Странник по звездам / The Star-Rover

“Go on and tell me,” I rapped to Morrell.

“That is why I waited for you to get real weak,” he continued. “Now you need it, and I am going to tell you. It’s up to you[27]. If you have the will you can do it. I’ve done it three times, and I know.”

“Well, what is it?” I rapped eagerly.

“The trick is to die in the jacket, to will yourself to die. I know you don’t understand me yet, but wait. You know how you get numb[28] in the jacket—how your arm or your leg goes to sleep. But don’t wait for your legs or anything to go to sleep. You lie on your back as comfortable as you can get, and you begin to use your will.

“And this is the idea you must think to yourself, and that you must believe all the time you’re thinking it. If you don’t believe, then there’s nothing to it. The thing you must think and believe is that your body is one thing and your spirit is another thing. You are you, and your body is something else. You’re the boss. You don’t need any body. And thinking and believing all this you proceed to prove it by using your will. You make your body die.

“You begin with the toes, one at a time. You make your toes die. You will them to die. And if you’ve got the belief and the will your toes will die. That is the big job—to start the dying. Once you’ve got the first toe dead, the rest is easy. Then you put all your will into making the rest of the body die. I tell you, Darrell, I know. I’ve done it three times.

“By-and-by your legs are dead to the knees, and then to the thighs, and you are just the same as you always were.”

“And then what happens?” I queried.

“Well, when your body is all dead, you just leave your body. And when you leave your body you leave the cell. Stone walls and iron doors are to hold bodies in. They can’t hold the spirit in. You see, you are spirit outside of your body. You can look at your body from outside of it. I tell you I know because I have done it three times—looked at my body lying there with me outside of it.”

“Ha! ha! ha!” Jake Oppenheimer rapped his laughter.

“You see, that’s Jake’s trouble,” Morrell went on. “He can’t believe. That one time he tried it he was too strong and failed. And now he thinks I am kidding.”

“When you die you are dead, and dead men stay dead,” Oppenheimer retorted.

“I tell you I’ve been dead three times,” Morrell argued.

“And lived to tell us about it,” Oppenheimer jeered.

“But don’t forget one thing, Darrell,” Morrell rapped to me. “It is very risky. You have a feeling all the time that you are free. I can’t explain it, but I always had a feeling if I was away when they came and let my body out of the jacket that I couldn’t get back into my body again. I mean that my body would be dead. And I didn’t want it to be dead. I didn’t want to give Captain Jamie and the rest that satisfaction. But I tell you, Darrell, if you can make it you can laugh at the Warden. Once you make your body die that way it doesn’t matter whether they keep you in the jacket a month on end. You don’t suffer anymore, and your body doesn’t suffer. You know there are many people who have slept a whole year at a time. That will be with your body. It just stays there in the jacket, not hurting or anything, just waiting for you to come back. Try it.”

“And if he doesn’t come back?” Oppenheimer, asked.

“Then we will laugh at him, I guess, Jake,” Morrell answered. “Or, maybe, he will laugh at us: we are in this old dump when we could get away very easily.”

And here the conversation ended.

I lay long there in the silence, thinking about that Morrell’s proposition. Morrell’s method was so different from my method of self-hypnosis that I was interested in it. By my method, my consciousness went first of all. By his method, consciousness persisted last of all, and passed into stages so sublimated that it left the body, left the prison of San Quentin, and journeyed afar, and was still consciousness.

It was worth trying, anyway, I concluded. And, despite my sceptical attitude, I believed. I had no doubt I could do what Morrell said he had done three times.

Chapter X

Next morning Warden Atherton came into my cell to kill me. Next morning Warden Atherton came into my cell to kill me. His face showed it. His actions proved it. With him were Captain Jamie, Doctor Jackson, Pie-Face Jones[29], and Al Hutchins[30]. Al Hutchins was a prisoner, but he for four years he had been head trusty[31] of San Quentin.

“Examine him,” Warden Atherton ordered Doctor Jackson. “Will he stand it?”

“Yes,” Doctor Jackson answered.

“How’s the heart?”

“Splendid.”

“You think he’ll stand ten days of it, Doc?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t believe it,” the Warden announced savagely. “But we’ll try it just the same. Lie down, Standing.”

I obeyed, stretching myself face-downward on the flat-spread jacket. The Warden seemed to debate with himself for a moment.

“Roll over,” he commanded.

I made several efforts, but was too weak to succeed, and could only sprawl and squirm in my helplessness.

So they rolled me over on my back, where I stared up into Warden Atherton’s face.

“Standing,” he said slowly, “I am sick and tired of your stubbornness. My patience is exhausted. Doctor Jackson says you are in condition to stand ten days in the jacket. But I am going to give you your last chance now. Tell me about the dynamite. The moment the dynamite is in my hands I’ll take you out of here. You will bathe and shave and get clean clothes. Then I’ll put you trusty in the library. I think you are the only person in San Quentin who knows where the dynamite is. And if you don’t tell me—”

He paused and shrugged his shoulders significantly.

“Well, if you don’t, you will put this jacket on. For ten days.”

The prospect was terrifying. I was very weak. Warden knew that it meant death in the jacket. And then I remembered Morrell’s trick. Now was the time to practise it. I smiled.

“These college guys are crazy,” Captain Jamie snorted.

“Warden,” I said quietly. “You can cinch me as tight as you please, but if I smile ten days from now will you give some tobacco to Morrell and Oppenheimer?”

“I guess you will die sooner, Standing.”

“That’s your opinion,” I said. “But since you are so sure of it, why don’t you accept my proposition?”

“All right, Standing,” snarled Warden. “Roll him over, boys, and cinch him till you hear his ribs crack. Hutchins, show him you know how to do it.”

And they rolled me over and laced me as I had never been laced before. The head trusty certainly demonstrated his ability. You see, Hutchins was a scoundrel. But I did not believe that I was going to die. I knew—I say I knew—that I was not going to die.

“That’s pretty tight,” Captain Jamie urged reluctantly.

“I tell you,” said Doctor Jackson, “nothing can hurt him. He ought to have been dead long ago.”

Warden Atherton, after a hard struggle, managed to insert his forefinger between the lacing and my back.

“Hutchins,” he said. “You know your job. Now roll him over and let’s look at him.”

They rolled me over on my back. I stared up at them. But I was well trained. I had behind me the thousands of hours in the jacket, and, plus that, I had faith in what Morrell had told me.

“Now, laugh, damn you, laugh,” said the Warden to me.

I was able to smile up into the Warden’s face.

Chapter XI

The door clanged. I managed to writhe myself across the floor until the edge of the sole of my right shoe touched the door. I could at least rap knuckle talk to Morrell.

But though I managed to call Morrell and tell him I intended trying the experiment, he was prevented by the guards from replying.

I remember my serenity of mind. The customary pain of the jacket was in my body, but my mind was so passive that I was no more aware of the pain than was I aware of the floor beneath me or the walls around me. Never was a man in better mental and spiritual condition for such an experiment. Of course, this was largely due to my extreme weakness. But there was more to it. I had neither doubts nor fears.

I began my concentration of will. My body was numbing and prickling through the loss of circulation. I directed my will to the little toe of my right foot, and I willed that toe to cease to be alive in my consciousness. I willed that toe to die. There was the hard struggle. Morrell had warned me that it would be so. But I knew that that toe would die, and I knew when it was dead. Joint by joint it had died under the compulsion of my will.

The rest was easy, but slow. Joint by joint, toe by toe, all the toes of both my feet ceased to be. And joint by joint, the process went on. My flesh below the ankles had ceased. All below my knees had ceased.

I knew that I was making my body die. I was devoted to that sole task. At the end of an hour my body was dead to the hips.

When I reached the level of my heart, the first blurring and dizzying of my consciousness occurred. I had shifted my concentration to my fingers. My brain cleared again, and the death of my arms to the shoulders was most rapidly accomplished.

At this stage my body was all dead, save my head[32] and a little patch of my chest. My heart was beating steadily but feebly.

At this point it seemed as if a prodigious enlargement of my brain was taking place within the skull itself that did not enlarge. Most perplexing was the seeming enlargement of brain. It seemed to me that the periphery of my brain was already outside my skull and still expanding. Time and space underwent an enormous extension. Thus, without opening my eyes to verify, I knew that the walls of my narrow cell had receded until it was like a vast audience-chamber[33]. And while I contemplated the matter, I knew that they continued to recede. Of course, this was pure fantastic whim, and I knew it.

The extension of time was equally remarkable. Only at long intervals did my heart beat. I counted the seconds between my heart-beats. At first, as I clearly noted, over a hundred seconds intervened between beats.

Morrell had told me that he had won freedom from his body by killing his body—or by eliminating his body from his consciousness. But—and here was the problem, and Morrell had not warned me—should I also will my head to be dead? If I did so, would not the body of Darrell Standing be for ever dead?

I decided to kill the chest and the slow-beating heart. So I no longer had chest nor heart. I was only a mind, a soul, a consciousness—call it what you will—and my nebulous brain inside my skull was expanded, and was continuing to expand, beyond my skull.

And then I was off and away[34]. I had vaulted prison roof and California sky, and was among the stars. I walked among the stars. I was a child. I was clad in frail, delicate robes that shimmered in the cool starlight. In my hand I carried a long glass wand. With the tip of this wand I must touch each star.

It was a long way among the stars. For centuries I trod space, with the tip of my wand tapping each star I passed. The way grew brighter. I was aware all the time that it was I, Darrell Standing, who walked among the stars and tapped them with a wand of glass.

And then the tip of my wand missed a star, and on the instant I knew I had been guilty of a great crime. On the instant a knock, vast and compulsive, inexorable and mandatory, smote me and reverberated across the universe. I was Darrell Standing, the life-convict, lying in his strait-jacket in solitary. And I knew the immediate cause of that summons. It was a rap of the knuckle by Ed Morrell, beginning the spelling of some message. It was a simple message, namely: “Standing, are you there?” He had tapped it rapidly, while the guard was at the far end of the corridor.

Now I know, my reader, that this story seems a farrago. I agree with you. It was experience, however. But it was real to me.

It may have taken Ed Morrell two minutes to tap his question. Yet, to me, aeons elapsed between the first tap of his knuckle and the last. And all the time I knew it was Ed Morrell’s knuckle that thus cruelly held me earth-bound. I tried to speak to him, to ask him to cease. But I had eliminated my body from my consciousness. My body lay dead in the jacket, though I still inhabited the skull. In vain I strove to will my foot to tap my message to Morrell.

Next I pursued my way among the stars and was not called back. From time to time, I stirred—please, my reader, don’t miss that verb—I STIRRED. I moved my legs, my arms. I was aware of clean, soft bed linen against my skin. I was aware of bodily well-being. Oh, it was delicious!

I awoke. Everything was the natural and the expected. I was I, be sure of that. But I was not Darrell Standing! Darrell Standing had nothing to do with the being I was. Darrell Standing was as yet unborn and would not be born for centuries. But you will see.

I lay with closed eyes, lazily listening. I heard steps and movements.

“Pons[35],” I ordered, without opening my eyes, “water, cold water, quick. I drank too much last night.”

“And slept over long today,” he scolded, as he passed me the water.

I sat up and opened my eyes. And as I drank I looked at Pons.

Now note two things. I spoke in French; I was not conscious that I spoke in French. Pons was a little old man. He was born in our house—I knew it. Pons was sixty. He was mostly toothless. Also, he was impudently familiar. This was because he had been in my house sixty years. He had been my father’s servant before I was born, and after my father’s death he became my servant.

Pons shook his head as I drained the huge draught. Then he took my new scarlet satin doublet.

“Sixty ducats for that!” Pons exclaimed.

And while we dressed—that is, while Pons helped me to dress—I continued to talk to him.

“It is quite clear, Pons, that you have not heard the news,” I said slyly.

“Late news?” Pons queried.

“Yes,” I shook my head. “But news perhaps to you. Have you not heard? The philosophers of Greece were whispering it two thousand years ago. It is because of that news I became a dandy. You see, Pons, the world is a terrible place, life is sad, all men die, and, being dead… well, are dead. So to escape the evil and the sadness, men in these days, like me, seek amazement, insensibility, and enjoyment.”

“But the news, master? What did the philosophers whisper about so long ago?”

“That God was dead, Pons,” I replied solemnly. “Didn’t you know that? God is dead, and I soon shall be, and I wear sixty ducats on my back.”

“God lives,” Pons asserted fervently. “God lives, and his kingdom is at hand[36]. I tell you, master, it is at hand.”

“So said the Christians in ancient Rome, Pons, when Nero made torches of them.”

“Too much learning is a sickness,” Pons complained. “I was always opposed to it. What did you study astronomy in Venice, poetry in Florence, and astrology in Pisa, and God knows what in that madman country of Germany for? The philosophers! I tell you, master, I, Pons, your servant, a poor old man who knows nothing—I tell you God lives, and the time you will appear before him is short.”

He paused with sudden recollection, and added: “The priest you spoke of is here.”

“Why did you not tell me before?” I demanded angrily.

“What did it matter?” Pons shrugged his shoulders. “Has he not been waiting two hours as it is?”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“You were shouting like a cock, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, cucu nu nu cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’”

“You have a good memory,” I commented. He shook his head sourly.

“No need of memory when you roared it over and over for the thousandth time. And when I had you finally in the bed, did you not call me to you and command, if the devil called, to tell him you slept? And did you not call me back again, and command me to call you not of the morning save for one thing?”

“Which was?”

“Which was the heart of one, a black buzzard, you said, by name Martinelli[37]—for the heart of Martinelli smoking on a gold platter. The platter must be gold, you said; and you said I must call you by singing, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’ So you began to teach me how to sing, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’”

And when Pons had said the name, I knew it at once for the priest, Martinelli, who had been waiting in the room.

When Martinelli was permitted to enter and as he saluted me by title and name, I knew at once my name. I was Count Guillaume de Sainte-Maure[38].

The priest was Italian, dark and small, and his hands were as small and slender as a woman’s. But his eyes! They were cunning and trustless.

“There has been much delay, Count de Sainte-Maure,” he began promptly, when Pons had left the room. “He whom I serve grows impatient.”

“Change your tune, priest,” I broke in angrily. “Remember, you are not now in Rome.”