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Title: Yesterday's doors

Author: Arthur J. Burks

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay

Release date: March 9, 2023 [eBook #70251]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Standard Magazines, Inc, 1948

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YESTERDAY'S DOORS ***





                           Yesterday's Doors

                             a novelet by
                            ARTHUR J. BURKS

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                Thrilling Wonder Stories October 1948.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




                               CHAPTER I

                             _Lost Memory_


It started off like an old story. It happens every day or so in
New York City. A man or woman, tired of living, becomes an amnesia
victim and loses himself or herself in the crowd. A few stay lost. A
few persist in not remembering as long as they can. Many are really
amnesiacs.

I didn't know my name, or whether I had one. I didn't know how old I
was, though I guessed about forty. I didn't remember the clothes I
wore, or my face in the mirror. I had no memory of yesterday or any
day, and even the events of just an hour ago slipped away from me. I
knew that something was radically wrong.

How wrong it was and how long the condition had lasted I had no
way of surmising. I just know I found myself in a dark room, being
interrogated like a criminal, by a group of men in uniform. Later I
learned that the room was somewhere on Centre Street, in downtown
Manhattan. The policemen and men in plainclothes I had never seen
before. I never did know their names.

A grizzled man with three yellow stripes on his sleeve struck me with
the back of his hand, then the front.

"You deny that your name is Dean Hale? You deny that you killed Marian
Slade, cut her body to pieces and pushed them into the sewer?"

"I deny nothing," I said dully, as if I were very tired. "I never heard
of Marian Slade. I never heard of Dean Hale. I don't know who I am, or
where I came from, or whether I ever cut anybody to pieces or not."

There was a concerted gasp from all present.

"Well, after all these hours, it develops you _do_ have a tongue,
and can use it. I thought we'd never hammer anything out of you."

So, for several hours, they had been working on me like this,
"hammering" me, as the sergeant had just said--and though I now felt
that I had been much abused, I didn't remember so much as one of the
blows that had been dealt me. I recite this to indicate the utter
depths of my "lostness." A man, even a victim of amnesia, should
remember when he has been beaten half to death.

"I don't know anything about myself," I said.

"Now don't go a-trying that amnesia gag on us," said one of the men in
plainclothes.

Just then another party entered the darkroom, which was dark everywhere
but where I sat under blazing electrics.

"He's not Dean Hale, has no record here at all," said the newcomer.
"His prints don't match with Hale's."

All I knew now was that I wasn't somebody named Dean Hale.

"He has to be somebody," said a plainclothes man, "Dean Hale or
not--and when we find out who, the fact will also remain that he killed
Marian Slade."

       *       *       *       *       *

How unreal the whole thing was to me. I realized no danger in myself in
these accusations. I forgot blows after they had been struck. I think I
even forgot to feel the pain of them. Finally my inquisitors gave it up.

"We'll make a check in Missing Persons," someone said.

They didn't find me there, either, though they held me three days
while they checked. I forgot the three days, each of them, until long
after--until I had the pictures clearly enough in mind that I could set
down the facts as I am now doing. The police finally decided I wasn't a
murderer, but that I was "missing," actually and mentally, an amnesia
victim who could not be aroused. That's where Jan Rober, one of the
plainclothes men came in.

"A touch of shock treatment might help you," he told me, visiting me
alone and somewhat mysteriously in my cell. "There is a laboratory near
Westchester I'm interested in. Modern equipment, far in advance of
science. Nobody knows about it. Sometimes I take missing persons there,
to help them remember. The surgeons, doctors, scientists there, are my
friends."

"They pay you to find people who are lost, for whom no one is likely to
inquire, and take them there?" I asked, wondering from what deep well
of verbal knowledge I dredged the words, and the fear that inspired
them. Jan Rober's eyes narrowed.

"You're accusing me of something?" he said softly.

"I don't know," I said, "but it just occurred to me that medical and
surgical science is often hampered because it can't work with human
beings, though how this occurs to me I don't know. Assembling missing
persons, orphans, people in whom nobody has the slightest interest,
whose eternal disappearance would cause no questioning, would be a boon
to such scientists, and a source of revenue to whoever provided them
with human guinea pigs."

"For an amnesiac," he said, "your thinking is to the point."

"But I'd just as soon be dead and buried as to know nothing of myself,"
I went on. "I find I don't care overly much. But do you believe that
I may somehow be shocked out of amnesia? Don't forget, a lot of heavy
hands have been laid on me in the last few days--if what you've just
told me is true--and the hands haven't shocked me into remembering."

"There are shocks, _and_ shocks," he said. "Ever hear of the atom
bomb? Know anything about electrons? Ever hear of a cyclotron? Part of
the work of my friends is in the field of nuclear fission, which means
less to me than it does to you; though just between us, if _you_
aren't a surgeon--from your fingers--I never saw one. Besides, the gent
who cut up Marian Slade knew his surgery."

That gave me a little chill. _Was_ I a surgeon? _Had_ I slain
some woman named Marian Slade? Was I innately capable of cutting a
human body to bits and pushing the pieces into the sewer? I didn't know!

"If I did anything like that, Rober," I said, "then if your friends cut
_me_ into little pieces, I have merely paid off for Marian Slade."

"And escaped the electric chair!" said Rober drily. "Also, your memory
is better than it was: you remember my name, and I told it to you once,
when I came in. Well, you're going to be released in my custody in an
hour or so. If you care to trust me, we'll visit The Lab."

The Lab! That's all it was ever called, if memory serves me, and memory
does serve me now. The Lab! Nobody, once having experienced a little
segment of it, could possibly ever again have forgotten it.

It wasn't much to look at, from the outside; just a squatty, large,
square building of gray granite, in the midst of a clearing in
Westchester's wooded area. It was wired like a prison, and there were
signs warning people away. There were also people standing guard. The
Lab was either a prison or a sanitarium--but not once while I was
there did I see anybody in the place who could conceivably have been
a convict or a patient. I saw only the doctors, the surgeons, if such
they were, the scientists, and Marian Slade!

Yes, Marian Slade was the name of the nurse, and she was about the
prettiest young woman--too young for me, in fact--I had ever seen. When
I was introduced to her, I said:

"Oh, yes, Dean Hale murdered you, cut you into small pieces, and thrust
you into a sewer."

Her face was impassive, her eyes did not flicker or show alarm. She
only said, quite calmly,

"Yes, Mr. Hale, I remember every detail. Now, be good enough to follow
me."

       *       *       *       *       *

I was being treated like a maniac who might become violent. This nurse,
with the name of a murdered woman, was coddling me, treating me gently,
so I wouldn't erupt! Jan Rober left me with her and was gone, and in my
imagination I could hear the rustling of bills of large denomination. I
never expected to get out alive. I didn't much care.

Marian Slade took me to a room, told me what to do with the roomy
garments she gave me. I found myself, shortly, in a kind of nightshirt,
standing on the threshold of a room of gadgets. Yes, I must be a
doctor, or some sort of scientist, for I recognized many of the gadgets
there. This room was an up-to-date surgery. It had everything.

It had everything including the pygmy cyclotron, set in the
mathematical center of the room. Marian Slade didn't introduce the men
in white to me. I was never to know their names. She told them I was
Dean Hale though Jan Rober must have told her I wasn't. She needed a
handle by which to identify me, and the police had called me that for
days.

I wondered idly how Jan Rober would explain my "escape" to his
colleagues, unless all of them were in league with The Lab to produce
"willful missin's."

In the room were great oxygen tanks, trays behind glass filled with
surgical instruments, operating tables, X-Ray machines, a fluoroscope,
pale screens against a far wall--screens against which, well, just what
sort of strange pictures might not be shown?

My eyes kept returning to the cyclotron. It fascinated me. If it worked
it was a masterly thing. Cyclotrons took up a building in themselves.
How did I know that? The question flashed through my mind, and the
answer, if any had been hovering on the verge of my consciousness,
vanished into the general blur of all my yesterdays, my passing hours.

Near the cyclotron, if that's what it was, were twelve chairs, above
which were metal globes, or hoods, like hair dryers, the chairs set in
a kind of semi-circle around three sides of the cyclotron. Each chair
was just the right size to hold a human body.

I glanced past the chairs--nobody had yet asked me to sit down, and
Marian Slade had disappeared somewhere behind me--and spotted the
electric panel for the first time. But another minute passed, a minute
during which the profound scrutiny of the "scientists" became deeper,
more profound, before I connected the electric panel with the chairs.

Those seats arranged around the cyclotron were electric chairs! Each
chair would be filled with a human being, and all could be electrocuted
at one time, and if all were "vanishers," who would care?

"Gentlemen," I said, "you might ask me to be seated! Just which of the
electric chairs has been assigned to me?"

There was a stir among the twelve men who had ranged themselves around
the great room to await my coming. One of them, the eldest, now that
I had discovered they were not dummies, but living men, bowed to me
gravely and said:

"Welcome to the Lab, Mr. Hale, if that is your name. Allow me to
introduce you to my colleagues. You will understand, later on, our
reasons for failing to furnish correct names. I am Doctor A."

Then he gave me the initials of the others, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J,
K and L. I never knew them by anything else. They varied in appearance
as men usually do, and their ages ran from perhaps twenty-five to
seventy-five, Doctor A being obviously the eldest and the dean of the
Lab.

Even the fact that all were men in white did not serve to hide their
differences. Their eyes were unusual, all of them. I think they held
a coldness, a searching hard coldness, in common. They were men of
science, by their appearance, and they were ruled by science.

Each would have given his life for science, if by so doing he did not
slow the progress of science instead of advancing it. That is, he would
have given his life if he had not realized that his death would be a
great loss to his chosen field. By the same token, not one of them
regarded the life of any individual as being important enough to fuss
much about. Understand this is only my personal opinion, the personal
opinion of a man lost in the utter depths of amnesia.

Those twelve men, however, struck me forcibly, short men, thin, fat,
tall, so that the urge was on me to make sketches of them. Just why, I
did not know, never having made a sketch of anyone I could remember,
never before having desired to sketch any one. Perhaps I should
have told some of them of this urge. Maybe it would have helped in
backtracking, identifying me. But perhaps they did not wish me to be
further identified.

"You have lost your memory," said Doctor A. "You have been brought here
to recall your yesterdays. There is some danger to you in this shock
treatment though we take every precaution known to science. Do you wish
to know yourself strongly enough to take the risk, and to absolve us
therefrom? To take your place in a chair by your own free will?"

"If I do not, Doctor A," I said, "isn't it true that I will placed in
the selected chair forcibly?"

"Mr. Hale," said Doctor A, "you are at liberty to leave. Nurse Slade
will escort you to the door of the Lab, and you may go where you
wish. You may even return to your home and report everything that has
happened to you here."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. A's words aroused my resentment. Here I was, lost, and he talked of
home!

"My home!" I said, bitterly. "And just where is my home? Look, Doc, the
ordinary ways of restoring the amnesiac have been tried on me without
success. This seems my only out. I've been doubtful, because there
have been so many strange things connected with it. I was accused, for
example, of murdering Marian Slade, cutting her to pieces and thrusting
the pieces into a sewer. Yet when I arrive at The Lab I am met by
none other than Nurse Marian Slade. You must admit that this could be
disturbing."

The doctors let out a concerted sigh. I moved forward as Doctor A bent
slightly, his eyes indicating the chairs. As I moved he came to meet
and escort me, while the other eleven "scientists" closed in, with
something akin to threat in their advance. If a man were not mentally
ill when he came to these people, he soon might well be ill. Naturally,
I doubted my own sanity. Maybe none of this actually existed save in my
addled, lost brain.

I climbed into the central chair. To my amazement the eleven scientists
took the other chairs, while Doctor A stood between me and the
cyclotron to conduct the experiment, or whatever was to be conducted.
The other doctors began to strap themselves into their chairs, as I was
being strapped into mine by Doctor A. I realized that, through the
use of the atom-smasher, the cyclotron, eleven scientists were somehow
going to share whatever was due to happen to me.

Just before Doctor A lowered and adjusted the metal hood over my head,
I saw eleven pairs of hands raise up, as women lift their hands to
adjust their hats, and pull down eleven hoods to hide their varied
faces.

Doctor A fumbled with me, attaching electrodes exactly as if I were
going to be electrocuted. Whether the other men there were so wired I
did not know, but why else would they have stepped under the hoods, sat
in the eleven chairs?

The soft voice of Doctor A came to me as from a great distance, with
eerie tones in it caused by the natural amplifier over my head.

"Are you ready, gentlemen?"

There was a chorus of "ayes" from the eleven.

"Mr. Hale?" continued the soft voice.

"Yes, Doctor, I am as ready as I ever expect to be."




                              CHAPTER II

                           _The First Door_


Abruptly there was nothingness, black, impenetrable. Abruptly there was
change. Abruptly I stood at the far end of a concrete sidewalk which
led across a clearing of beautiful, exquisitely green grass, closely
mowed. Afar to right and left dense forest formed an amphitheater for
the building at the end of the sidewalk opposite me, and perhaps a
hundred yards away.

At first I thought it was the Lab, but only for the briefest seconds.
Doctor A's voice had somehow followed me into this great transition,
for it said:

"Go ahead, Mr. Hale, hesitate not anywhere. Remember! Be sure to
remember. I command you to remember!"

"My name is not Hale," I told him, as I stared at the building at the
far end of the strip of sidewalk, the only strip of sidewalk on that
lawn of green. "I am Father Wulstan."

Now, just how did it happen that I called myself Father Wulstan? I
hadn't the slightest idea _then_, but only that I _was_
Father Wulstan. But who Father Wulstan was I hadn't the slightest
idea. I could not see his habit upon myself, because I still wore the
nightshirt.

The shape of the building yonder was most unusual and strange. But it
was familiar, fearfully familiar. It was shaped like a huge human head.
The skull was bald, glistening in the sun with great brilliance, as if
the sun itself nestled on the cranium.

But why the familiarity, when I could never have seen this building,
or any like it, in all of my life? I asked myself these questions as
I strode swiftly toward the "mouth," the front of the building. After
all, how did I know I'd never before seen such a building, when I could
not remember my yesterdays?

[Illustration: Swiftly I strode along the path, toward the strange
Building of the Skull.]

I was close enough that the facade of the strange building was
beginning to lose its details, to become a smoothly rounded front, when
I understood why the Building of the Skull looked so familiar.

The building's facade was my own face!

The skull was my skull, vastly magnified!

Whoever had erected this weird building had most certainly used my
skull, or the skull of a twin of mine, as his model!

I had scarcely absorbed this utterly fantastic thought than I realized
something else, something that I could not have seen until I lost the
outer, apparent detail of the Building of the Skull, by coming close
enough to see smaller, more intimate details. Then I made my second,
most amazing discovery. The Building of the Skull was walled, roofed
and domed, by an infinite mosaic of tiny hexagonal doors! They were
doors of a strange shining metal which something inside told me was far
more precious than gold.

There was a tiny lock in each door, in each lock a tiny key, and the
voice of Doctor A, calm, sure, unexcited, came again to direct me.

"Choose the proper key, Father Wulstan. You know which one it is!"

My hand went unerringly to one of the tiny gray keys in one of the tiny
gray doors. My thumb and forefinger turned the key without difficulty,
as if the key and the lock were forever freshly oiled. It made no sound.

As the little door opened, there was the sensation of speed, but not
of crossing a threshold. Memory came rushing back, so swiftly that I,
Father Wulstan, did not even know that I had forgotten anything. The
place was the crypt of Saint Dennis, far under the church, deep in the
bowels of the earth. The country was England. The time was midnight or
thereabouts. The day was Thursday. The year was 792 A.D. Nothing in the
mind of Father Wulstan, at this time, considered the year 1947, because
it had not yet come.

There were three other priests with me, all older than I. They were
very old. I was thirty. I was devout, God loving, almost a religious
fanatic. But I loved mankind, too, wished to do for him all that the
Master had intended. I was the keeper of the faith, the doer of works.
The others were Fathers Dennis, Paul and Elihu.

In both my hands I held an intricate model of dried clay. It was
a model of something I had seen many times in dreams. It was a
conveyance, a conveyance like none known hitherto in the history of the
world, in any history I had ever read or heard of. It certainly was not
mentioned in Holy Writ, unless that certain passage in the Revelation
of Saint John the Divine were this--wherein he spoke of "flying things
out of The Pit."

       *       *       *       *       *

This conveyance, I realized, complete in every detail save the power
by which it might travel, was intended to travel in the air, at any
height, like a bird--like the fastest bird known to nature. I had
shaped this thing with my loving hands. Its details had come to me in a
series of dreams. It had wings of an especially beautiful design. I had
burnished the gray of the clay so that it shone, for I had visioned the
sun gleaming on those wings.

[Illustration: I had seen this "metal bird" in dreams.]

Below the wings was the body of my artificial "bird," and under that
body were two wheels. The wheels flared slightly outward, and were
joined to the body by straight staves--and herein was I thrice puzzled.
In my dream the outer rims of the wheels had been soft, pliable, so
that on the ground the "bird" traveled without bouncing. I knew that
the staves were of metal, but while I had seen it often in dreams, I
had never seen its name.

I felt sure that man had not yet found the metal needed for the wings
of my "metal bird." There was something else about it: there were three
vents, carefully spaced, under each of the two wings. What traveled
through those vents I did not know. I had a "metal bird" which I knew
would fly, because I had constructed it again, several times, in wood
and paper. Alone in the woods about Saint Dennis, I had flung the model
into the air, and it had flown. I had then destroyed my models of wood
and paste and paper. I did not know why.

But one thing I did know: if my metal bird did not yet possess the
will to fly, if it were as man had been before God breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, so that he became a living soul, then
the world was not ready for my metal bird. Yet, if the world were not
ready, why had I, a priest of God, dreamed of the metal bird, and
finally, made of it a thing of clay only because proper metals, proper
gums for the wheels, and proper motive power, were not yet available? I
was a true priest, religiously descended from Peter the Rock, against
which, as the foundation of the Church, "all Hell might not prevail."

"It is the work of the devil!" said Father Dennis, who had taken
the name of this church for which all of us labored. "It should be
destroyed."

I studied the face of the saintly old priest, who had done so much
for humanity in the sixty-odd years of his priesthood. The face was
familiar, for I had known him all the days of my own ministry.

"It is not the work of the devil, Father," I said softly. "It is the
work of man, of myself, Father Wulstan of Saint Dennis. I based it on
a dream, as did Saint John the Divine, who also saw winged chariots on
Patmos."

"You, my son," Father Dennis pointed out, "are not Saint John the
Divine, for all your piety. I say the thing should be destroyed."

"But it has been agreed, since I told you of this model, and showed
it to you three as the oldest and wisest of all the brethren of Saint
Dennis, that we should not give it to science, but should hide it away
secretly, here in the crypt of Saint Dennis. Then, what becomes of it
in course of time, is in the Hands of God. Who sent me the dream!"

I disliked even that much concession, but they were wise in religion,
and I would not stand against them. My greatest desire was not to
hide the trim, sleek model away, but to give it to science and beg of
science to find the motive power and the missing metals. I would then
pray that the Father work closely with science--provided the world was
ready for what this dream might give it.

However, here was the climax. I was, besides being a priest, like many
another priest, I did things that were not of the ministry. I invented
things, dreamed of things that would make earthly life easier for my
people. Some priests invented rare wines. Some copied the sacred books
in colored inks, spending all their lives to attain written perfection.
Some priests studied the stars and came by rare secrets, some of which
the church called heresy, some of whom died because of their heresy. I
did not believe that was heresy, or that the priests should have died.
For myself I believed in earthly as well as spiritual progress.

For that reason I invented things for busy women, for laboring men, for
growing children. I invented blocks with letters on them, that could be
piled together. Countless other things I brought into the waking state
out of my dreams, and made them real. Countless things I assembled
while I was awake, between times of busy, devout ministering in my
church, the ancient, venerable Saint Dennis.

       *       *       *       *       *

To bury this model made me feel guilty. Yet my belief in the future of
man was such that I knew somewhere up there ahead, generations perhaps,
the missing elements of my dream for this model, would be "discovered."
That was the reason I agreed to hide the model "metal bird." How and
when, if ever, would it be found? Without faith I could not have
endured the emptiness of the obvious answer--that eventually, in course
of time, Saint Dennis would crumble into ruins, raining those ruins
down upon the crypt, burying it for all time from the sight of men,
losing to men the thing I had brought into being from my dream inspired.

Other things I had shaped, invented, had come into human use, had
bettered the living of mankind. Why should this "metal bird" be an
exception?

So, we made a niche for the metal bird in solid rock, a niche which
was itself a kind of chapel, just big enough to take the spread wings
of the metal bird. I looked at the six vents under the clay wings, and
the wheels and staves from which essential elements were missing, and
wondered if ever inventive man, in all his generations, had ever left
so much to faith in God, and man's future?

We blocked the small "chapel" with a rectangle of stone, and cemented
it tightly. I marked the Cross and date upon it in red paint, and
blessed myself and my fellow priests before we left the crypt. I was
sick at heart, but knew we had done rightly. Two of the three priests
had agreed with me that at the very least it could do no harm to
preserve the clay model of the metal bird.

As we left the crypt, the flames of guttering candles highlighted the
faces of Dennis, Paul and Elihu. They were, as I have said, saintly
faces. There was also, I felt, a coldness, a hardness in them, that
reminded me of something--something far past, a memory so far back
it eluded me entirely. The bodies, the faces, the vestments, were
those of the church. The eyes were the eyes of those who sought truth
otherwheres than in the church, the eyes of scientists.

I felt the urge to make sketches of their faces. I often did this, and
they enjoyed posing.

"I'd like, Father Dennis, Father Paul, Father Elihu," I said, "to make
sketches of each of you and the three of you together. I wish I had
thought in time. I would have made the sketch and left it behind the
rectangle of stone, with my metal bird of dreams."

Father Dennis crossed himself.

"I am glad my likeness does not repose anywhere with this devil's work
we have imprisoned behind the red cross! But," and he smiled, "I do not
mind another sketch. You have something new in each sketch you make of
me!"

So they posed, and I made a sketch of each of them, and of the three
together. Then Father Paul brought me a reflecting glass--of a special
design I had created for our use in the church of Saint Dennis--and I
looked at myself in it, and sketched myself among these three brethren
of the church of Saint Dennis. Then I made an end for a little time.




                              CHAPTER III

                           _Far Retrospect_


When we had made an end of sketching--out on the grounds of Saint
Dennis, during a period of rest and meditation--we separated and
returned to our cells. As I walked back to my cell which was also my
workshop, many other priests met me, spoke my name, Father Wulstan, and
asked for my blessing. I was a priest with a future in the church, in
the world. I was a man of importance as a man as well as a priest.

I remembered the faces of those who met and were blessed by me, there
on the grounds and in the austere halls of Saint Dennis, and when I
reached my cell-workshop, I made sketches of each of them. Like the
first three, Fathers Dennis, Paul and Elihu, there was a familiarity
about them that did not stem from daily acquaintance, but from
something else, from some elder world, or older time.

I did not understand it, or anything about it, except that the urge to
make the sketches was as strong as the urge had always been since the
dream, to complete the metal bird model. Such urges, I had always been
sure, came from God. Thus I explained my urges, which I never allowed
at any time to interfere with the manifold duties of my ministry.

It was a beautiful setting, rural England in 792 A.D., and the church
of Saint Dennis one of the saintliest in the land. Many saintly
priests, many advanced spirits, came to Saint Dennis for what we could
teach them there--and there were many who were taught earthly things
by me in my workshop. In some way my fame as a builder of things had
traveled in Christendom, so that others wished to know.

When the devotions of the day were over, and it was time to sleep, I
lay back on my rough cot with a sigh, fell intently to sleep. No sooner
had today, and England, and Saint Dennis' church, vanished from my
conscious memory, than a terrifying variation of my dream of the metal
bird descended upon me.

I was inside the metal bird, and it was more than large enough to
hold me, and the metal bird was flying at vast, awesome speed, speed
that was as the speed of spirit, or of sound. Yes, I knew the speed
of sound, and of light. The metal bird did not travel with the speed
of light but it did travel faster than sound, for far behind me as I
flew, with my hands fast on the odd instruments which guided the bird,
I heard an awesome noise. It pursued me.

"Now I understand that if I had traveled faster than sound, the sound
would never have reached my ears, but I heard it anyway and allowed
a little for the oddity, the inconsistencies of dreams, as I trusted
others would also make allowances."

I flew far above the earth, and was terrified, so that I pointed the
bill of the metal bird downward, to return me to earth as quickly and
safely as possible. I aimed the bill at the gleaming brightness of a
doomed building that looked to be a cathedral, though shaped somewhat
like a skull. It seemed to be all windows, and on each window--all were
small--the light of the sun was reflected. Surely even I could make my
way to a spot so bright with God's sunlight.

When I aimed the bill of the metal bird at the "cathedral" however, I
found I could not swerve it again. I saw that I was going to plunge
into that Golgothic building, at this vast speed I was making. That it
would destroy me I knew, but that did not seem to matter as much as the
sure knowledge that it would also destroy the metal bird which thus
would be lost to mankind forever.

I crashed through the building, and felt no pain. I hurtled completely
through the Building of the Skull, heard the crashing about me of the
destruction I wrought with the body of my metal bird. I passed through
the building, emerged into the open again, low above the ground, and
saw another building flashing to meet me for further destruction.

It was a rectangular building of gray stone, granite I thought, and
there was a kind of fence around it, of metal I did not know. There
were men in garments strange to me, guarding the place by their
behavior, against attackers. Or else it was a prison, and the guards
were there to see that no prisoners escaped.

I passed over the fence, crashed into the squat building, like none I
had ever even dreamed of before.

This time there was no emergence. Only the crash, and silence, and
utter darkness. In the darkness I felt hands upon me, shaking me, and
so, shortly, I came out of the darkness, and found myself facing Doctor
A. His face was alight with excitement which he seemed scarcely able
to contain. I sat in my electric chair, feeling none the worse for my
strange transition into the unknown. The hood no longer hid my head,
the electrodes had been removed--if electrodes they were.

       *       *       *       *       *

The other eleven scientists were assembled about Doctor A, and
they were as excited as he was. One thing struck me instantly as I
remembered Saint Dennis, for I _did_ remember it now, in every
detail. The faces I had sketched in Saint Dennis were all represented
right here in The Lab, in the faces of these scientists. Was that why
they were all so excited? But of course they could not know what I had
experienced, unless they had participated in it. Maybe, by the magic of
the diminutive cyclotron, they had done exactly that.

"Just how long," I asked, "have I been away from you delightful
gentlemen?"

"You've been sitting in that chair for twelve hours, Hale," said
Doctor A. "And during that time you may well have altered the course
of military progress in the world. Have you any idea what you've been
doing? Do you remember, as I commanded you to remember?"

"Father Wulstan," I said slowly. "I was Father Wulstan. There were
other priests, three in particular. I remember: Fathers Dennis, Paul
and Elihu." I grinned. "Father Dennis was your twin, Doctor A, as Paul
and Elihu were twins of Doctors D and F."

"Look at this," said Doctor A, thrusting a sketch into my hands. "Tell
me what it is!"

"A sketch," I said. "By Father Wulstan, of the church of Saint Dennis."

"Which church has been lost to the world for ten centuries!" said
Doctor A. "We've checked on it since you began telling us what you
were doing. A great church stood on the site in the Fifteen Hundreds,
but it was destroyed, and though religious antiquarians believed there
was another church below it, and below that a crypt, the lost crypt of
Saint Dennis, it was not proved to be a fact until yesterday. We've
been in contact with the archeologists who have been excavating for
several years on the site--in contact by telephone. They have found the
crypt, thanks to questions I asked you while you were away, Hale. Now
take a look at this."

He showed me a sketch, of which "Father Wulstan" must have made
hundreds, of Father Wulstan's "metal bird." His excitement was greater
than ever it had been.

"We have made photostats of it, basing details on your sketch, made
right here while you were away, and flown them to Washington, to the
Bureau of Aeronautics. Jan Rober took them. This is a jet plane, far in
advance of anything aviation has had to date. It is faster than sound.
It will pass easily through the wall of compressibility and will not go
out of control. The design has been given to the nation, and shortly
there will be a practical, full sized jet plane, as here specified."

I began to sink into myself, to feel a horrible depression.

"Then this is all folderol," I said. "I make sketches of priests who
have the faces of Doctors A, D, F and perhaps L, only because those
faces impressed themselves on me at the moment I went away. And the
fact that I have designed, on paper, a jet plane that promises to be
faster than any yet made, what does that prove? That I, perhaps, this
nameless one whom the police called Dean Hale, whom I called Father
Wulstan in my unconsciousness--or whatever the state was which that
cyclotron induced--was an architect or a plane designer. All that I
need to find out now, is what plane designer has been missing for how
long!"

"Not so fast, Hale," said Doctor A, not one iota of his excitement
dissipating under the words of my disappointment. "For there is
something else you must know."

"Yes, what?"

"In the crypt of Saint Dennis a red painted cross was found on a
rectangle of stone set into the solid rock. The stone was removed, and
what do you suppose was found behind it?"

I grinned wryly as I answered, excitement mounting in me in spite of
myself:

"A tiny hangar, just big enough for a clay model of a metal bird."

"Right! A model airplane done in clay. From the description we had over
the telephone, it followed your specifications which we have just given
to the Bureau of Aeronautics, exactly, to the letter."

"A hoax!" I said. "A gag!"

"There was a date on the stone hangar," said Doctor A. "The date was
Seven-Ninety-Two, A.D.!"

"That could be a gag, too," I insisted, though by now I didn't believe
it myself. "It could have been put there by pranksters at any time."

       *       *       *       *       *

Doctor A gave me a keen glance and then shook his head.

"The crypt of Saint Dennis has been lost to the world for centuries,"
he said softly. "That's a proved fact. Even if the prank as you call
it, was brought about, that metal bird of yours was tucked away in the
crypt before fifteen hundred A.D. at which time, if records serve, the
world did not use the airplane, especially the jet plane."

"Then," I said, feeling the awe my voice must have expressed, "I, whom
you call Dean Hale, and Father Wulstan, are one and the same person.
If true, reincarnation is a fact. What does _that_ mean, after
twelve hundred years?"

"The answer to that question is the answer to why The Lab was first
established, Hale. You wished to remember. You are remembering."

"I'm remembering a lot I didn't bargain for," I said. "Dean Hale is
Father Wulstan, or was, and Father Wulstan is now Dean Hale. Now, if
you'll just tell me who Dean Hale is, I'll be satisfied!"

"Dean Hale," said Doctor A, "whoever he may turn out to be, is the
total of all his past. If reincarnation is true, he has lived countless
lives, many useless, many evil, many good. Thus have all men lived, if
reincarnation is true. If it is, and we prove it, we as scientists are
interested only in your past scientific lives."

"You mean you want me to go through more Father Wulstan stuff?" I
demanded.

"You've already remembered Father Wulstan," said Doctor A, "and we are
interested only in your past lives which contributed to human progress.
There'll be many lives that will remain closed books to you, and to us."

"How many do I re-live?" I asked groaning. "Or even the good ones, if
any there were, how many must I re-live?"

"Who knows?" asked Doctor A. "How many profitable doors are there in
the walls, dome and roof of the House of the Skull?"

One thing I insisted on, before I went "back" again. I didn't go for
the name of Dean Hale, if Hale were a murderer.

"Then we'll call you Everyman," said Doctor A, "since every man, in
this same situation, would bring us about the same story, if his proper
past lives were chosen. You are Adam Everyman. Now let's get on with
the next excursion."




                              CHAPTER IV

                          _Faster Than Sound_


I knew that the eleven scientists who traveled with me, collaborated
to build, through the mediation of the cyclotron, the House of the
Skull; that it was an enlargement of my own skull. The "doors" were
segments, the "keys" symbols of location and identification. The Lab
had seemingly proved reincarnation. Could it have been coincidence?

No, I believed I had been Father Wulstan, was still Father Wulstan in
spirit, though in this life I had now forgotten, I may have refused
to be a minister again. I could understand my refusal in terms of
reincarnation. I had once refused, or been compelled to refuse, to
do everything required of a scientist. I had hidden a most important
invention away. Now I must produce it, in accordance with the Law of
Consequences, of Cause and Effect.

The combined thought of the eleven colleagues of Doctor A, directed
into the cyclotron, therein to assemble, by the power of thought,
special hordes of electrons, could very well construct of them the
Building of the Skull, which thus might not be a thought form at
all--scientifically! I knew there were things in the invisible man
knew, could not prove or delineate; modern experiments with nuclear
fission was proving that, and this was somehow nuclear fission far in
advance of modern science, according to Jan Rober. Thought could be
registered. That fact had long been accepted. Mechanical means could
register the weight and substance of thought. Everything that existed,
even energy, and therefore thought, was composed of electrons.

I was beginning to see the deep meaning behind The Lab. From my brain
alone, the scientists could recover from the Invisible Records, more of
world history than could be found in books. If men had existed through
endless lives, man the individual had--and I was merely one. Each was
an historical record himself.

Thus The Lab seemed to have proved in its work with me. However, I did
not believe it. There was no scientific authority for reincarnation,
and not even the cleverest of the esoterics could prove it.

Yet, here was the Building of the Skull, tangible, for I touched it
with my hands, with the hands of my body, not with astral hands. I
turned a certain key in a certain door I seemed to know....

And my name was Anghor, and I had forgotten either key or door, for the
simple reason that when I regained "Anghor" I was actually the Anghor
who had been--twelve thousand years ago! I was Anghor who had lived,
and come to a catastrophic end, though at that moment Anghor did not
seem to fear the end, ten thousand years before the Christian era.

I was Anghor of Atlantis, a sage, a wise man, a scientist, with all
the secrets of the universe at my finger tips, and in my brain. I was
thirty years old. I was cold, merciless, exacting. My science was
exact science. I could even, if allowed by The Masters of Atlantis,
my only superiors, have used the Creative Fiat used in The Beginning,
and caused my thought forms, the thought forms of anyone, to live,
to breathe, to _be_! But the Masters had taken the right to use
the Creative Fiat away from everyone, including myself, because the
majority of Atlanteans had misused it.

One thing I knew which stood out above all others: mankind was
responsible for everything that happened to himself, even apparently
natural catastrophes. The people of Atlantis, for instance, were
responsible for the Creeping Mist. It was vile, slimy, almost lethal,
like the thoughts of so many who had turned their backs on the
teachings and warnings of The Masters. The Creeping Mist, for ten years
now, had hidden the sun from Atlantis. We knew the sun was there, of
course, but it never shone through, save when one went to the top of
The Sun Tower, above the Creeping Mist, to observe it. This privilege
had been denied me, now, for those ten years.

I was responsible, because of my radical scientific teachings, for the
thoughts of the people; therefore I was responsible for The Creeping
Mist. I had been shut away behind the walls of The Laboratory, in the
City of the Sun, until I should have found the means of dissipating the
Creeping Mist. With the Creative Fiat I could have transmuted it into
rain, perhaps, for Atlantean crops; but remember, the Fiat was denied
me.

In Atlantis of just before the Catastrophe, mind had reached its apex.
Man had never before in world's history, even in Mu, Lemuria or Pan,
advanced quite so far in his use of mind. We still used words with
which to express ourselves generally, though a minority of us could
communicate directly from brain to brain by thought; but even the
lowliest, mentally, of us, had the power to Visualize. In other words,
when a man used the Atlantean word for river, he made it clear just
what river he had in mind, so that his hearers would not think, one of
the River Sian, one of the River Ogra, a third of the River Linu, thus
receiving his thought in a blurred way.

       *       *       *       *       *

How was this done? By thought projection. On a televisor, produced by
personal thought, beside the skull of the "speaker," appeared an exact
replica, a picture, of the very stretch of the River Sian which the
speaker had in mind. In effect, this was an adaptation of the Creative
Fiat, but so was everything a man did with his brain or with his hands.
The only difference was that the Creative Fiat was limitless, every
adaptation of it limited, because man had limited himself by his doubts
of his own ability.

I myself had invented the Televisor of Speech-Thought. Every Atlantean,
even the subjugated, possessed one. It never deteriorated, because I
made it of the secret metal which does not rust, tarnish, or decrease.
It fitted, as a dental bridge, in the space from which the useless
wisdom tooth was invariably removed from all Atlanteans as soon as
possible after birth. At the will of the speaker its rays formed the
Televisor, and on the Televisor the speaker wrote with his mind the
picture he saw when he spoke.

We had other things. The Tor-Dox was one. It was the door which
compressed space. There were many such doors, all adjustable. Many
miles and many hours separated Sian from Ogra by medieval methods of
transportation, but you could step into the Tor-Dox at Sian, first
adjusting for destination, and you were instantly in Ogra. I had not
made Tor-Dox. My father had, for he, too, possessed the secrets of the
past.

Other things we knew and accepted as commonplace. We could,
individually, live as long as we wished, remaining perennially
young--or we could place ourselves in the hands of the Masters, to live
as long or as briefly as they wished; but we had free will.

And that free will was the disastrous inspiration behind the Creeping
Mist.

We had been warned by one of the Masters, ten years before, of the
Creeping Mist. By now, ten years after, it should have been called the
Mounting Mist which hid the light of the sun, save as the dull glow of
it came through to blister tender skin and fill the heart with growing
terror.

"You are facing destruction, people of Atlantis," the Supreme Master
had said, standing on a tall white pillar in the central square of
Sian, "if you do not use natural laws as they were given you to use
them. Disobey the laws continually, and they will destroy you, surely
as the sun rises. Ages ago, the Masters of that time disclosed to some
of you all the secrets which science should discover bit by bit, as
the people become ready for each discovery.

"The secrets, _all_ the secrets, of the universe, were given to
a few--a few who had proved themselves worthy of trust. The Masters
erred, as even Masters sometimes may. Some of those who received the
secrets in trust, realized the vast power thus given them, and began
to use them for their personal needs, and in so doing, subjugated
countless of their fellows.

"With each age of progress of the human mind, Masters have warned you,
as they warned the people of Mu, of Lemuria, of Pan. They made it clear
to Atlanteans then exactly why Mu, Lemuria and Pan sank under the
sea--and that Atlantis herself was doomed to the same fate if she did
not reform, return to the proper use of natural law! Some heeded, some
did not. It is ever the way.

"Those who cry out, those who warn men against themselves, are never
thanked, are usually regarded as fanatics, as cranks without knowledge.
Beware, the time is set. It will come in ten years, if drastic return
to the law is not made by all the people."

So the Supreme Master of Sian had spoken, ten years ago, almost, when
he had wrapped his white glowing garment about him and was lowered into
the pillar, to vanish since then from sight of all save the Masters, of
Whom He was One.

Now, the ten years were almost upon us, and all Atlantis groped through
a fog almost too thick to be breathed, this in spite of the fact that
the Masters had instructed me that I, as a leader of the majority of
the people, must find a way to dissolve the fog, and restore the proper
workings of Nature's Law.

"If you fail," the Masters told me. "If you fail, Anghor, the Creeping
Mist will become water. The water will coalesce with the salt waters
of the Atlantean Sea, and the sea will possess all of the land save
certain mountain-tops. Already the weight of the Creeping Mist upon the
land is such that the foundations of Atlantis groan."

Now, as I found myself behind that third-entered door in the Building
of the Skull, alone in The Laboratory of the City of the Sun, I had a
great decision to make. I had been commanded never to use the Creative
Fiat without permission of the Masters. The Masters were mortal. What
if they were drowned in the sea, when Atlantis sank beneath the
waves? They _would_ be, I knew, if I so willed. Could they, then,
prevent my use of the Creative Fiat, which after all was merely the
_Whole_ of the principle of the Televisor of Speech-Thought? If I
refused to use it, it was merely because I was obedient.

       *       *       *       *       *

I had a great battle to fight within myself, for I knew now the
secret of the Creeping Mist. Within The Laboratory of the City of The
Sun, I had invented a light-screen-dome, wherein I had concentrated
sufficient light from the sun to dissipate the Creeping Mist. I had
re-found a lost secret--how to capture and hold the light of the sun.
My screen-dome, constructed of the secret metal, revolved eccentrically
on a quartz pedestal, so that its rays went forth through all the land,
reaching out to conquer the mist as radar of ancient days reached out
to conquer the unseen, and sonar of an even elder time reached out to
solve the mysteries of sound.

I had experimented with the Screen just once, and in a heartbeat of
time after it began its eccentric motion, the Creeping Mist was pushed
back from the Laboratory until I could see the buildings of Sian for
many _parasangs_ in all directions. I gasped, almost failing to
shut off the mechanism before people of Sian should have realized that
I, Anghor, had solved the problem of Atlantis' salvation. This would
not do. I was human, mortal, and they could compel me to use what I had
perfected. But what if they never knew, until it was too late?

My problem then, the decision I must make, was very plain. I could
save Atlantis and its mighty civilization for ages yet to come, and
The Masters would continue to rule it. Or I could keep my secret until
destruction came, make preparations that I myself be sure to survive
and rule the remnants saved of Atlantis on the "certain mountain-tops"
that would remain above the Atlantean Sea. There might not be many
of these, but that mattered not at all. For all of me they could
_all_ perish.

For when I was the One Master, and all the Masters were perished, who
could prevent my use of the Creative Fiat? No One, ever!

I could live as long as I wished, and people my En-Don--which men had
once called Eden--with living things of my own designing and my own
desires. They would be beautiful beyond all dreams. The men would be
perfection, the women more perfect than perfection, but there would be
one variation of the Law; they would all be subject to me, and pay me
tribute as I cared to exact.

For days after I knew the secret of how to dissipate, not once, but
repeatedly, and so forever, the Creeping Mist, I struggled with my
decision. If I kept my secret to myself, millions of human beings
would die in the submersion. But had they not earned such end? Had not
the Supreme Master so accused them all, and each of them? Who was I
to stand in the way of proper Consequences of the Law? Just because I
myself had inspired some of the people to rebellion in their minds?
Were they any the less to blame for their failures because I had, ever
so little, inspired them? Oh, it was easy enough to justify myself.

For days on end I would assure myself that at the proper time I would
give the secret to the Masters, that Atlantis might be saved. But
always I somehow held it back. There were many days when I was sure I'd
keep the secret as my own until after the Catastrophe, and thus emerge
into the new world with the secret of Creations, wherewith to design
and people the Eden of Anghor.




                               CHAPTER V

                        _Traitor to His Trust_


Even as I wavered between right and wrong, the law and lawlessness,
so that I was sometimes not quite sure just which was which, I was
fashioning a vessel in which my own carcass would be saved. The vessel
was a tube, just large enough for me, a special tube of propulsion,
using the power which Atlantis had used for ages upon ages, with a
subtle difference. I made a visit to the twin peaks of Ba and Ku, in
the warm south, and in each peak I set, and carefully hid, the master
magnets to which the magnet in the nose of my vessel would travel
unerringly when I freed the power between them with the flipping of a
switch.

Thus, even when the great waters broke, and overwhelmed Atlantis, I
could step into my vessel, seal it tightly, and let the waters take and
turn and spin me wherever they might--but when I pressed the switch,
releasing the magnetic power--it was really absurdly simple--the
vessel would rise up through the worst maelstrom and rest on the sea
between the peaks of Ba and Ku. I would not need then to make haste to
leave my vessel. I would be Master of the New World, with no need to
hurry. I would be THE Master!

Into this vast indecision I stepped, through the tiny door in the
Building of The Skull--forgetting the door, the key, and the building,
to become Anghor of twelve thousand years ago.

I sat there, still undecided, with the Catastrophe almost upon
Atlantis, when the Three Superior Masters--these titles related
solely to natural science, from which all other arts and sciences
derived--came to see me. That their coming expressed the general fear
I knew. They would ordinarily have bidden me to them. I was a junior,
for all my age and knowledge. Beside them, in age, I was a child. A
precocious child, but yet a child.

I rose and bowed to them, my heart hammering, for now the decision
must be made. If I gave them the secret of the Screen, Atlantis would
be saved, and the Masters would remain the Masters, I the precocious
child. If I refused it, held it back, Atlantis would disappear beneath
the waves and I would be the Master of the New World. Millions would
die, but what was death save a scientific fact?

"Greetings, Masters!" I said.

"Greeting, Anghor!" said Rols, the eldest. "We need not tell you why we
have come? Nor to remind you that destruction visits us any moment now,
any day, any hour?"

"I understand. Destruction hangs over us all, Masters!"

"You have not yet mastered the Creeping Mist? Have not yet even found
a clue to its mastery which might provide us with hope? You, though
so young, who have given us so many inventions in advance even of our
time?"

Here, now, I must decide--and for all time. Whatever I decided,
there would be no turning back. If the Masters found I had lied, my
fate would be as horrible to me personally as would the fate of all
Atlanteans if the Creeping Mist were not abated.

So, what did I decide? In utter horror I heard myself say:

"My Masters, it is hideous failure I must report. I have not solved the
secret of the Creeping Mist. I am completely baffled. I have wasted
years on nothing of value!"

There, it was out, my decision irrevocably made.

They were very calm about it. They bowed as one, polite as always,
exchanged glances, not once asking about or even noting the Screen, its
outlines indicated by a tarp of linen, within reach of their hands.

"We must warn Atlantis, at once, but try to prevent fatal stampeding.
The end will come with any heartbeat."

They turned and left me. I listened to their footfalls, beating out
the knell of Atlantis. I changed my mind, changed it though it meant
banishment at least, or worse, for me. I rose and hurried after them,
calling out a name. They did not turn, did not seem to hear me. In my
mind I intended to call: "Master Bols! Master Bols!"

But not until I came to myself, whoever myself was beside Adam
Everyman, in The Lab in the woods behind Westchester, did I realize
that I was yelling, over and over again: "Doctor A! Doctor A! Doctor A!"

Amazed, I looked at him. He was indeed Bols the Atlantean Master, which
identified him far more clearly than did "Doctor A."

"Yes, Anghor," said Doctor A. "You have followed after me for twelve
thousand years to correct the hideous wrong you wrought in Atlantis. Is
it not so?"

I shuddered, realized that my body was bathed in horror sweat.

"Send me back!" I said. "I must know fully the depths of my ancient
infamy. Send me back!"

       *       *       *       *       *

But the savant only shook his head at me, as if I were a wilful child.

"Man would not be able to endure himself if he could remember all
his infamies," said Doctor A, "which is why it is given only to the
supernaturally strong in spirit to remember. But since this is only
experiment, out of which we hope to benefit the world and thus balance
your personal books, Anghor, as well as our own, you will return, into
the heart of the Catastrophe, to remember, record, and bring back.

"After all, you have returned this time without bringing the details of
your Mist Dispersing Screen, or the vessel by which you planned to save
yourself. Both contain practical data of use to the world. Let us first
evaluate what we have, combining your work as Father Wulstan with that
of Anghor, and see what we have upon which to base the Total You!"

"How can we total me, or anyone, without opening all the doors of each
one's mind--subconscious--House of the Skull--from the Present to the
Beginning?"

"With a drop of water from the sea," said Doctor A, "we can postulate
the sea itself!"

There was a period of relaxation--breakfast-luncheon-dinner in the Lab,
before I should return for answers nobody in The Lab seemed to be able
to give me to my satisfaction. I ate without noting what I ate, like a
man famished, still sitting in my personal "electric chair." Detective
Jan Rober had arrived and made himself at home in the Lab. I grinned at
him.

"Checking on your investment, I see?" I said.

"I've been getting a lot of lowdown on you, Adam," he retorted. "For
a man who can't remember yesterday, you've been doing an awful lot of
remembering. Also, it appears to be exact and very useful remembering.
I wish somebody would explain to me just what it's all about?"

"First," I said, "would you like me at last to clear up the mystery of
the murder of Marian Slade by Dean Hale?"

If he hadn't laughed aloud I might have thought I had made a mistake,
but men didn't laugh at murder, so I took the plunge.

"Marian Slade, of course, was not murdered. You coppers and dicks were
doing your level best to make me remember myself. You took extreme
measures. You accused me of being a murderer, which ought to shock
any amnesiac out of his amnesia. You gave me a name, Dean Hale. I'll
bet your contribution was Marian Slade, by an association of ideas!
Somebody had to be murdered, you remembered the Lab and how useful a
man who might never remember would be to its mentors--and so, Dean Hale
murdered Marian Slade. Am I right?"

"Close enough, Adam," he said, a bit ruefully. "But just between pals,
I wish you could remember who you are."

"I appear to be remembering a lot of people I have been," I answered.
"That is, if you believe in reincarnation."

"This past lives of individuals stuff is the bunk!" he insisted, while
the scientists, who ate with us, smiled patronizingly and shook their
heads.

"We'll prove it isn't bunk," said Doctor A. "After all, it's nice, or
would be, to know you never really go into the grave, or the sea, or
the crematorium, wouldn't it? Only your body does."

I didn't believe him, Jan Rober didn't. I doubted if anybody with a
grain of sense would. I didn't know how to explain Father Wulstan, or
Anghor, but they'd have to be more reasonable than reincarnation to
convince me.

"Just what," I asked, becoming more serious, "have you managed to get
out of my experiences, if you must call them that, as Anghor? Before
you answer, it strikes me that all Anghor's palaver about the creative
power of thought is on a par with what we've seemed to prove about
reincarnation, a kind of waking-sleeping nightmare! How could anybody
except the gods create by the power of thought?"

"You believe in telepathy?" asked Doctor L.

"Between certain minds, perhaps yes; perhaps between the minds of
separated twins, or the minds of people so closely associated they can
guess accurately what each other thinks. But for one deliberately to
transmit thought--well, I've always believed that whoever claimed to do
it was a charlatan, a blasted liar!"

"How," said Jan Rober softly, "do you know what you have always
believed when you can't remember so much as one yesterday?"

"I don't know," I said desperately. "That thought came out of my very
being, so I know it must be true, whoever I may have been yesterday.
But remembering something out of the years since one was born, and
something out of a pre-existence, are horses of different shades of
falsehood. Anghor hints of the Creative Fiat, allegedly an attribute of
the Creator only, and of unplumbed depths of power in human thought. I
don't believe I am contributing anything."

       *       *       *       *       *

Doctor A raised his head, and his eyes flashed.

"You did design, while you were away your Televisor of Speech-Thought,"
he said sternly. "And it is so revolutionary that we're not going to
trust it out of the Lab. With the world equipped with it, nobody could
ever get away with a lie. I'm not sure the world is ready for such a
dose of truth.

"But you belittle the power of human thought. Let me ask you some
questions. Which was greater, the unplumbed thoughts of Thomas Alva
Edison, or the selected thoughts which resulted in his countless
inventions? And which is greater, more important, the invention, or the
thought which produced it? And can you insist, after giving it some
thought, that anything man uses is not a manifestation of thought, his
own or another's?

"Thoughts direct the engineers who plan the Grand Coulee Dam, so that
it is set down on paper to proper scale. That design is thought made
manifest. Other engineers, working with the design, issue orders, which
they have carefully thought out, to many junior foremen, who pass
them on. Laborers, carpenters, cementers, plasterers, stone-and-sand
workers, receive the thought-out orders, turn them over in their minds,
absorb them, transmit their own personal, individual orders to their
own hands and feet. The hands and feet, directed by thought, perform
the myriad details of labor which result, in time, in the Grand Coulee
Dam, greatest work of man existing on earth today save one--the Great
Wall of China, also the result of thought."

I reeled mentally, trying to absorb this. It sounded reasonable,
_too_ reasonable. It sounded so reasonable I mistrusted it more
after hearing it.

"The telephone," went on Doctor A, "is the result of much thought. It
transmits thoughts, ideas. How clumsily it transmits them man will
know when he can do it without using telephone, wireless or radio, all
of which are merely forerunners of communication by direct thought
between brain and brain. No, Anghor, we Atlanteans had something,
twelve thousand years ago, which man has now lost. If, through the
cyclotron, we are able to regain it, or some mechanical channel of it,
it may again enrich the world--if, in our opinion, the world is again
ready for it, will not misuse it. Misuse of it could destroy nations,
devastate the planet."

"Then why fool with it?" I asked. "I'm for letting well enough alone!"

"The world had it before, therefore it must have been intended to have
it. If it has it again it is because the time is ripe. Whatever happens
to man he has earned it, whether it exalt or destroy him. It isn't up
to you to decide."

I tried to think of something else to say, some further objection
to offer. The truth was that I was now eager to be Anghor again, to
find out just what had actually happened to Atlantis. Of course, I
suspected we were somehow being hoaxed, or hoaxing ourselves, but
it was exciting--exciting enough to make me forget that I couldn't
remember anything of myself.

"Why all the mystery of The Lab?" I asked. "Why may the world not know
about all of it?"

"Suppose the world, its newspapers and motion pictures, knew exactly
what we are doing with you as the central character in what they would
call something like drama of human destiny? Would you mind being
annoyed by every crank who'd be sure to intrude?"

I thought what it would be like for me to be away, while hordes of
people misconducted themselves in the Lab and gawked at me, and maybe
punched and pushed my body out of ignorant curiosity, and shook my head.

"But why do you hide your identities behind letters of the alphabet?" I
persisted.

"Maybe, like you, we feel it best not to give our right names," said
Doctor G, the first words I had ever heard him speak. "No, Adam, since
we are delving into the unknown, perhaps the unknowable, since we
are using human beings against the beliefs of other human beings, we
maintain anonymity. Here each of us is Doctor Jekyll of the Lab. At our
homes, outside, away, when we take time to visit them, we are humble
Hydes who wouldn't think of doing anything unorthodox, or even of using
animals in our tests! I'm sure you can understand our wish to protect
ourselves against intrusion."

"But how about my metal bird, and the other designs you have made
available to--whoever you have made them available to?"

"Oh, that's very simple," said Doctor A, grinning. "We have given
everything to the world in your name, Adam, in your right name! We've
done it through Jan Rober, a very wise and useful man, who acts as your
agent."

I jumped to my feet.

"Then you know who and what I am, all of you? What is my name? Where do
I practice law?"

"You still don't remember, Adam?" asked Doctor A, softly.

"No, I don't remember!" I almost shouted it.

"Good! Then what your real self, represented by Jan Rober, does in
the name of humanity, can't possibly influence the excursions of Adam
Everyman! I think, and my colleagues agree with me, that it is better
you remain, for the time of our experiments, and your excursions,
Adam Everyman! Of course if by chance you remember, we shall do
nothing to interfere. After all, you came here to be induced to
remember--remember?"

I gave the matter some thought. I could see where conflict could
interfere with what we were doing, and that my own personal rediscovery
would bring about that conflict. Maybe I had a wife, family, who would
object to all this if they knew. I almost asked Jan Rober whether I
did have a wife and children, but thought better of it. It wouldn't
maintain my peace of mind to know I had. Better leave it as it was.

"I'll play along," I told them. "Where do I go next?"

"Into your magnetic vessel, Anghor," said Doctor A, "at the exact
moment doom cracks down on Atlantis!"




                              CHAPTER VI

                            _Master Island_


Yes, the Catastrophe came and I was ready. Some few Atlanteans had fled
to the great continent to the south. Some had fled to the mountain
tops. The Masters had chosen to go down with their land, as masters of
vessels went down with their ships in the days when vessels traveled on
the face of the sea.

For myself, I had my vessel, completely equipped for myself. In it was
every comfort. I could lie at full length and control every movement of
the vessel. I could cause it to stand on end, so that I stood erect, or
I could lie on my sides or my stomach or my back. Always before my face
were two windows. One was an ordinary window, through which I could see
my immediate surroundings. The other window was my own development,
kept as secret as the Mist Screen, of radar.

In this radar I could see any part of Atlantis at any time. And so,
within my vessel I saw the terror strike. I studied, each in turn, the
great cities of my native land. Their minarets, their spires which,
before the Creeping Mist came down, were like new snow reflected in the
sun. Never in the world were there beauties made by man such as were
found in the cities of Atlantis. There were four great cities in the
richest valleys, beside the most beautiful lakes, and countless smaller
ones, and not even the proudest local dweller could have said which
city of Atlantis was the most beautiful.

Surely Sian, for example, must have been even grander than the New
Jerusalem which our ancient prophets foresaw. Perhaps heaven itself
was what man saw when he looked upon the cities, the fields, the blue
canals, the gorgeous spires, all the glory of Atlantis.

But for me it might have survived for further ages. Who can say? I
might make a journey sideways in time, as we sometimes do among the
Initiates of Atlantis, and see what would have happened if I had
decided to give up the secret of the Creeping Mist. But now it was too
late, though I may elect to do the sideways journey from the Master
Island which is now, for a few short hours, a mountain peak.

The Creeping Mist became all at once a roaring maelstrom. Its mists
became waters as the waters in higher heavens came down to join the
mist. Over the hills, through the great divides, up the valleys of the
rivers, came the blue-white waters of the Atlantean Sea. Atlantis, the
continent itself, began to shake and tremble as if held up by palsied
undersea legs that could no longer hold its weight. The land tipped,
and the sea rushed over it, tilting it the more.

So I watched the sea strike Ogra, the City of the Morning-and-Evening
Star. What a monster was the sea, its forerunning wave higher than
the tallest spire in Ogra. It rushed with all its vast weight upon
the city. People were like ants scurrying to safety. I watched them,
refusing to think that but for me they could have had a chance to live.

The water struck. The spires disappeared. Mighty buildings were pushed
over, to crash to the trembling earth, as if by irresistible monsters,
and the water possessed the ground before the masses struck. But one
knew they struck for mighty geysers were hurled aloft from underseas,
where weight and power and energy were in conflict. But ever the sea
moved on. I saw the great wave approach Sian, and held my breath. Had
I miscalculated? Would my tiny vessel withstand the might which had
ground Ogra into nothingness? I was sure it would, for I had calculated
how high the water would rise, how great would be its mass, how much
pressure on the ribs of my vessel would be required to hold it away
from myself.

The sea poured over me, and over Sian. Through my radar screen I
watched people, men, women and children, gathered up in the heart of
the seas, tiny things in the midst of mighty maelstroms, and hurled
hither and yon, up and down. I saw bodies by the hundreds, thousands,
ground to bits among the undersea wreckage of the most beautiful
buildings in Sian. I saw animals spun in all directions. I saw precious
things, tapestries, robes, screens, furnishings beyond price, taken
into the heart of the rushing tide, and borne away into limbo as if
they had been nothing. I saw Atlantis the proud, the mighty continent
of old, pushed beneath the waves, to rise no more. I saw the sun go
out on it until it should rise again--if ever--and knew to the fullest
realization that the fault was mine.

Canals were gone, lakes were gone, valleys were buried in the darkness
of the deep sea. Hungrily the waves crawled up the sides of the highest
peaks, and some of them for a time were under water, long enough to
drown the desperate who had managed to flee so high, and then rose
again as the continent settled in its new resting place.

I had been positive that the twin peaks of Ba and Ku would remain. And
so they did. I watched the cities fall away beneath me as I soared
above them in my vessel. I saw countless bodies follow the cities,
sucked under until the resurrection day by the plunging, ruined,
battered cities. I saw the darkness claim them. I saw great creatures
of the deep come over the land riding deep and riding shallow in the
conquering sea, and I saw the vastest creatures of them all, feed upon
the people my carefully kept secret had slain.

       *       *       *       *       *

I was not happy in the horror, until I remembered that now, in effect,
I was The Master, and so a kind of god. I had seen enough. Now I must
hurry to my Endon, my Eden, there to be a god in fact and by using the
Fiat to create a world of my own, in my own image if I wished, or in
any form I might desire.

Riding through the waters, now deep under, now just below the surface,
now on the surface which was becoming swiftly still, I threw the switch
which connected my vessel with the magnets on the peaks of Ba and Ku.
Instantly, like a homing pigeon, the vessel responded. Its speed was
swift, until the water along the sides blurred my vision, so that I cut
it down. To think to decelerate was to decelerate. To think speed was
to gain speed--for thought was the motive power which guided the magnet
by which my vessel traveled, the switch its signal to perform.

So I came to the surface of the blue sea which lay between the sunlit
peaks I had chosen for myself. They still were damp as from a lengthy
rain. The water had covered them, long enough to drown all living
things upon them save the trees, the plants. The twin peaks were mine.
Not one person lived among all the many bodies that floated in the sea
about me, and doubtless in the seas beyond the peaks. And with all
industry the sharks and great whales, the behemoths and leviathans,
were disposing of the dead.

I took my time until the scavengers had cleared the waters and there
was no chance of infection. Disease had long been banished from
Atlantis, but there had never been such an epidemic of death in the
land before, and so it would have returned but for the scavengers.

When all was done I quitted my vessel, stood ashore, raised my arms
above my head, rejoiced that my plan had succeeded. This was Eden
indeed, with all green fruits and trees and vegetables man might
desire, for Atlantis cultivated every inch of all its land, including
these. Here was my Eden.

I ate and drank from my stores. I was sure I could produce food at
will, or water at my desire, merely by desiring. I had not used
Creative Fiat yet, but I knew how. There was no hurry, there was plenty
of time. A god had no need to make undue speed.

When I was ready, and not before. I sat down under a fig-tree and
thought:

"What shall I create in this Eden?" I began to form pictures in my
mind, to make mental designs of the living things I would create. I
would begin small. I would, first, make a simple tree. I saw a stately
palm in my mind, like no palm that ever grew on Atlantis anywhere. I
saw it in every detail, its fronds, its fruit, its life juices, its
roots, its velvety bark.

I saw it. I spoke the word: "Be!"

And it was! The Fiat operated for me! I needed no further proof. Now,
as for animals there were enough in the sea. They might come out in
time to populate the earth. Just now I had no need of animals.

"There shall be men, but not the tall white blue eyed man of Atlantis,"
I decided. "I shall make several men, of different colors, of different
attributes, of different heights, different appetites, different
mentalities. First, I shall bring a brown man--and why not his mate at
the same time--into being!"

I saw the man and his mate in perfect detail, whole.

I spoke the word, and nothing happened, nothing whatever! More sharply
I spoke it again, but it did not operate. I gazed at the tree I had
made, to make sure--and as I thought of how I had completed the tree,
the thought created its other self beside it, so that there were two
new palms on the first of my two peaks. But man I did not bring into
being.

I tried red men, and failed. I tried black men, failed again. I tried
yellow man--failure, all failures!

Would my dream not come true then? Was I destined to live out my time
entirely alone on this Eden I had selected? I would not have it so.

I could manufacture stuff from electronic force. I had with me in my
vessel every ingredient, every element, every instrument. I had stocked
my vessel against every contingency, like a good seaman, by which I
might build the skin, flesh, bones, cartilage, nails, all the intricate
diverse parts of man.

So all in a day I built the forms of a red man, black man, yellow man,
brown man--and for each I built a mate at the same time.

Then I commanded them to obey me, to rise, and breathe, and walk, and
go, and live as men and women. In their brains which I had created I
wrote for each color a language which should be all his own.

Now they obeyed me!

       *       *       *       *       *

They rose, and stood, and turned their eyes upon me, eyes that should
have been alive, but were instead the eyes of the dead--the eyes of
things which had never lived, nor ever would--moving things that did
not live!

I've no way of knowing what their metallic minds thought of me, but as
if they were, all eight of them, possessed at once by the same evil
genii, they launched themselves at me, shrieking at me in their several
tongues.

I had not expected this. I slew a man. A woman I slew by accident. The
others pulled me down, clawing at me, biting, scratching....

I knew, as I knew that they were killing me, that these people would
survive, for I had made them strong, and that in them--soulless,
merciless, heartless though they were--I would survive to the end of
time. Perhaps, eventually, the Masters, or other Masters would do that
missing thing, speak that fruitful word, which would bring the light of
life into those dead eyes, but I had little time to think upon it.

For they were tearing me apart, and I was begging for mercy from the
merciless. I cried out, but they did not understand, how could they,
when what I called aloud was:

"Doctor A! Doctor A! Doctor A?"

I stepped from beneath the hood in the Lab in Westchester. The table
before me was littered with new sketches I had done. Doctor A and his
colleagues were jubilant.

"Here's a perfect job of city planning!" he cried. "Here's the answer
to the housing problem! This concentration of great force is the answer
to the atom bomb, for it was developed for defense as well as offense.
It was known, you told us, ages beyond ages ago to Atlanteans, but not
used for all those ages because the world was at peace. But it could be
used to cause continents to sink as Atlantis sank."

I stared at the scientists.

"Don't give it to mankind!" I cried. "I have seen such destruction. I
caused it. Don't make me the instrument to bring it about again. Keep
it secret, for all our lives, and afterward, unless somewhere in the
Secret Wisdom of the Sages of the Past, there is an answer to dreadful
knowledge such as this, to make it safe for men to manage!"

They understood me, every one of them, for they were men of
intelligence beyond their time--and why not? Three of them were
obviously the Three Masters of Atlantis!

"To trace every possible knowledge of man," said Doctor A, "we must
trace in detail the past of every man on earth. That we cannot do. To
trace all the past of even one would take generations."

"But we can begin," I said eagerly. "I shall devote my life to it. And
if you're somehow giving the world the benefit of what we're doing and
believe that man can learn from the evil in his past, dredge up my
disastrous lives if you wish, also."

"Maybe I can find other volunteers," said Jan Rober, grinning.
"We've made a beginning, let's not stop! We've already seen from the
progressive past lives of one man, how much harm a single individual
can cause because he possesses too much forbidden knowledge. What
a lot each one of us must have to pay for. And how much all of us
together have done to unbalance the precision of the world!"

"Adam," said Doctor A, "you can be your real self now, since we have
discovered who and what you really are. You can be rich, famous, one of
the most important men in the world. Or you can be Adam Everyman, and
accomplish much more, not for yourself but for the people of the world.
It's for you to choose, as it is always for man to choose."

At least in one life I'd choose correctly!

"To the day I die," I said to my colleagues, "I am Adam Everyman and
all that may have been before he was born into this particular life.
I've had fame, riches, power in past lives. If men could know who and
what I've been, they'd destroy me and lock themselves in somewhere
where they could damage no one. And we can't end it, if reincarnation
is true, because reincarnation is true. But we can bring it forth into
the light and show it to every man!"

"You are ready then, Adam," said Doctor A, "to make further excursions
into your former lives?"

"Even if it leads me repeatedly to the gates of Hell!" I said.

"It will lead you there, often," Doctor A said grimly. "Every man
already knows that, if he will just think, if he will just select the
forbidden panels on his own personal House of the Skull, turn the right
key, and take a good look at his own mental insides!"

"Maybe we can induce him to do it," I said hopefully.

"Maybe," repeated Doctor A, though if there were hope in his entire
make-up, I could not see it.



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