailors huddled over the electrical equipment. Suddenly one of them looking into a glowing viewing screen said: “We have the signal.”

  “Keep a sharp eye on the gauges,” Mr. Czito said.

  Everyone huddled over the screen, waiting. In a moment, the screen flashed off and went dark.

  “Time-lock!” Mr. Czito called out.

  The big door of the escape trunk slid open suddenly and the six sailors wearing the enviro-suits flew through the opening. I could see Beauty Ranch below us, Jack and Charmian’s cottage, the meadow by the barns, and the field across from the cottage where one of those large copper balls had been planted in the ground. The long streamers of electricity still extended from it, all of them stretching out motionless in the air.

  “We were down there in the meadow,” Jack said. “Why can’t we see ourselves now?”

  “We have arrived just after our past selves departed the meadow,” Mr. Tesla said. “We are following our past time-line nested within this frozen universe.”

  “All of the men have arrived at the assigned positions next to the aerials,” Mr. Czito said.

  “Focus all the ship’s beam weapons on the aerials,” Mr. Tesla said.

  “All beams focused on aerials, sir,” A sailor said.

  “Modulate the frequencies of the beam generator to match those of the sailor’s body in the etheric scanning chamber,” Mr. Tesla ordered.

  A sailor turned a dial on a console, and then announced, “Frequencies of beam generator modulated.”

  “Fire full array of beams,” Mr. Tesla ordered.

  “Firing beams, sir!” another sailor said, closing a switch.

  A ray of light shot out from the ship and struck the copper-ball aerial planted in the earth below. A boom of thunder split the air, and the long electric streamers that had been frozen mid-air suddenly began undulating rapidly.

  “We’re on real time again, sir!” a sailor shouted in excitement.

  The other sailors let out whoops of relief and clapped their hands.

  “We’ve done it, Mr. Tesla!” Mr. Czito exclaimed. “We’re back! We’ve all made it back!”

  Mr. Tesla shook Mr. Czito’s hand, and then came around to Charmian, Jack, and me, shaking our hands.

  “This is goodbye for now, Houdini,” Mr. Tesla said to me, shaking my hand. “We have come from afar, may we each go much further yet.”

  “We will, Mr. Tesla,” I said.

  Jack, Charmian, and I stepped off the threshold of the escape trunk and on to the surface of the meadow. The sailors in the enviro-suits swooped past us in the air, each of them carrying one of the copper-ball stanchions. They landed in the escape trunk. The door of the escape trunk started sliding shut, and the U.S.S. Cypher began lifting off the ground. Mr. Tesla and Mr. Czito stood looking down at us. At the last moment, before the door passed in front of them, Mr. Tesla and Mr. Czito raised their hands to us. Then the door of the ship completely closed, and the U.S.S. Cypher swung up into the air and shot off in a straight line to the west, disappearing over Sonoma Mountain in less than five seconds.

  Jack, Charmian, and I stood alone there in the meadow, gazing at the spot in the sky where the Cypher had disappeared as a black point.

  “No one would ever believe any of this,” Jack finally said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “We can never tell anyone anyway. I can’t even tell Bess.”

  Jack looked over to me and Charmian.

  “We’ve made a loop in time,” Jack said. “It’s as if none of it ever happened.”

  “We’re wearing these sailor’s outfits,” Charmian said.

  Jack looked down at his uniform shirt.

  “Souvenirs, if ever there were some,” Jack said. “And proof of the events. I think we need the proof for ourselves. I need the proof to know that it wasn’t a dream.”

  “It wasn’t a dream, Jack,” I said.

  Jack looked at me strangely, and then said: “Come on.”

  He took Charmian by the hand.

  “I’ll meet you inside,” I said. “I better go around back. Bess will be expecting me.”

  Jack and Charmian turned and ran across the meadow hand in hand— hand in hand as Charmian and I had done the previous night. I watched them go and felt something I had never felt before— a strange mixture of guilt, sorrow, envy, joy— and relief. Most of all I felt relief. There was also a certain knowledge that some kind of balance had been restored, a balance of the universe that I experienced directly in the sight of Jack and Charmian running together across the meadow and up on to the road to the front of the cottage. They belonged together, I thought, and nothing that had happened— and nothing that I felt— could change that fact.

  Then they were gone, and I looked about at the empty meadow, and beyond to the rolling hills and forested shoulders of Sonoma Mountain. The earth was quiet, and still, and new with morning promise. I could start again. I could try to make things right— in my own life and in the life of the larger world around me. I could only try. Perhaps only trying was my destiny.

  When I went through the back door of the cottage, I found Bess sitting on the bed, holding on to Bobby. The moment I came in, Bobby jumped up, barking with excitement and wagging his tail. He leapt up into the air. I caught him in my arms and he began licking my face.

  “Well, I guess the trip here did Bobby good,” Bess said.

  “Yes,” I said, “he’s well again. He’s his old self.”

  I put Bobby down on the floor and patted his back. He grinned widely and wagged his tail. I went over to Bess and sat down on the bed beside her. Bobby tore back and forth around the room barking excitedly and then jumped up on the bed with Bess and me, and I rubbed the top of his head.

  “Such thunder,” Bess said. “I’ve never heard thunder like that in California before. This is a strange place. Harry!”

  Bess had put her hand on my arm.

  “You’re soaking wet!” she exclaimed.

  “Just a little damp from the sprinkle outside,” I said.

  “A little damp?” Bess asked, exasperated. “Get out of those wet things this instant.”

  “I’ll be all right,” I said.

  “You’re not getting on the train in those wet clothes,” she said.

  Bess went over, opened a suitcase and flung some clothes at me.

  “Change,” she said. “Right now.”

  I slipped off my clothes and Bess took them outside and rung the water out of them somewhere. When she came back in, I had on the dry clothes and was tying my tie.

  “How do I look?” I asked.

  “Good,” Bess said.

  “Why don’t you say ‘great’?” I asked.

  “Because you don’t look great,” she said. “You look good.”

  Bess unfolded a canvas bag from the suitcase and stuffed my wet clothes into it.

  “Maybe I can get a porter on the train to dry these out,” Bess said. “Funny, I didn’t see a cloud in the sky outside.”

  “It was a cloud burst,” I said. “The weather changes quickly around here.”

  “Strange,” Bess said. “This whole place is strange.”

  She closed the suitcase, locked it, and then went to the door and opened it. Sekine was standing out in the hall.

  “You can take the trunks,” Bess said to him.

  Sekine bowed, came in, picked up two suitcases, and went back out the door. Bess and I followed Sekine down the hall to the front of the house with Bobby scampering along beside us. Possum came out of the door of Charmain’s bedroom and the two dogs started barking and running back and forth along the hall.

  Charmian and Jack came out of Charmian’s bedroom at the front of the house. Jack had changed into one of his own shirts.
r />   “You’re leaving us too soon,” Jack said.

  “Good friends always leave too soon,” Charmian said.

  We all went out the front door and down the steps and out to the front gate. Sekine sat the suitcases down and turned back to the house.

  “Bring the car around,” Jack said to him.

  Sekine ran off around the corner of the cottage.

  “Someday soon I want both of you to come back for a much longer stay,” Jack said.

  “Maybe next year,” I said, “if I could arrange another California tour, we might be able to stay for a few days.”

  “A few days?” Jack asked, incredulous. “I was thinking a few weeks! We have only scratched the surface here! I’d like to take you over to meet Luther Burbank and some of my other friends. And there’s so much to see and do round about these parts: the geysers and the petrified forests and the mountain solitudes of redwood forests! And San Francisco! Talk about a vast, barbaric wilderness to conquer!”

  “Chinatown, no less!” Charmian said, grinning.

  “And the Barbary Coast, for those made of stronger stuff!” Jack said.

  “Yes,” I said. “It all sounds wonderful. What do you think, Bess?”

  “It all sounds wonderful,” Bess said flatly.

  “We will do it,” Jack said. “And we’ll get that plane and have you fly us over Sonoma Mountain.”

  “We’re not ones to keep our feet on the ground too long, are we Jack?” I asked.

  “Why should we keep our feet on the ground when there is so much sky up there waiting for us?” Jack asked.

  The roar of the automobile reverberated through the air. We all stood there, looking toward the side of the house. Then the automobile flashed into view, and in a moment Sekine pulled it to a stop in front of the gate to the yard.

  “One more trunk,” I said to him.

  “Make it snappy, Sekine,” Jack said. “The Houdinis have a train to catch.”

  Sekine jumped out of the car, ran up to the cottage, up the front porch steps, and through the front door.

  “That’s a good man you’ve got there,” I said.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “I suppose he is.”

  Jack looked over to Bess.

  “Madam,” Jack asked, “I hope you have not been disappointed with your visit.”

  “Oh, no,” Bess said. “I’m just tired, that’s all. I’m not used to all that horseback riding.”

  “That’s why you’ve got to come and stay with us a few weeks,” Jack said. “Then you’ll become used to it— and then you’ll never want to leave. Perhaps you and Houdini could build a house of your own right here in Sonoma Valley. Houdini could retire from the stage, become a man of letters.”

  “Harry?” Bess asked. “Harry has been claiming he’s going to retire for years. But I’ll tell you a secret only I know. I can tell you exactly when Houdini will retire.”

  “When?” Jack asked.

  “Never,” Bess replied.

  Sekine came rushing out of the house with the big trunk on his back. He moved rapidly toward us, out the front gate and around to the rear of the automobile. He sat down the trunk, opened the back of the car, and began loading all of our cases.

  “I’d like Sekine to come work for me,” I said.

  “Oh, never,” Charmian said. “Sekine’s our man. We couldn’t let him go, and he wouldn’t want to go. Sekine loves Beauty Ranch, isn’t that right, Sekine?”

  “That light, Mizzes Rondon!” Sekine said, pushing the last case into the car. He closed up the back hood and came around to the driver’s seat and got into the car.

  “Well,” I said, “this is it.”

  “This is it,” Jack said. “Until you return, Houdini.”

  Jack held out his hand and I grasped it.

  “Jack,” I said. “There’s so much I’d like to say, but I can’t say it. I don’t have your way with words.”

  “You have your own way,” Jack said.

  “I hope,” I said, “I hope…I have been your friend. I have…tried to be.”

  “And you have,” Jack said, looking directly into my eyes.

  I glanced over at Charmian, and her expression told me everything. Either she had told Jack about what had happened to us up on Sonoma Mountain the night before, or Jack had sensed it for himself.

  “Until I return,” I said, shaking Jack’s hand.

  Then Jack shook Bess’ hand and then Bess and I got in the automobile and Jack shut our door.

  “To the station, Sekine,” Jack said. “Easy on those pedals.”

  “Yes suh, Mistel Rondon,” Sekine said, and he started the car, shifted its gears, and sent it forward.

  Jack and Charmian waved to us, saying over and over: “Bye! Goodbye!” and Bess and I waved back at them and kept waving, watching the two of them stand there in the road in front of the cottage, growing smaller until they were only two little figures on the hill, and then the car went around the bend and the stand of eucalyptus trees moved in front of us like a curtain, closing Jack and Charmian off from our view.

  In two hours Bess and I were boarding a train bound for Los Angeles at the Oakland station. We went into the coach and Bess sat at the window and I by the aisle. In a few more minutes, we were moving along the rolling brown hills of California. I watched Bess looking out the window at the endless passage of undulating dry grass. That was my last awareness of anything until I suddenly felt Bess nudging my shoulder and saying “Harry! Harry! Wake up!”

  I opened my eyes. Beyond the windows I could see the interior of a train station.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Los Angeles,” Bess said. “You’ve been out like a light for hours.”

  We got up from our seats on the train and went straight to the theatre. When we got there, Collins and Vickery had everything ready for the show.

  “Manager’s a bit put off,” Collins said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because you weren’t here for morning rehearsals,” Collins replied.

  “Let him be put off,” I said. “Where’s my mail?”

  Collins handed me a stack of letters and two telegrams, one from Dash and one in code— Majestic Seven code. I closed the door, sat down, and decoded the Majestic Seven telegram. When I got it decoded, I saw that it was ordering me to meet an agent that night for an initial debriefing. So late that night after my performance, I met with the agent, and gave him an account of what had happened to me over the last week in Oakland. He took down my statement with a pencil on a pad of paper, writing in coded shorthand. When I had finished, he told me that I would be contacted again in the near future for further interviews. He started to get up to leave, but then stopped, and said:

  “A lot is going on in California right now.”

  “Is that so?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “a lot of unusual people seem to be converging out here on the coast. Perhaps it’s the San Francisco fair. We’ve noticed them down here in Southern California, too. A lot of them are coming into Los Angeles. Some of them are then going out as far east as San Bernadino and as far south as San Diego.”

  “What sort of unusual people?” I asked.

  “Hard to put a label on them,” he said, “all sorts of Spiritualists, Theosophists, soothsayers, and occultists of all kinds.”

  “Lots of nuts,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But imagine if some of those nuts have made contact with the Martians.”

  “You think some have?” I asked.

  “We don’t know yet,” he said. “But if someone such as Dellshau could make mental contact with the Martians, who knows? Better keep an eye out.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Anything unusual,” he said. “If anything unusual at all happens, let us know about it.”

  The agent of Majestic Seven got up and left, and a few minutes later I got up from the booth in the saloon and went out too. I walked through Chinatown, thinking about what the ag
ent had said, thinking about the Martians. Then I got a cab and went back to my hotel.

  Tuesday night, something unusual did happen, but I didn’t need to contact Majestic Seven. The event was quite public, and Majestic Seven knew all about it.

  It happened while I was giving my usual performance on stage at the Orpheum. I had been informed that Jess Williard, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world was going to be in the audience. When I asked for a committee to come up on stage, I requested that “Mr. Jess Willard our champion” join them. The audience applauded, cheered, and whistled upon learning that Willard was in their presence. I spotted Willard up in the balcony with his trainers. Willard only shrunk down in his seat. I put it to the audience: If they wanted Jess Willard on stage, they could let their approval be known by applause. The audience rose to their feet in a tumult, and gave Willard a lengthy standing ovation. Above the sound of applause, I heard Willard suddenly shout:

  “G’wan! G’wan!”

  The applause began dying down.

  “Aw, g’wan wid your act,” Willard growled down at me. “I paid for my seat here.”

  “But, Mr. Willard, I— “

  “Give me the same wages you pay those other fellows and I’ll come down,” Willard shouted.

  The audience stopped applauding. Some of the people started sitting down. Most others kept standing, looking up at Willard.

  “All right,” I said. “I accept your challenge. I’ll pay you what I pay these seven men. Come on down— I pay these men nothing. Don’t crawfish. Kindly step right downstairs and come on stage.”

  The audience gave out with a resounding cheer.

  “Go on wid your show, you faker, you four-flusher,” Willard shouted. “Everyone knows you’re a four-flusher.”

  I was stunned by his statement, and so was the audience. The house went quiet.

  “Your remark is slander,” I said. “You will retract your statement and apologize!”

  “G’wan, you four-flusher,” Willard shouted.

  I looked away, to the side of the stage, trying to decide what to do. Jess Willard was famous, and a public hero. Yet he had just slandered me in public. My glance fell upon Bess, who was standing in the wings. Her face was flaming red, and at first I thought she was angry with me, and I was actually afraid of her. But then I realized she was with me and ready to help me load the machine guns. So I turned back to the audience, went down to the footlights, and said: