Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “Look here, you. I don’t care how big you are or who you are. I paid you a compliment when I asked you to be one of the committee. You have the right to refuse, but you have no right to slur my reputation. Now that you have thrown down the gauntlet, I have the right to answer, and let me tell you one thing, and don’t forget this, that I will still be Harry Houdini and a gentleman when you are no longer the heavyweight champion of the world.”

  A roar went up from the audience such as I had never heard before in my life. Refined ladies and gentlemen in evening dress became members of a howling mob— twenty-three hundred men and women all set afire with the rage of a seething, roaring furnace— and all of that rage directed at Jess Willard. I stood absolutely still for ten minutes while the audience shouted and screamed. All this while Willard shook his mighty fists at me, and tried to shout above the roar of the audience. I could hear him screaming: “I’ll give you a thousand dollars to come up here! A thousand dollars! Come on up! I’ll annihilate you!” Willard began jumping up and blaspheming. His trainers tried to hold him back. Finally the head usher came down the aisle and informed him that if he did not cease his outbursts he must leave. Willard sunk back into his chair, surrounded by his trainers, then rose to his feet and slunk up the aisle, crestfallen and defeated while the audience jeered his departure.

  The news of my confrontation with Willard made instant headlines in the newspapers. I wrote letters to Jack and my sister Gladys about it. And the agent from Majestic Seven showed up in my dressing room the next day.

  “We followed Willard last night,” the agent said, “and I think he knew we were following him.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “He has suddenly left town,” the agent said. “He was supposed to make an appearance as a referee at a wrestling match today, but he didn’t show up. When we went over to his hotel, we found that he had checked out and removed to parts unknown.”

  “What do you make of it?” I asked.

  “Could be a case of mind control,” the agent said. “You know that’s how President McKinley was assassinated.”

  “Do you have any reason to believe Willard was under some kind of control?” I asked.

  “No,” the agent said, “but we have to consider that possibility. We will follow up on this, and let you know what we find, but I’d suggest you carry some protection from now on.”

  “Protection?” I asked.

  “A gun,” the agent said.

  “I’ve got a derringer and a holster for it,” I said.

  “Use it,” the agent said.

  Nothing could ever be determined one way or another with the Jess Willard incident. Willard refused to ever talk about it, and Majestic Seven was never able to connect his actions to any of the secret operations with which I had been involved. Willard’s actions remained an enigma to me. But from then on, I carried the derringer, and went everywhere with a different kind of alertness than I had ever had before.

  Sometime during the last weeks of 1915 President Woodrow Wilson convened a formal meeting of Majestic Seven, reviewing the events that had transpired on the Pacific Coast in November. A summary of Lt. Nimitz secret report to the Secretary of the Navy was read aloud. Also, a summary of my interviews was presented at this meeting. Captain Forrest Wilson was listed as “missing in action.” The mystery of his disappearance has never been solved to this day.

  I had never discussed what I had experienced with Djudhi in the Chamber of Destiny or what had happened to me on the astral plane when I confronted NYMZA. Mr. Tesla knew of what had happened to me with NYMZA through communications with that mysterious bird invested with the consiousness from a being of the Pleiades, and Mr. Dellschau also knew, but neither of them revealed what they knew to Majestic Seven or to anyone else. We who knew the true nature of NYMZA knew that knowledge of its existence was for the very few indeed. If NYMZA could gain control over the Martians, what might it do when men of earth sought it out to gain power for themselves? Mr. Tesla, Mr. Dellschau, and I feared that this very thing might now be happening with the Germans, especially through some of their most secret societies.

  The members of Majestic Seven closely questioned Mr. Tesla and criticized him for commandeering the U.S.S. Cypher without proper Presidential authority granted through the chain of command of the Secretary of the Navy. Some of the members of Majestic Seven felt that Mr. Tesla had taken the correct course of action, considering the extremity of emergency that the situation presented. The dissenting view, promoted vociferiously by Col. House, was that it was precisely in such cases of extreme emergency when chain of command must be followed with utmost strictness. Soon after this meeting, Mr. Tesla received notification that he was being removed from Majestic Seven and his security classification in the government was being altered. He was denied access to the New York underground laboratory and its secret underground rail system, and he was informed that the Wardenclyffe Tower would be scheduled to be destroyed under secret Presidential order. From that moment on, Majestic Seven would guard earth with a fleet of airships that would continually patrol our planet. Mr. Tesla would be an advisor only to Majestic Seven, and, in fact, a subject of their surveillance and suspicion, for the members of Majestic Seven, and particularly Col. House and the larger powers which he represented, feared the knowledge of Nikola Tesla and the unknown factors of his existence which might threaten their own plans, powers, and possessions.

  I soon received a package in the mail from the Londons. It was a copy of Jack’s The Cruise of the Snark and Charmian had autographed it. Bess found the book on my dressing table. I came into the dressing room and she was standing there with it open, looking at it.

  “What’s this?” she asked. “’To Harry Houdini and his with’.”

  “That’s supposed to be ‘wife,’“ I said.

  “She’s her husband’s secretary and she can’t spell?” Bess asked. “Or just can’t spell ‘wife’?”

  I didn’t say a word.

  The ordeal of the Time Loop accelerated the decline of Jack’s health, although only Charmian, Jack’s doctors, and perhaps Sekine knew how fast he was fading. In mid-December Jack and Charmian sailed for Honolulu in hopes that the balmy weather might restore his strength. On New Years Eve they attended a reception in the throne room of the old Palace given by Queen Liliuokalani and Governor Pinkham.

  In early January Jack received word from his stepsister Eliza that government engineers had been on the property at Beauty Ranch and had issued secret orders to her, seizing a tract of land on Sonoma Mountain for important scientific research. Immediately following this news, Jack received a coded telegram from Majestic Seven informing him that they were carrying out a secret civil engineering project on Sonoma Mountain and required his and his step sister’s full cooperation. Jack wrote Eliza back, advising her to give the government scientists full cooperation on their “earthquake research.”

  A month later, Jack learned the full story of what was happening on the ranch. The Corp of Army Engineers, working under the direction of Majestic Seven, had broken up the anvil rock on Sonoma Mountain, dug down into its bedrock and excavated all around the aerial projecting up from the spherical Time Modulator embedded in the earth below. They had also uprooted the stand of oaks encircling the site. This left a big hole in the mountainside that they covered with a special formulation of cement and volcanic rock, followed by a layer of earth. All of this was then covered with tons of earth and replanted with grass and trees. A radio tower was also erected near Sonoma Mountain’s peak to constantly transmit information about the vibrations of the Time Modulator to a Majestic Seven laboratory.

  Simultaneous with this project was another one very much like it on the island of Guadalcanal. An aerial survey of the island conducted by Lt. Nimitz aboard the U.S.S. Cypher revealed that the main resonator of the Time Modulator, the 200 feet diameter sphere, still lay exposed in its pit of volcanic rock deep in the jungles of Guadalcanal. The volcano that had stood
near it twelve thousand years ago had collapsed and folded into the earth over eleven thousand years ago, and the surrounding floor of the ocean, which had been above sea level, had also collapsed. The level of the earth’s seas had also risen several hundred feet at this time, due to the melting of an extensive shield of ice covering the North Pole and Canada. In a joint secret project with the British government, a team of British and American engineers filled the pit surrounding the metal sphere with earth, rock, and cement, and then covered the top of the sphere with a mound of more fill. Then this remaining mound was planted with local vegetation.

  The Time Modulators buried in Alaska, Peru, South Africa, and the Sinai Peninsula were also located, and work began on a complete analysis of them by a multi-national team of engineers working with Majestic Seven. Majestic Seven was never able to analyze the Siberian Time Modulator. Negotiations with Czar Nicholas’ advisors to grant permission for Majestic Seven scientists to enter Russia dragged on throughout the last weeks of 1915. The Czar at one point expressed agreement for only Nikola Tesla and me to enter Russia to see the Time Modulator, but this was unacceptable to Majestic Seven. In March of 1917 the Czar and his family were executed by the Bosheviks, and an impenetrable wall descended between Majestic Seven and those in Russia controlling the Siberian Time Modulator.

  News of the secret work involving the Time Modulators reached Jack London in Honolulu. He learned of the difficulties the engineers encountered on the island of Guadalcanal with the local populace, a tribe of headhunters. The tribe had to be driven from the site and some of them had been shot dead. This tribe considered the 200 feet wide cherry red sphere some kind of god, and worshipped it in a death cult. They had constructed a great tripod of forest trunks upon the edge of the pit surrounding the giant red sphere, and hung from it by ropes another fifty feet long trunk, its surface carved with images of their gods. This trunk was hung laterally so that it could swing back and forth on the tripod and strike the side of the 200 feet wide sphere, making it ring and thunder for over an hour. The deep, shimmering sound of that ringing could be heard as far as the coast of the island.

  When Jack heard about all this, his mind became fixed upon the vivid images in his memory of the Time Modulator and what we had experienced in the Time Loop. So, Jack set down these thoughts on paper, “obscuring their veracity under the veils of fiction,” and thus wrote one of his greatest short stories, “The Red One,” completing it in May of 1916.

  On the morning of November 23rd, 1916 I received news of Jack London’s death. I immediately wired Charmian in Glen Ellen for information, and soon received a reply from her. Yes, she wired back, it is true. Jack is dead.

  I received her telegram in my dressing room, and I sat there, more shocked than I thought I would be at the confirmation of Jack’s passing. I could see him as I saw him for that first time on that platform above the street in Oakland, the rain pouring off the brim of his hat and his grin lighting up the shadow beneath it. I could see him astride his horse, riding ahead of me toward the forests of Sonoma Mountain. I could see him as I saw him that last time— him and Charmian waving to me from atop the hill at Beauty Ranch. He was gone, never to return, gone, just as my mother had departed from this world with that same, brutal finality.

  Perhaps we’ll meet again, Jack, I thought to myself as I looked down at Charmian’s telegram. Perhaps we will know each other again someday— in another life.

  I put the telegram aside. Jack was gone, and Charmian— perhaps it was best that I never saw her again, either, I thought.

  The year 1916 ended with a dull bitterness for me. I wondered where my life was really headed. I was getting old quickly, my brother Nat was getting divorced, and it seemed like everything was falling apart around me.

  On my birthday in 1917 the United States finally declared war on Germany. My thoughts tumbled back through that fantastic time loop of twelve thousand years to what Djudhi had shown me there in the Chamber of Destiny, and to what he had said about war. Yes, war is a trap, I thought, but one from which there is no escape for any of us. I knew well the military might of Germany; I had observed it at close hand. And I knew the intent of their military leaders. But I also knew something that few others knew: the Germans had made direct contact with the civilization on Mars and might have become allied with it. The Germans might even have made contact with NYMZA. Germany had to be stopped.

  I was told by the draft board what I had already known, but would have never admitted: I was too old to be a soldier now. I would be of greater use to the war effort as an entertainer. I threw myself into supporting the war, introducing a resolution at a meeting of the Society of American Magicians supporting the efforts of President Wilson. The resolution passed unanimously. I began to devote my full time to entertaining troops and raising money.

  And so I found some direction to a life-force that I once again felt to be on the wane. Life was not really good for me, but it did have a purpose of sorts. This was my frame of mind in October of 1917 when one day after one of my performances in New York, I met Charmian again.

  I was in my dressing room and looked up suddenly. She was standing there looking at me in the doorway. My first thought was: Who is this beautiful young girl? Our ability to see depends upon what we expect to see. I did not expect to see Charmian. But in the next instant I saw that it was her, and my heart turned over.

  We talked the talk of old friends, simple things: why she was in New York (to publish her new book) and how she was doing (great). I thought Jack’s death would have been a blow to her, but I was almost shocked to see that she was in radiant, youthful health. She was my idea of beauty itself, although I did not say so, for we were only friends, catching up on the little things of life. Then she suddenly went out of the room and I thought I had offended her or disappointed her. But I was wrong. The next day I received a letter from her, a very personal letter that I knew Bess could never see. But then, after that, I heard nothing from Charmian. I let the matter go and did not respond to her letter. It is for the best, I thought to myself.

  I kept thinking that for a number of weeks, but I couldn’t get Charmian out of my mind. Finally, in January, I responded to her letter, and sent her tickets to my show at the Hippodrome where I was making an elephant disappear before thousands of onlookers. Charmian came backstage again after the show, looking more beautiful than ever. From that moment onward we began talking to each other on the telephone everyday. After a week of conversations, I could no longer restrain myself, and said to her one day:

  “Remember the night on Sonoma Mountain?”

  “I’ll never forget it,” Charmian replied.

  “I wanted to say something that night, but I didn’t have the right then. I’m going to say it now: I love you. With all my heart and soul, I love you.”

  Charmian was silent on the other end for a long moment. Finally she asked:

  “Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know.”

  “Are you prepared to live what you feel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then come to me here. Come down to the Village.”

  “When?”

  “Now. Right now.”

  “That…that is just not possible. I have to go onstage and make Jenny disappear in ten minutes.”

  “Then tomorrow,” Charmian said.

  “No,” I said. “If I come tomorrow, Bess will know. I’ll come the day after tomorrow.”

  “When?” Charmian asked.

  “I’ll call and give you the time,” I said. “It all depends on what Bess does.”

  “You are a cautious soul,” Charmian said.

  I did meet Charmian at her Washington Square apartment two days later. Things began awkwardly. I sat down and we began talking about the small things of our lives. Then Charmian began talking about the secret digging being done on Beauty Ranch, and we talked over what had happened to Jack, her, and me in the Time Loop. She said that after what happened to
us, Jack would take long rides by himself up to Sonoma Mountain. He never discussed with her what he did when he went up there alone. Then Charmian began talking about how Jack died. She told me everything that had happened on the day of his death, every minute detail, how Sekine had found him that morning in his bed, his face blue-black, how the doctors were called, how they all picked Jack up and walked him through the rooms of the cottage trying to wake him up, how, as evening came on, they laid him on a mattress on the floor of Charmian’s sleeping porch and watched his life fade away, as his unconscious mind clenched his hand in a fist and pounded the floor in protest against his dying fate.

  “His kidneys failed him,” I said. “That was the cause of his death.”

  “I don’t know,” Charmian said. “I don’t think anyone will ever know for sure. The first arriving doctors thought he had overdosed on his morphine, but then his regular physician arrived and diagnosed his condition as kidney failure.”

  “What do you really think killed him?” I asked.

  “All I can tell you,” Charmian said, “was that his very last words to me ever the night before were: ‘Thank God you have courage.’ That’s what he said before he went off to bed. ‘Thank God you have courage.’ That’s all. What do you think he meant by that?”

  “I think he was telling you he was going to die,” I said. “I think he’d had enough.”

  “You think he overdosed,” she said.

  “Rather ashes than dust,” I said. “I think Jack always knew somehow that he was going to die young. Look how he lived his life— every instant of it at top speed and no looking back. He hardly had time to catch his breath…”