Wonder of the Worlds
Page 47
Epilogue
Now there’s the facts just as they happened: let everybody explain it their own way.
— Huck, Tom Sawyer Abroad
A University Somewhere in the United States January 16, 1943
The professor sat behind his desk bent over the manuscript which was laid out in two neat stacks across his ink blotter. A wry smile played upon his lips and his eyes twinkled. The blank-faced man and his associate sat in the same chairs in which they had sat the day before. “Well?” the blank-faced man asked. “Did you reach a conclusion? Did Mark Twain write that?”
The professor looked up at the blank-faced man and grinned. “Possibly,” the professor said, “Have you read this?” The blank-faced man nodded.
The professor placed one stack of the manuscript pages on top of the other, picked up the combined stack, squared their edges against the top of his desk, and then held up the entire manuscript and placed it in the hands of the blank- faced man. “Quite a yarn, isn’t it?” the professor asked. “Can’t say,” the blank-faced man replied.
“Well,” the professor said, “it might be Twain’s writing. It’s an obvious burlesque of Jules Verne, at least the parts I read thoroughly. Mark Twain did write that kind of thing. In Tom Sawyer Abroad he had Tom and Huck travel around the world in a balloon. In this, the writer seems to be using real people who actually existed. Twain sometimes did that sort of thing as well. He wrote a novel about Joan of Arc, and once wrote a piece about Queen Elizabeth I.
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Rather ribald, I might say. Then there’s this character of ‘the man in the silk hat,’ clearly another version of Twain’s ‘Mysterious Stranger.’ If I were certain that Twain wrote this, I’d be tempted to say that the original source for Twain’s idea of the ‘Mysterious Stranger’ comes from this story. On the other hand, some of the passages just don’t strike me as Twain’s style of writing; they sound more like someone trying to imitate Twain but doing it rather poorly. Unfortu- nately, that critique is not compelling. You see, sometimes the worst imitator of Twain was Twain himself. But then, sometimes Twain wrote very good imita- tions of himself. And, then, sometimes, Twain just wrote, and that, of course, was when he was writing at his best—parts of Roughing It and the first half of Huck Finn, for example. So in terms of style, it is very hard to say. I can think immediately of one other person besides Twain who could’ve written this: George Ade. I was brief ly acquainted with Ade at one time through his Mark Twain literary club. Ade was a big admirer of Mark Twain’s writings. This is the kind of thing Ade just might have written as a literary hoax, perhaps as a gag on one of his pals such as Peter Finley Dunne. I believe George Ade is still alive. In fact, though I’m not sure, I think he’s the only person mentioned in the manuscript who is still alive. You ought to contact him. If he didn’t write it, perhaps he might give you an idea who might have. I certainly have no idea who else might have written it. However, there are some curious things about that manuscript.” “What things?” the blank-faced man asked.
“Well,” the professor said, “some of the passages are inaccurate about com- monly known historical events—inaccurate to the point of absurdity, while other passages accurately describe historical events of the greatest obscurity.” “Such as?”
“Well,” the professor said, “most obviously all the stuff about Tesla is so far from the truth that it’s hardly worth discussing. Everyone knows Edison in- vented the light bulb, not Tesla. I think this Tesla fellow invented some kind of electrical coil, as I remember, and that he worked for Westinghouse, but it was Westinghouse who invented alternating current, not Tesla, any history book will tell you that. Mark Twain met Tesla once or twice I think, but then, Mark Twain met just about everyone who was anyone in his lifetime, so there’s nothing in that. Twain and Tesla were not friends. I think there is only one letter in existence written by Twain to Tesla, and it is very brief. I find this whole story about Tesla to be rather silly. I think he died years ago and accom- plished very little. All his ideas have been disproved by scientists like Einstein and Bohr. On the other hand, I happen to know that the passages about President Cleveland’s cancer are very accurate. Even today, very few people know about that. Sometime around the end of the First World War I recall reading a Newspaper article about Cleveland’s cancer. I think it was an inter- view of one of the doctors who had operated on him. I know that the President’s
cancer operation was kept a secret during his lifetime. So this manuscript couldn’t have been written before 1918.”
“Unless the writer had secret knowledge of the President’s operation,” the blank-faced man said. “Yes,” the professor said. “If someone had secret knowledge, but… who could that be—unless it was Mark Twain himself—or someone like him who knew Cleveland?” “So what are you saying?” the blank-faced man asked. “Are you saying Mark Twain didn’t write this?”
The professor stared down at his desk, and then looked up at the blank- faced man. The professor said, “If Mark Twain wrote it, I’d say it is one of his lesser efforts at fiction.” “What if it isn’t fiction?” the blank-faced man asked.
“Absurd,” the professor said. “Impossible. That stuff’s pure Buck Rogers. Please! The King of Mars? You’ve got to be kidding! It’ll take hundreds of years to fly ships to other worlds—if ever. No, I assure you, that is definitely fiction.” The blank-faced man slipped the manuscript into a steel suitcase, and closed its lid. “Oh,” the professor said, “here’s something,” and he brought out a small watch fob attached to a gold chain.
“I was given this by Mark Twain’s daughter,” the professor said, handing the fob and chain to the blank-faced man who took the fob and held it up to the light. “Notice the crystal in it,” the professor said with a chuckle. “Imagine if that could have been what gave Mark Twain the idea for the story there—that is, if he wrote the story.” “Can I take this with me?” the blank-faced man asked. “Why?” the professor asked, his smile fading. “What for?”
“We’ll return it to you,” the blank-faced man said. “When we’re finished with it.” The professor took a deep breath, then exhaled and nodded his head. “Very well,” he said.
The blank-faced man placed the watch fob into the suitcase, and snapped its lid shut again. He and his associate rose from their chairs. “Thank you, professor,” the blank-faced man said. “Oh, and about yester- day—if I was a little short with you, I apologize.” “That’s all right, young man,” the professor said.
“You know how it is with the war and all,” the blank-faced man said. “My boss is pushing me all the time. Results, results, results.” “I understand.”
“Good day, professor.”
“Good day.”
The blank-faced man and his associate turned and went out the door. The professor watched them go with a smile on his lips, part bemusement, part wariness, and he listened to their footsteps die away down the hall. Then he looked back down at his desk at another stack of papers: his neglected work from the day before. He picked up one of the papers, studied it a moment, and then began making notations in its margin. Outside the professor’s window, the sky was a steel winter blue. If he had turned around to look, the professor would have seen the two men who had been in his office walk away across the campus. They were still walking with that strange military precision; it was almost a march.
A pigeon lit upon the sill of the professor’s window and put its beak close to the glass pane. The professor continued writing.
The two men who had been in his office continued to walk away; they reached a wooded park and disappeared down one of those secluded path- ways where anything seems possible.
END OF BOOK ONE
The Wonder Returns in
METAMORPHOSIS
About the Author
Sesh Heri has always lived in fantastic worlds. His first conscious memory goes back to the age of one when, while crawling along the ground, he realized he was unable to walk as he
knew he normally could. Looking down, he saw that he had the legs of a baby! The shock and confusion of this sight triggered the realization that he had been reborn in the body of a baby and would have to live life all over again.
At the age of two Sesh Heri began drawing detailed pictures, as if by instinct. At the age of four Sesh Heri sighted his first UFO: a slow-moving, matte black cylinder with rectangular flapping wings. After this first UFO sighting, there followed a lifetime of strange experiences: alien abductions, synchronicities, and psychic phenomena.
Although Sesh Heri has spent many years researching UFOs, leys, geo- morphology, alchemy, synchronicity, and other unusual phenomena, the ar- chaic term jongleur best denotes Sesh Heri’s calling as storyteller, entertainer, and artist.
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