The Science Fiction of Erle Stanley Gardner - The Human Zero

by Matin Greenberg

  He stopped and pointed. “Look you at the cunning of the Indian. He has put these trees and bushes at the mouth of the cave, and he has made them look as though they had been here for years. I am afraid this means that he has conquered our men. But how could a horde of savages conquer trained soldiers?” And he looked from one to the other of us.

  I shook my head and said nothing. It was Bender’s party and Bender could handle the explanations.

  Bender fastened those pin-point eyes of his on the Mexican and said quietly, “Who are we to fear a few savages?” and pushed aside the brush.

  “Charioteer, you are a man of courage!” said the Mexican.

  He reached out, grasped Bender by the shoulder and jerked him to one side. “But it is the part of a soldier to go first. Only I warn you, these redskins are fiends for torture. They gouge out the eyeballs and grind hot sand into the ears. They cut the skin off the soles of one’s feet and press cactus thorns into the flesh. They heat little splinters of wood and stick them into the body. They are devils when they capture one.”

  Bender grunted. “Never mind that stuff. Let’s go ahead and get the gold.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Dust

  Moreno shrugged and marched forward, going unarmed into a cave that he thought was filled with savages, who had been dead for three hundred years. It was the act of a brave man.

  There was a narrow entrance. We had to stoop to get into it, but that entrance widened out within the first twenty feet. The cave went down on a sharp incline, but there were stone steps, worn smooth by many feet, and I groped my way in the darkness.

  “There should be flint and steel here, a little tinder and a candle,” said the Mexican, pausing and groping.

  Bender took a pocket flashlight from his coat and sent the beam flashing into the darkness.

  The Mexican jumped back with an oath.

  “Cascaras, charioteer, but you have magic of sorts! What kind of thing is that?”

  “A magic light,” said Bender.

  The Mexican regarded it for a moment with admiring eyes. Then he reached out and took it.

  “It’s like the other magic: fine at first, but it may tire. I prefer the dependable light of my fathers before me. Here’s the flint and the steel, but, there’s no tinder. Surely that dust can’t be . . . Dios! It is!”

  He looked at me, and I could see his eyes gleaming in the reflected light from the flash.

  “There is too much magic around here,” he said. “I left that candle and the flint, steel, and tinder here on this rock shelf but last week. Now look at it. A hundred years might have passed, yes, two hundred years!”

  And he scowled at me with an expression I didn’t like.

  “You,” he said, “are the one who says but little. Yet you are never surprised, and you seem to know more about these magic things than this charioteer with the funny eyes. Speak!”

  I smiled at him. “Better wait to argue about the magic until we find what has happened to your brave comrades. We waste time in idle talk. It seems to me you are better at talking than at rescuing comrades.”

  The words snapped him out of it. He whirled.

  “Right. First we will rescue those who need to be rescued. But you shall pay for those words! Blade to blade and foot to foot you shall make them good or eat them. To call Pablo Viscente de Moreno a coward, one must fight!”

  And he was off down the stone stairway.

  By the light of the flash I could see that it had been rounded by years and millions of feet. The very stairs had been worn in a deep passageway that bare feet alone had grooved into the rock.

  “It was always here, this stairway,” said the soldier, as though he could read my thoughts. “But there is much that is strange. I will be glad to see my comrades, but I fear they are trapped by these savages.

  “There must be treachery somewhere, and I will smell out the traitor and have his heart spitted with my blade. I remember something now of this place. It had to do with the feeling of sickness . . . There was a fight. Hundreds of savages came pouring down into the cave. I remember that which followed— Wait! It was off here to the right. The Indians crowded me into that little chamber. There Were hundreds of them. I fought them and hacked them, and they shot their arrows at me, and there were spears. I was wounded. I remember a darkness that came over everything. My torch ceased to give light and I felt a drowsy feeling. At the time I thought it was death.

  “But that must have been but a swooning, for I woke up at El Morro, the rock of the inscriptions. Let us see what happened here.”

  He darted the beam of the flashlight into the interior of a round chamber which opened off from the main slope of the cave.

  I caught the glimpse of the light on something white, and then he jumped back.

  “Damn!” he cried. “I remember it now!”

  For a moment he stood there, then he crossed himself and strode into the chamber.

  There were skeletons there, and the floor of the cave was littered with bone dust. Bits of grinning skulls turned to dust when we touched them. There was a pile of bones in one end of the chamber from which there emerged a strip of glittering steel, reflecting in the beam of the flashlight.

  The soldier leaned forward, grasped the blade from the bone heap and drew it toward him.

  "Carramba!” I heard him hiss in a whisper. “It is my own. But my blade is rusted with blood. Look you, charioteer, at the incrusted blood upon it!”

  He held it out and turned the light on it.

  It was a wonderfully well balanced sword of finest steel. The hilt had been ornamented and incrusted with gold. There was a coat of arms upon the upper end of it.

  In the shelter of the cave, in the dry climate of the desert country the blade had kept in splendid shape, almost as it had been laid down there some three hundred years ago. And who had laid it down? To whom did those bones belong?

  The same question was in the mind of the soldier.

  “Look you,” he said. “I was left here to guard this cave and this gold. There were two other men. The general was out making a raid, and meanwhile the savages swarmed down the stairs to attack us three. That is all I remember, that fight here. I went to sleep, or I swooned from loss of blood.

  “And then I woke up at the inscription rock. I am still confused on the time. It was more than two weeks ago that I stood by my chief while he wrote his name upon that rock. After that came the fight. That is the last that I remember until I awoke by the rock.

  “But now I am unwounded. When I swooned I had a hundred wounds. The blood poured down my arm until the hilt of the sword slipped in my fingers through the slime of my own blood. There were dancing savages grinning at me, shooting arrows at me . . . Now I wake up two days’ march away and am unwounded. What sort of magic is this?”

  And he glared at Bender, with the pin-point eyes.

  Emilio Bender did some tall lying, and did it fast.

  “I am glad,” he said, simply and in a low tone of voice. “We were in the desert and we heard the cries of savage Indians. We knew that they were torturing white men. We sneaked our way toward the place from which the cries came, and we saw little fires,7 and there were white men who were lashed to a heavy stake, and the fire was eating its way into their flesh.

  “You were lying unconscious on one side. Your turn for the torture was to come, and my friend and I rescued you. There was a great fight with the savages. And we would have been caught had it not been for the magic chariot. But we loaded you into the chariot and took you to a safe place in the mountains. There you recovered your health, but you could not remember how or when you came there or where you had been.

  “We took you back to the rock so that the sight of the inscription might bring back your memory. Your wounds have healed, and the savages now have gone.”

  With eyes that were clouded with thought the Mexican looked at him.

  “Then,” he said, “you are no charioteer at all, but a brave soldier who rescue
d me from the savages.”

  Bender nodded.

  “That is right,” he said.

  The Mexican clapped him on the shoulder.

  “Ha!” he said. “A soldier!” And his eyes glittered. He turned to me. “Then you, too, are a soldier?”

  I sensed trouble coming, and I wasn’t going to lie about it.

  “No,” I said. “I am what you’d call a charioteer. Civilization has decayed my courage and spoiled my fighting trim. If you want to list Bender as a soldier that’s all right. I’m a charioteer.”

  He stepped back, whirled the sword in a glittering arc, made a thrust or two.

  I’ve seen fencers in my time, but I have never seen any one who could get the things out of a sword blade that man could. The muscles seemed to have been oiled and greased, made especially for sword handling.

  “But the gold,” Bender was prompting him.

  “My comrades!” snapped the soldier. “Is it too late to rescue them? How long was it since you found me?”

  The man with the metallic eyes glittered his magnetic gaze straight into the pupils of the soldier.

  “It has been more than a month,” he said.

  “More than a month!” repeated the Mexican in wonder.

  What would he have said if he had known it had been more than three hundred years more than a month? Perhaps nothing could have surprised him very deeply after his ride in the magic chariot.

  So I was treated to the spectacle of a man picking his three-hundred-year-old sword from the bony hand of his own skeleton and starting out to avenge the fate of two comrades who had been dead for a third of a thousand years.

  CHAPTER 6

  A Monster

  I got Bender off to one side.

  “You’ve found the cave now. But you’d better do some of your hypnotic stuff and bring this fellow back to earth. There are natives all around here, and if I have any accurate knowledge as to where we are I’d say there was an Indian pueblo within a few miles of here. This is quite a cave, and we’re likely to find the Indians are familiar with it.

  “If this chap runs onto some Indians down here, you can figure what’s going to happen. Better snap him out of it and we can find the gold somehow or other.”

  Bender looked at me, and for the first time I caught a greenish glint of panic in his aluminium-colored eyes.

  “I can’t hypnotize him any more,” he told me. “I’ve tried it half a dozen times. He’s dangerous, but there’s nothing we can do about it. The primary personality, Ramon Ayala the Mexican, I can hypnotize any time I want. But this secondary personality has too strong a will. I can’t do a thing with him.”

  “Where,” I asked, “did this secondary personality come from?”

  “It must be evidence of reincarnation,” he said. “I have always believed in it. This proves it. The individual is made up of hundreds of thousands of personalities. The channel from the conscious to the subconscious is well developed, and the experiences of the conscious mind are transmitted faithfully. But the channel from the subconscious to the conscious is not developed. That is why we don’t see the tangible evidence of reincarnation in—”

  He was interrupted at that point by a roar.

  “By my sword!” swore the soldier. “The man who has left his bones here is a robber and a thief. He has even stolen the gold chain and cross from around my neck. Look, I tell you! It is mine, and look at the shape it is in. It is blackened, the links of the chain are corroded. He well deserved slaying.

  “But, mark you, my comrades, there is some foul miasma here which rots bodies quickly. For these are the bones of Indians whom I slew myself with this very sword, and but a little over a month ago. You are sure of the date?”

  Bender nodded easily.

  “Certain,” he said. “But let’s go find the gold.”

  “Gold!” bellowed the Mexican. “Let us go find my brave comrades, or let us avenge them.”

  “You are but one,” tentatively suggested Bender.

  “Two!” snapped the Mexican. “You forget that you are also a soldier. Two soldiers and a charioteer. Diablo! What more do you want? We will avenge our brave soldiers who have died the death of the Indians’ torture!”

  And he was off down the main slope of the cave, brandishing his sword in a glittering arc.

  Bender leaned toward me. “I left my revolver in the car. Have you a weapon?”

  I shook my head. I had nothing except two fists and a jackknife.

  We followed the soldier, hurrying to keep up with the circle of illumination which was cast by the flashlight. There was no time for conversation, little for thought. Bender was worrying about the gold. I was worrying about what was going to happen. Perhaps it was a presentiment, perhaps it was the uncanny atmosphere of trailing around after a warrior who had been dead for three hundred years, but there were cold chills racing along my spine.

  For we couldn’t control this soldier. I knew it. Bender was going to find it out, if he didn’t know it already. With the passing of every single minute the strange secondary personality that was the individuality of Pablo Viscente de Moreno, a soldier who had campaigned the deserts under General Don Diego de Vargas, and who had been dead three hundred years, became more firmly ensconced in the body of a cholo Mexican named Ramon Ayala.

  And the personality of that soldier was something to be reckoned with. Civilization has done things to us. We have become weaklings, the whole race, believe it or not. It isn’t so much the physical strength that has ebbed from us, as it is the spiritual courage which we should have. Here was a man who had lived by the sword and had died by the sword. He was one who had lived his life, enjoying its every moment. His vitality showed it, made us seem as sick shadows.

  Here was a man who had been raised at a time when one must be able to preserve his life in order to live. He couldn’t call a cop or rely on an injunction if his neighbor got crusty. He had to stand and fight, and that was the life he enjoyed.

  We talk proudly of our hardy forbears who went westward across the plains in Eighteen Forty-nine. But how of those soldiers who campaigned the deserts in Sixteen Hundred-odd? Those men were traversing trackless wastes whose very nature and extent they knew nothing of. They didn’t have covered wagons and sturdy oxen. They didn’t have a green and fertile goal at the end of their march.

  No, they simply headed their horses into the dry and burning desert, surrounded by hostile tribes, armed only with the weapons of ancient warfare, and knowing not what was before them.

  Such was the man who strode in front of me, whirling his sword in a glittering arc for the very joy of life and combat.

  And in the chamber behind me were the bones of this very man, dead three hundred years.

  Is it any wonder that the cool air of the cave made the perspiration on my forehead seem dank and clammy?

  We came to a place where the cave widened out into a great chamber. The flashlight couldn’t penetrate the darkness far enough to disclose all the walls; only a stray outthrust of rock here, or a bit of lowhung ceiling there.

  The soldier stopped and sent the beam of the electric flash in a long circle.

  “I have got to look for landmarks here,” he said. “I was only here a few times, and it has been over a month ago, and I have been sick in that month . . . Wait! There should be a branch of the main cave over here to the left.” And he walked confidently forward into the darkness.

  “If anything happens we’ll have a hard time getting out of here,” I whispered to Emilio Bender.

  “There is gold here,” he said, and his voice quavered with eagerness.

  I said nothing further. I could take my chances with the rest. I had been taken along to see the thing through, and that was what I was going to do.

  The flashlight hit the walls again, and there was an arched opening.

  “This is the place,” said the soldier, and started to run.

  We followed.

  When he stopped short we almost ran him dow
n. The beam of the flashlight was glittering from something white again, and I knew what it would be.

  “Madre de Dios! Another fight. More bones. Carramba, there is another blade, and it is the sword of Juan Bautiste de Alvarado!”

  And he stooped and picked up another red-incrusted blade of finest steel.

  “Here, soldier,” he said, as he thrust the hilt into the limp hand of Emilio Bender. “Here is the. sword of one who was brave of heart and steady of hand. Take it and bear it well and with honor.”

  He took another step forward and stooped to the floor of the cave. He presently turned to me with another blade, dulled with three hundred years of disuse.

  “Here, señor charioteer, take this. You are unworthy of it. It is the blade of a brave man, but it is the fortunes of war, and you may have to stand shoulder to shoulder with us before you quit the place.

  “Remember that a cut is faster and more terrifying, but a thrust is the means of piling a corpse at your feet to make a partial barricade. But, when you thrust, be sure to thrust true and be careful to pull your blade out before the weight of the falling man jerks the hilt from your hand . . . Come.”

  And he started forward again, his feet grinding the bones beneath him to a powder.

  “There is some horrid miasma about this place,” he muttered. “Think of bodies that are only a month old turning to dust!”

  I said nothing. Bender had started the explanations. He could finish them.

  CHAPTER 7

  A , Medieval Raid

  The room opened out into a wide circle, then narrowed again. There was the sound of running water, and my nostrils fancied they could detect the odor of wood smoke. I spoke of it in a whisper to Bender, but he shook his head.

  “Gold,” he said in a hoarse whisper, and hurried on.

  We came to a little alcove which had been carved out of the cave by the action of prehistoric waters. The soldier