The Best of Argosy #6 - Minions of Mars

by William Grey Beyer

  The guards placed little reliance upon the bars of the prison to hold their man. They had already inspected the bent bars of a cell further down the corridor. Nor did they feel much confidence in their own ability to stop a man of such vigor. Their mastery of the situation depended wholly upon their ability to use their swords to attack Mark’s hands if he tried to bend those bars.

  “How did you do that?” said one of them querulously.

  “A trade secret,” Mark confided. “Didn’t they tell you I was a master of Black Magic?”

  “No,” said one, awed.

  “Well, I am,” Mark declared flatly, ignoring the whisper “Liar!” that drifted to his ears.

  “Rats!” the other said. “There ain’t no such thing!”

  Mark smiled in a friendly manner. “Oh, but there is,” he insisted. “Do you want me to prove it? Well then, spit. Anywhere at all. I leave the choice to you.”

  The guard paled, then rallied. “I thought you did that,” he said. “But it’s some kind of a trick. And you’re not going to get out of that cell with any trick.”

  “Black Magic or trick, what’s the difference?” Mark asked. “I’ll walk out of this cell whenever I care to.”

  As he spoke, Mark waved a hand past his face to dislodge a fly which had decided to park on his nose. But the gesture seemed fraught with significance to the two guards. For at the same time they were astounded to see the door of the cell becoming a cherry-red color.

  They stepped back, shaken, and so doing, one of them stumbled over a bench and landed in a heap. He didn’t take his eyes off the door, however.

  The bars lightened from red to a brilliant white, and to the accompaniment of angry crackling, melted and dripped in a pool on the stone floor.

  Mark, at the back of the cell, felt the blast of heat that was released, and grinned. Omega was playing his favorite game. He loved to astonish ignorant humans with a display of his mastery of natural forces. The guards were properly impressed. They cowered against the far side of the corridor, evidently too scared to run from the heat which was singeing their hair.

  “You see it would be simple for me to escape if I wanted,” Mark said. “So you needn’t keep such a close watch over me. Suppose you both run along now and continue your card game in your own quarters. I’m tired of looking at you. And I’m tired of having you spit in my cell.”

  The guard who doubted the existence of Black Magic suddenly experienced a return of his courage. “No,” he shouted, brandishing his sword. But abruptly the weapon began to weave through the air like demented sea weed. The guard howled and let it go. Whereupon the sword drifted feather-light to the floor.

  “Short memory,” Mark observed. “Now you two do as I say, before I get mad. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be here for quite a while. Shoo!”

  Mark made a violent gesture with the last word, and the guards fell over each other in their flight. Once in the outer room they slammed the door to the cell block and shot the bolts. And with the sound, Omega materialized in the familiar form of the wrinkled old man.

  Chapter 13: Uncle Omega

  MARK said furiously: “It’s about time you showed up. I’ve been having the darnedest time, and it’s certainly no fault of yours I’ve come through so far in one piece. How’s Nona?”

  “She’s okay,” Omega assured him. “When I left her, the ship was within a hundred miles of Stadtland. She was madder’n a skinned wildcat because I wouldn’t bring her here. And it’s high time you learned to mind your manners, you young ingrate! How’s your head?”

  “All right,” Mark said. “And I’m certainly relieved that for once you showed sense enough to keep Nona out of this. This is no place for a woman — even Nona. Gosh, now I miss that baggage. Nobody’s really bawled me out in a month.”

  “Yeah,” Omega agreed, eyeing Mark and rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “You do need taking down a peg. Too big for your boots.”

  Mark didn’t like the look in Omega’s momentarily borrowed sage’s eyes. “Now, look here —” he began in alarm. The old man had gently vanished. “Come back here! you shyster. This is no time for —” His speech broke off in a short, indignant yelp as a large gray rat, appearing out of the wall, scampered unpleasantly across his face.

  “Cut it out!” Mark roared and took a swipe at the skittering rodent. His knuckles banged first air, and then the wall. It was very painful. Mark cursed.

  Mocking laughter echoed out of space. Mark jeered: “Behave yourself. Orson Welles did that hollow mirth stuff a heck of a lot better, and anyhow —”

  But Omega was having much too good a time to stop so soon. His next divertissement was to turn into several pairs of disconnected hands that floated menacingly about in front of Mark’s face. In spite of himself, Mark shivered and then drew in a deep breath as the hands, like a flock of gulls suddenly assembled for concerted attack upon an unwary fish, dove for his naked and defenseless stomach.

  “Quit it, you playboy idiot!” was all Mark had time for before the hands descended upon him, fingers curved and outspread, and began to tickle as hard and as fast as they could. It was an expert job and a skilled masseur could scarcely have been more personal. To Mark, it was sheer torture. He was helpless, doubled up, and screaming with agonized and involuntary laughter.

  When the hands retreated, Mark collapsed, winded.

  “Say uncle,” a voice commanded.

  “I’ll be — darned — if I — will,” Mark panted, thoroughly annoyed. “I’ll — get you — for that.”

  “All right,” said the voice. “Here you go. Oops-a-daisy.”

  The hands swooped down, grasped Mark by his armpits and raised him swiftly to the ceiling.

  “Put me down!” Mark demanded.

  IN ANSWER, the hands let him down with terrifying speed, arresting his plunge inches above the floor with a suddenness that did things to his stomach that hadn’t been done to it since he had last ridden in an office-building elevator, eight thousand years ago. But the good old sensation was still there, and Mark howled in angry protest.

  “Say uncle,” the voice repeated.

  Mark clamped his lips together; and the hands, this time in no mood for fooling, dragged him through the air in a series of breathtaking loops and swirls that would have made a twentieth-century stunt pilot weak with admiration. It was remarkable what intricate maneuvers could be accomplished in such a limited space. And a man may be stubborn, but his sense of equilibrium, when properly outraged, will betray him at last.

  “All right,” Mark gasped weakly, wincing as the floor came up to bat him in the face for the twentieth time. “I surrender. And I love you very much, Uncle Omega — but for cat’s sake, put me down!”

  Mark came to a gentle rest on the floor, where he lay, eyes closed and gasping for breath, until his head and his eyes and the pit of his stomach began to function in something like unison again. He opened his eyes and was relieved to find Omega back in his old man’s guise, sitting placidly in the corner.

  Omega stirred. “That ought, to teach you,” he said smugly. “And now let’s get down to brass tacks. What are you doing here? When I looked in on you the other day you were making speeches to a bunch of misguided insurgents.”

  “Why didn’t you say hello?” Mark inquired.

  “You were busy and I had to get back and tell Nona I’d found you. She was worried sick. I told her not to expect you for a while. I knew you’d want to finish this job even after you regained your memory. You’ve got a fine knack for sticking your nose into things which don’t concern you at all.”

  Mark made a rude noise. “What do you mean, don’t concern me? You fixed things so that this peculiar body chemistry of mine is to be perpetuated. For which you have my gratitude, incidentally. A lifetime several thousands of years long would be monotonous without company of the right sort. But the very fact that you gave Nona my kind of a body chemistry, makes me extremely interested in the sort of a world my future descendants will have. There
fore, I’m starting a campaign for betterment, right now.”

  “And how are you going about it?”

  “I’m not so sure any more,” Mark confessed, with unaccustomed hesitation.

  “Then suppose you answer the question I asked,” Omega suggested. “I could get the information direct from your mind, you know. Only I don’t do that to people I like.”

  “You mean how I happen to be in prison?”

  “Yeah. Were you jay-walking?”

  “Something about as serious.” Mark went on to explain his encounter with Erlayok.

  “Nasty character,” Omega said. “I looked him over several years ago. Unmitigated scoundrel — and a tyrant.”

  “A genius, though,” said Mark.

  Omega caused his seamed face to take on an expression of surprise. “Who said so?” he demanded. “Your own intelligence is better than his by a long shot. Even if you behave like a looney.”

  “How do you figure that out?” Mark inquired. “He was able to hypnotize me before I knew what was happening.”

  “Doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Why not?” asked Mark.

  “LOOK at it this way,” said Omega. “Back in your youth there was a powerful intellect known as Einstein. And as far as I know he had no hypnotic power at all. Whereas there were any number of mediocre intellects in the form of fakirs and magicians who had considerable talent in that field. Obviously then, hypnotic power has little bearing on the intelligence of the mind which uses it.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Mark conceded. “It never occurred to me, that there wasn’t a direct relationship between the two.”

  “There isn’t,” Omega said. “Hypnotic power is merely a special ability of certain brains. It bears about the same relationship to intelligence as other special abilities, such as adeptness with figures. If you’ll remember, there were men in your time who could add long columns of numbers with lightning rapidity. What did they do for a living? Were they great statesmen, mathematicians or erudite scholars?”

  Mark smiled as he recalled several such cases. “There was one who worked behind the counter of a grocery store,” he remembered. “If you ask me it takes a high grade of intelligence to sell anything to a woman who doesn’t know what she wants. That is, without going stark raving mad in the process. Were you ever in a grocery store, my old one?”

  “Yeah. I was in a trolley car once, too,” Omega confided. “That was a lot of fun. A woman, who for some reason was carting around about a hundred pounds of excess weight, was trying to find a nickel among a mass of gadgets jumbled inside her handbag. These jiggers, I understood, were mainly aids to beauty, and all had some specific purpose. Not being a human, I don’t have a very well developed appreciation of human pulchritude, but in my opinion this particular lady was fooling herself.

  “But as I started to say, there was a long line of people waiting to get on the trolley, while she fumbled. The motorman was looking at his watch and breaking out in a cold sweat. Several passengers were evidently late for work. She finally found the nickel, and was quite surprised to see it turn into a slimy worm in her hand. The conductor, who had meanwhile managed to become an overgrown rooster, pecked at it hungrily. The lady left the car with several blood-curdling screams, much to the surprise of the other passengers, who hadn’t noticed anything unusual.”

  Mark listened patiently to the reminiscence, resigned to the fact that anybody as old as Omega certainly had a right to become garrulous about past adventures.

  “About hypnotism,” he said. “I’m afraid I got off the subject, just what is hypnotism?”

  “I think you did,” Omega agreed. “Bad sign — indication of advancing age. Hypnosis may be said to be a condition in which the subject is in an exaggerated state of passive attention to some person or object. In that state he is very amenable to suggestion. He can be made to do all sorts of things. The hypnotist, also by suggestion, can make him imagine he is being subjected to any sort of environment. It might be a sultry July day, but if the hypnotist tells the subject that he has been deposited on an ice floe adjacent to the North Pole, he will shiver and turn blue from the cold.”

  “I know all that,” said Mark. “I’ve experienced it from the viewpoint of the subject. But what causes it? How does the hypnotist get his subject into this condition?”

  “Oh, so you want to be a hypnotist!”

  “No,” Mark denied. “I just got an idea, a little while ago. An idea of how I might make this little rebellion of ours pay the sort of dividends the rebels think it will.”

  “That’s fine,” Omega applauded. “Tell me about it.”

  “After you tell me what causes hypnotism.”

  “GETTING stubborn again, eh? Whenever you get an idea, it’s such a momentous occasion that you want to enjoy it all by yourself. I’ve a notion to leave you to your own devices. Then where will you be?” Omega twisted the wrinkled old face into an expression of extreme malevolence. But Mark knew he didn’t mean it, so he just grinned.

  Omega finally relented. “All right, I’ll tell you. The force which enables the hypnotist to subdue the will of the subject is a variety of thought wave. Thought, as you should know, is a wave which ranges among the shortest of the vibratory scale. Hypnotism is at the longer end of the thought range.

  “You have an analogy in light waves. As you know, there are several distinct waves in the range which we call light. At the shorter end are the violet and ultraviolet. At the longer end are the red and infra-red, known as heat waves. In the thought range are also several distinct vibrations, with varying characteristics.

  “At the lower end of the thought ranges is the one which I employ frequently. It enables the user to manipulate the forces of nature as he wishes. With it he controls those energies which pervade all space. He can change energy into matter, or matter into energy, in any combination he wishes. One of the simplest manifestations of this is the lifting or moving of bodies of matter by causing this universal energy to do the work. You have heard of humans who had this power, though none of them actually knew what he was doing, It is called telekinesis. But of course no human who ever possessed the power had enough intelligence to use it for any but the simplest of exercises. Almost invariably they would set themselves up as having supernatural powers, and astound people with exhibitions of chair lifting and table shaking.

  “Slightly longer thought waves can be projected. This is call telepathy. Further along the range of thought is the wide band which controls the movement of animal bodies. These waves are common to all forms of life, however unintelligent. They carry the motor and sensory messages to and from the brain, and may be either voluntary or involuntary. These require a medium, such as nerve tissue, for their passage.

  “Toward the longer end of the range we have the waves which enable humans to reason logically. They possess pretty well developed ability in this division, compared to the lower animals. And longest of all the thought waves is that of hypnotism. It appears in humans occasionally, though seldom to any great degree.

  “Most hypnotists among humans have found it necessary to have the subject concentrate on some bright or rhythmically moving object to subdue him. Here, the subject is using his own limited powers to hypnotize himself. Erlayok is an exception in that he needs only the subject to concentrate momentarily on his eyes. His own power does the rest. Everything clear?”

  Mark thought for a moment. “Why do some have it and others not?”

  “For the same reason that some people can hear lower notes than others. And for the same reason that bats can hear notes totally outside the range of human hearing. The sensory organ involved is tuned a bit sharper. It’s the same with this hypnosis business. Erlayok was born with thought apparatus of slightly wider range in one direction. Use and practice have made it powerful.

  “You, yourself, have the same property. But the fact that you don’t know how to use it has caused it to remain undeveloped. The same goes for telekinesis. If you kne
w how, you could develop the power of your brain to equal mine.

  “You could create matter from energy! You could move mountains! But you don’t know how to use consciously any but a small band of the thought range you possess. You can use only the third and fourth waves in the series. The motor and sensory waves which all animals use, and the reasoning band common to humans. You have good control of the latter, because of constant practice during the nights when other humans have to sleep.”

  MARK nodded gravely. “You mean that these mental powers are there to the same extent that the unused muscles of my feet are present. I’ve never learned to pick up objects with my toes, but the muscles and nerves are there just the same. Some people know how to use them, but most don’t.”

  “Correct,” Omega agreed. “Some people can wiggle their ears independently. Others can make ridges in their scalps. These muscles are present in all humans, but very few know how to control them. As far as that goes, only a few people ever make any great use of the third division of thought waves. As you are well aware, most people don’t know how to think. Any effort along those lines gives them a headache. Maybe it’s just as well, though. There’d be an awful high suicide rate if humans once began to realize what futile sort of beings they are.”

  “Phooey!” said Mark. “But you’ve told me what I want to know. There is a way to make this rebellion result in sufficient good to warrant the bloodshed.”

  “Getting back to that idea, eh?”

  “You know, we humans are not quite the primitive savages you would imply. We construct mechanical aids for our limited senses. We make instruments which can detect ultra-violet and infra-red. And other machines which manufacture them. The same goes for the sounds which our ears can’t detect.”

  “That was thousands of years ago,” Omega reminded. “Humanity has fallen back a long way since then. Man has his hands full feeding himself, now.”