Collected Short Fiction, page 198
That face, Jason knew, would haunt him for ever. He covered his eyes, shrank back from it. Then quick pity followed his horror; pity—and red blazing anger at the tall, ironically suave Oriental beside him on the floor of glass. He swung upon Iskandar, spoke in a voice thick with emotion:
“You did that? To Jerry Travers! You did—that?”
ISKANDAR chuckled with a sinister mirth, and silently motioned to Jason’s guards to lead him off the floor of glass. Deliberately his voice rolled out, musical and deep and colorless:
“Yes, Wade, that was one of my creations. Quite a feat, don’t you admit, to cause the body cells of the human to degenerate to the arthropod level, without material change to the head? I warned you, I believe, that you might be surprized.”
“You must kill it,” whispered Jason, faintly. “It’s dreadful that a man should live on in such agony—or. a man’s brain.”
“It doesn’t want to die,” responded Iskandar, suavely, musically. “It wants to live—to kill me! That is why I let it continue to exist. I derive an esthetic satisfaction from its hate.”
They had come out into the hall, Jason reeling, half carried by Jabez Head. His soul was sick with horror.
“How can you bear,” his dry voice whispered, “to see the suffering in its eyes?”
“There is an esthetic pleasure,” observed the tall Oriental, calmly, “to be had from the contemplation of emotion. You, doubtless, enjoy witnessing a play, in which the characters are personifications of the various emotions, of love or hate or jealousy or fear. But your crude faculties, apparently, art satisfied by the mere shallow imitation of emotion. My own esthetic appreciations, Mr. Wade, are refined beyond yours. I have made life my play. I prefer genuine emotion in real human beings, to the synthetic imitation upon the stage. And the most intense, therefore the most pleasurable, emotions are hate and horror and terror.”
“I believe it,” Jason shot at him, angrily. “But why did you do that to Jerry? What excuse——”
“It was partly,” Iskandar replied suavely, “as a test of my mastery over the processes of life, and partly as an example to others who might think of disobeying me; but largely because I derived an esthetic satisfaction from so punishing an insolent young man who thought to defeat my purposes.”
“That was,” Jason gasped, “—a punishment?”
“Precisely,” responded the deep, emotionlessly musical voice. “I brought the man here to assist with my laboratory work. He was quite a competent technician. . . . But he refused to assist with my undertaking. He had the temerity, even, to make a fantastic, futile attempt to upset my plans for the future of the human race.”
The tall, purple-robed Wizard chuckled with golden mirth.
“After his insolent refusal to assist with one experiment, I made him the subject of another. I placed him in the ray chamber, exposed to the radiations of the green tubes you saw. The green rays, together with certain chemicals in the air he breathed, with additions to his food, and certain injections into his blood, effected the change in his body cells that you observed. That was nearly a year ago.”
“His wife?” breathed Jason, remembering. “What became of her?”
“It was she,” said Iskandar, “who gave the final esthetic touch. He loved her, you see. . . . She was a witness to the experiment. She was confined in the room we just entered, above the glass floor. She watched the change. She died, some weeks ago . . . laughing! She had been, for some months, insane.” Jason bit his lip. The nails of his tight hands cut into his palms.
“You,” he breathed, dazed with horror, “you did—that?”
“Certainly,” agreed the Oriental, smoothly. “And if you care to see further examples of the possibilities of cell-manipulation——”
Abruptly, Jason was shaken by another chill of horror. A thought had come to him that was dreadful, unthinkable.
“Tonia?” he whispered. His voice was a hoarse, dry rasp. “You aren’t going to—to—change her?”
“On the other hand,” said Iskandar, “I am.”
Jason grasped at Jabez Head’s hard arm. They were back in the amazing tower room. And it. seemed to spin around him. The gray deck of glass and the flat gray sea beyond its huge windows lilted and whirled. His voice was choked and hoarse with horror.
“You—are?”
“I surely am, Mr. Wade. I am developing a new race, to replace the ugly, inefficient beasts that now call themselves men.”
A STRANGE fanaticism had crept into the throbbing musical voice; it blazed in the compelling, slanted black eyes.
“I am truly the Wizard of Life. I am creating a new human race. It will go forth from this island to conquer the world. The things you know as men will be their chattels and slaves. I, Iskandar the Wizard, will make over the world, as the great Macedonian, my ancestor, made it over before me.”
Jason shrank from the man. He was terrible. In his reverberant voice, in his blazing, night-black eyes, was a power, a mad inspiration.
“And the girl, Tonia Hope,” the fascinating voice throbbed on, “is chosen to a duty of rare honor.”
Jason rasped, with a desperate effort, “What’s that?”
“She is chosen to be the mother of the new race. Very soon, when a little more preliminary work is completed, I shall make the injections into her blood, and mix the vapors in the air that circulates about her, and flood her cell with. the radiations. And she will be changed into die first of the new race. She will be the mother of the conquerors!”
Jason reeled, sick with nightmare horror. The dragon hangings and the great silver lamps and the jade Buddha wove fantastic patterns across his spinning world. It was incredible, insane. Yet this amazing, diabolical genius had showed him enough so that Jason knew he had power to do the thing.
“And now,” asked Iskandar, his musical tones lower, again faintly mocking, “is your curiosity satisfied, Mr. Wade?” Jason tried to speak, but he was faint with horror. A dry, whispering gasp was all that came. But for the arm of Jabez Head, he might have fallen.
“I must thank you, Mr. Wade,” throbbed the mocking voice, “for allaying my apprehensions of official investigation. However,” it added, “don’t think me defenseless. I prefer that my enterprise should yet remain unknown. But, if it should become necessary, the three silver spheres you see upon the pylons outside project an energy capable of destroying any navy on earth, in half an hour.”
Jason fought to recover his faculties, tried to find voice for some protest against the unthinkable atrocity designed upon Tonia Hope. Still horror would not let him speak.
“Captain Head,” Iskandar addressed the gaunt man supporting him, “Mr. Wade appears faint. Take him for a walk, if you please, in the fresh air outside. It may revive him.”
“Yes, sir,” snapped the hard voice of Jabez Head.
“And be careful, Captain,” the deep voice added, with expressionless significance, “that Mr. Wade does not slip and fall into the sea. With the ice upon it, the deck is very slick.”
“Yes, Mr. Iskandar,” cracked Jabez Head. And he added, unnecessarily, “I understand, Mr. Iskandar.”
The thin New Englander and ape-like Hap Nino led Jason out of the strange vast tower room, dazed with realization that the Wizard’s last words had been a sentence of death.
3. The Crucible of Hell
THE ice-laden wind lashed them, as they came outside and upon the gray, slippery pave of glass. With Jabez Head at one arm, Hap Nino at the other, Jason was dragged unresistingly down the broad, ice-armored way, past the squat radio station, past one of the pylons that bore an enigmatic argent sphere, to the low metal rail at the edge of the flattened top of the dome.
He made a vain struggle, as they came near the railing, and slipped to his knees on the ice-coated glass. The men dragged him back to his feet.
“Don’t fuss so, brother,” the hard Yankee voice of Jabez Head advised him, ironically. “Ye might slip, on this ice, and fall off in the sea. Mr. Iskandar would be sorry about that.”
He chuckled, as they dragged Jason to the railing.
Beyond, the gray glass sloped down, glistening with ice. A gentle slope at first, it became swiftly steeper. He could see the slate-gray, raging sea beyond, flinging up wild white arms of spume. Above the howl of the bitter wind, he could hear the thunder of mad water against the edge of the dome.
“You’re white men,” Jason appealed desperately. “How can you be servants of that monster? How can you stand to see him do such—such hellish things? You’ve seen Jerry Travers—or the thing that was Jerry. You’ve seen Tonia Hope, the girl he’s going to twist into some hideous form with his infernal science. You’ve seen her, so young and so lovely! And we could stop him! Just the three of us. Stop him, before it’s too late. We must! No matter what happens to us afterward!”
“Can the gab, bo,” snarled Hap Nino.
“You saw that—that thing! With the man’s head. Jerry Travers was my friend——”
“Ye’re crazy as a bedbug, brother,” the hard voice of Jabez Head cut him off. “We know which side our bread is buttered on. We’re the only whites here. The rest is damn’ Chinks. We’re agents for Mr. Iskandar, ashore. We haul down a grand a week. Hell, brother, we couldn’t cross him if we wanted to! He’s got his damn’ yeller soldiers scattered all over the place. And them white balls on the towers could wipe out the whole damn’ navy! . . . Why don’t ye be careful, brother? Yell fall!”
Hap Nino had pushed him, while Jabez spoke. He toppled over the low rail. Grinning unpleasantly, the gaunt man made a pretense of grasping for him, knocked his hand loose from the rail with a malicious blow.
“Careful, brother,” Jabez Head called mockingly after him, “or ye’ll fall in the sea!”
Sprawling on the slippery, ice-filmed glass, Jason clutched at it vainly with his fingers. He slid down the slope of the enormous dome, at first rather slowly. Gaunt, green-eyed man and bulky, gorilla-like man, above him, stood by the rail and chuckled at his futile struggles.
He slid faster; the roar of the mad, ice-cold sea below came swiftly nearer.
No stopping, now! He was plunging into the storm-lashed ocean.
He made no more effort to check his fall. Instead, he tore off his coat, and struggled into a position on his face, head foremost, ready for the dive.
Though a strong swimmer, Jason had no real hope of saving his life. No man, he knew, could survive more than a few minutes in the heaving, frigid water. The two would not have let him slide down alive if there had been any probability of escape.
But a burning determination had been born in Jason Wade to kill Iskandar. He must, for Tonia’s sake. There was ground for no slightest hope that he could do the thing; yet purpose flamed strong in him, fed with memory of the sobbing horror, of Iskandar’s pitiless cruelty, of Tonia’s unthinkable danger.
He plunged down. Bitter air screamed about him. The racing glass was hot, stinging, beneath his body. Then he flew clear of it. A trough yawned for him, in green-gray, foaming water, another hundred feet below.
It struck him with savage, bruising force; he was swallowed in dark, crushing, icy depths. His clothing dragged him back, as he struggled for the surface. He tore himself free of it. His head broke through into smothering spray.
Already numbed, chilled, he strangled in salty foam. A mountainous wave drove him at the vertical wall of the floating island—it was steel, beneath the glass, to a height of forty feet, painted gray. Fiercely, vainly, he struggled back; he was flung against it, cruelly.
He was slightly to windward of the floating isle. He would try, he thought dimly, to swim toward the leeward side. He might live a few minutes longer there—a few more minutes, t® wait for the miracle which alone could give him the fighting chance he longed for.
Heaving, icy water flung him again at the steel wall; again he fought to save himself from being pulped against it. Then, as he fell bade into the trough, numb, battered, strangling, he saw the grating.
It was the only break he had seen in the gray steel wall. A circular port, closed with a massive, rusty grille of iron, it was twenty feet above him, now. But the last sea had rushed over it; green water was still gushing back through the bars.
If he could reach it, somehow, and enter! It was a desperate chance, but his only one. He gasped for breath, tried to estimate the motion of the next wave, struggled desperately to get where the crest would fling him toward the grating.
A green, resistless flood boiled up under him. Stinging spray, whipped freezing on the bitter wind, choked him, blinded him. He could do no more than fight to keep above the surface.
The steel wall crushed against him, with a cruel impact. He had failed to reach the grate. It was still several feet above him, and he would never have another chance; he would be carried far past before the next wave came.
He clawed vainly at the cold metal with his fingers. A last ironic fillip of the sea flung him up. His tom fingers closed on the rusty bars. The ocean went down, and left him there, a numb limp bundle, clinging in the freezing wind.
HE GOT his breath, and rested, until the mad sea smashed at him again. White water stung him, smothered him, hammered him against the grate, tore at him with resistless power.
When it had gone down again, he found energy to shake the barrier. It was hinged on one side, fastened at the other, he perceived, with a rusty bolt. With foul water gushing out upon him, he reached through the bars, fumbled with the bolt.
It was stiff with rust. His numb, bleeding fingers could not move it. Another sea hammered him; it left him clinging to the grille, shivering, exhausted, battered. He dragged himself up, and tried again.
The bolt loosened. The grille creaked outward. He swung his trembling body under it, climbed into a reeking dark passage. A terrific, driving wave slammed the grate behind him, and buried him a last time with icy water.
Weakly, on hands and knees, he climbed up a dark, sloping tube, against a foot-deep stream of foul water. A few dozen yards he advanced, and came into an open, stagnant ditch; at last he stood upright, naked, exhausted, half frozen, under the dome of glass.
Too nearly dead to have any interest in his surroundings, he crawled out of the stagnant ditch, and collapsed in something that was green and growing. His coma of exhaustion must have passed into a natural sleep which lasted several hours; for when he came abruptly to himself, he felt less fatigued and extremely hungry.
He opened his eyes and sat up—and only then received the impact of amazement and horror from his unprecedented surroundings.
The immense glass dome arched above him, braced with spidery ribs of steel. The circular floor beneath it was enormous—some three thousand feet across, he estimated. It was broken only by a huge cylindrical pier which rose in the center of it, giving support, hundreds of feet above, to the spreading web of steel.
Suspended from the gloomy confusion of girders were strange lamps—gigantic globes beneath shimmering, huge reflectors—that bathed the floor under the dome with a green light, unearthly, terrible.
The green, fearful radiance lit a world of horror—a scrap of jungle, riotous with roaring, swarming life that had revolted hideously from every law of normal, healthy nature—with life in mad rebellion against order or sanity. It was the dread laboratory, Jason realized, trembling before the terror of it, of the inhuman scientific genius who called himself the Wizard of Life.
It was a colossal crucible of nightmare horror, in which evolution, in the strange rays of the eery green globes, under the faintly violet vapor that filled the dome, had followed insane, unthinkable paths!
The narrow strip of green moss along the edges of the drainage ditch seemed natural enough, except for an abnormal luxuriance. But all about him, buzzing, humming, thrusting up, fighting a mad battle for perverted existence, was living nightmare.
A little away from the ditch, on either side, rose eldritch, unearthly jungle.
Mushrooms—amazing fungi, sickly, livid white, splotched with purple—towered thirty feet high. Avid maggots fed upon them, hideous, scarlet, the size of a man’s body. Above their rotting masses hung enormous flies, from whose iridescent wings throbbed a deep and menacing roar.
Violet vines choked the fungoid forest; they covered colossal mushrooms with mountains of broad, shining leaves, and entwined them with huge, twisted lianas. They opened enormous bellshaped blooms, that smelled powerfully and sickeningly sweet.
The violet leaves stirred with unseen life. Many things rustled and crawled and flew, in this crucible of hell—insane, unthinkable things from which Jason’s mind recoiled in overburdening horror.
At first Jason had been savagely elated to find himself alive, and upon the floating island; but elation swiftly died, before realization of the terrific obstacles yet ahead. He was unarmed, amid the perils of this unthinkable jungle. Iskandar was still secure, among his Oriental soldiers and his unknown weapons.
Elation died, but purpose kept alive. As long as he breathed, Jason knew, he would fight to avenge Jerry Travers and to save Tonia Hope from a fate that was unnamable.
He stumbled up the ditch, toward the great central pier, seeking some way of escape from this pit of struggling horror. He beat a huge, droning fly from above his head, and fled precipitately from something scarlet and unthinkably hideous that reared itself from the violet vines as he passed, beside a white-and-purple mushroom.
And he came, presently, across strangely luxuriant green moss, to the round metal tube. A hundred feet thick, it plunged straight up to the spidery confusion of supporting girders above the sinister globes of green. It should, he reasoned, contain a stair or elevator. He tramped around it, and came indeed upon a door—but it was locked, and made of heavy steel that his best efforts could make no impression upon.
He was still beside it, when he heard a key in the lock. Hastily he retreated, and flung himself down behind a mass of lush violet vines, to watch. Three men left the door, to advance cautiously into the weird jungle.
