Mirrikh, or, A Woman from Mars/Chapter 27
CHAPTER XXVII.
MIRRIKH ONCE MORE.
It was a glorious night. The moon was at her full, the vault above us ablaze with stars innumerable. Far in the distance, through that natural archway, we could discern the twinkling lights of Lh’asa.
Midnight came and found Maurice slumbering. Not again had the transformation come upon him. If his claim was true and a female spirit from our sister planet was united with his own, then like a sensible creature she had kept in the background. Walla’s condition remained as before. The Doctor and I sat together, conversing in low tones.
“Under these circumstances I consider suicide perfectly justifiable, even admitting a hereafter,” Philpot was saying. “To-morrow will have afforded Padma ample time for any move he may intend to make, if indeed he intends any. If by this time to-morrow help has not come, the dawning of another day will not find me here, Wylde. I shall take my chances and discount the future, if I can muster up the courage to make the fatal plunge.”
“In a case like this every man must decide for himself,” I replied gloomily; “but for my part all doubts of an existence beyond the grave have vanished. Our lives were certainly not given us to throw away, and I shall stick it out to the end.”
“But think of the horrors of starvation; think”
He suddenly ceased to speak; his head fell forward on his breast, his eyes closed, his face became as white as death.
“Doctor! Doctor!” I cried, springing to my feet. I was in the act of bending over him when I heard that gentle voice in my ear, and a hand was softly brushed across my brow.
“Do not interfere with our work, George. Help is at hand. Remain perfectly passive or you will spoil it all.”
Not since the last time I heard the voice in the cave had I experienced anything which I could ascribe to a spiritual origin. Once more I was seized with that same sense of security; that same immeasureable calmness. Involuntarily I found myself repeating a single word, over and over again.
“Hope!” I kept murmuring. “Hope!"
I turned and looked behind me.
Maurice still slumbered. Walla crouched near him, her head bent forward, and there—oh God! there it was again—there was that bounding globe of light at her feet.
Hope!
I did hope now!
Silently I prayed that God might give his spirit messengers power to help us in this the hour of our sore distress.
I watched the light. It came and went. There seemed to be unusual difficulty in repeating the process which I had so often seen; but it came at last, and I saw at Walla's feet a man who was certainly not Maurice, nor yet the Doctor. He was crouching upon his hands and knees. By no human power could he have come unknown to me upon the rock.
Breathlessly I watched him; saw him writhe and twist about as though in agony, and then at last rise up with a spring and stand before me as perfect a man as I was myself.
One glance at his face was sufficient. It was a face yellow above and black below. There were those wondrous eyes gazing upon me with that same look of profound intelligence, that same calm assurance of power over me—over us all. It was the man I had met at Panompin, it was my friend Mirrikh. Least of all I had expected this. Had help come to me from the realms of material space? Had my prayer been heard in Mars?
Then he spoke—spoke in phrases which proved most conclusively that he possessed the power to read my very thoughts.
“Friend Wylde, I greet you!” he said, extending his hand, which I took in both of mine, finding it as surely flesh and blood as my own. “Gradually you are progressing on the higher planes of Nature’s secrets. Know that time and space are but imaginary limitations. From the most distant of those glittering points above us I could come to you as easily as I have come from my home in Mars."
I tried to reply, but my voice seemed to die away into an incoherent murmur.
Withdrawing his hand he now produced a sealed letter which he laid in mine.
“Your safe conduct from Thibet,” he said quietly. “It was an oversight on my part. Padma has all the prejudices of his people; moreover he fears for himself. He has indeed betrayed you. Your presence on this rock is known, and the sentence of death has been already pronounced against you. You are to be shot down where you stand, one by one; but this will protect you and carry you safely beyond the frontier. Look toward the city and you will understand that I speak truly in this.”
He raised his hand, making quick passes before my eyes. Then as I looked through the arch, distance became as naught. I could see with the most astonishing distinctness. I was at the very gates of Lh’asa.
“You see the city?” he asked.
“I do, most plainly. It is precisely as if I were looking through a powerful telescope. I am there.”
“Look again! Look at the foot of the mountain!”
Now suddenly I seemed to be looking down from a height upon a broad roadway, along which a troop of perhaps fifty armed men were trudging. They were dressed in the well-known costume of the Chinese military, and at the head of the procession the dragon flag floated.
“For you,” he said. “In less than half an hour they will be beneath the arch. Present my letter to the commander and have no fear.”
I inclined my head in dumb assent. I could not speak. Still he read my thoughts.
“To permit you to talk to me, Mr. Wylde, would only be to have objections raised, and each objection is just so much of a hinderance to my work. It is for this reason that we have entranced the Doctor and even thrown our dear friend into slumber. My time is short. I cannot waste the forces drawn from that poor girl to produce this body, for she is reserved for another work, which, strange as it may seem to you, is as much for her eternal welfare as for the good of those whom she will materially assist. Ask me your question now, I see it burning in your brain, but after that do not speak unless you would destroy all your chances of escape. In its way my power is as limited as your own.”
“Maurice! Tell me!” I burst. “Did he actually go to Mars? Did I? Did”
“Stop! This is idle. You know it is so!”
“But the other? Is Maurice’s claim true? Is there actually within that body another soul than his?”
“It is true. Behold!”
“Not the soul!”
“No, no; not the soul! No man, no spirit, none but God himself can see the soul. Look at the Doctor and you will understand what I mean.”
Again his hand passed before my eyes and they rested upon the Doctor. To my astonishment I saw that he was not alone. Above him stood a man’s form, dim and shadowy, with wolfish face and hideous bulging eyes. He held his hands above the Doctor’s head.
“It is the spirit which holds him in control,” said Mirrikh. “It is a spirit which is ever with him, ever will be until he rises out of his sphere of intense selfishness, if happily that times ever comes; but this is not what I would have you see. Look at the Doctor himself.”
Again I looked. I could see the whole internal organism of the Doctor’s body, but not singly, as I should have supposed. I could see the heart busy with its ceaseless toil; I could detect every rise and fall of the lungs; I could look into his stomach, perceive its emptiness, and even feel its cravings; more wonderful than all, I could see the mysterious workings of each convolution of the brain, from which seemed to dart myriads of tiny sparks. At a single glance my eyes seemed capable of following these through the extension of every nerve in his body, and at the same time seeing that everything upon which they rested had its duplicate. There were two Doctors; one gross and material, the other thin, airy, most highly refined; but there was no other difference between them. If one was a man, then so also was the other. Not an organ, not a muscle, not even the most minute fibre which was not perfectly reproduced.
“It is the spiritual man you behold,” said Mirrikh. “Until the heart ceases to beat, it remains enchained. Its life is eternal, it destruction as impossible as for you to tear one of yonder stars from heaven; and as it is with the Doctor, so also is it with every man on earth. But look now at Maurice and behold a mystery unfathomable to your Western schools of thought.”
Instantly my eyes were upon Maurice.
Here my experience with the Doctor was repeated, but with a difference.
With wonderful distinctness I could discern the spiritual prototype of my friend, but there, mingled with it so strangely that I was unable to detect where one began and the other ended, was a complete duplication of every portion of the spiritual Maurice. I could see them separately, yet were they blended incomprehensibly. One was Maurice but the other was a woman. I could see her face with perfect plainess. More than that, I recognized her. It was the woman whom I had seen standing beside Maurice on Mars.
Now Mirrikh waved his hand and all this vanished. I was looking on his face again.
“You believe now?”
“I cannot do otherwise—I must believe.”
“It is well that you do, for it is written that you must write, that those who will may read. The time is close at hand when a flood of spiritual light is to be poured upon the earth, arousing the Eastern adepts from their selfish lethargy; light before which the agnosticism of the West will melt away like snow before an April sun. Yours is the mission, friend Wylde, to in some slight degree aid in the coming of the light. It has already begun to shine, but it must be made to shine brighter and brighter still, until darkness is wholly banished, and men, as in the days of old, know Nature’s secrets as the dwellers beyond the veil know them; know each other, not as they would seem to be, but as they are.”
“God grant that I may be faithful to the trust!” I murmured.
“Have no fear. Your work is but as the work of one of the minutest fibres in the body whose interiors you have just seen. Help will be given you when help is needed. In the words of Jesus the Christ, I say unto you: “Watch and pray! The time is close at hand.”
He ceased to speak and walked with firm tread toward the rift—that awful rift through which the water went rushing with its sullen roar.
To my continued amazement I saw that the break offered no obstacle to his progress. He seemed to float rather than walk across it. In an instant I beheld him on the other side. Silently, and with a sense of profound confidence in his power, I watched him. He bent over the strips of hide and examined them with care, straightening up at last and looking toward me.
“Wylde,” he called, “I am very sorry, but I find that it is going to take more force than I supposed to accomplish my purpose. My dear friend, I had intended that you should witness what I am about to do, but I must ask you to look the other way.”
Then before I could reply, some influence more powerful than my own will forced me to turn my head.
It seemed but a moment, and in that moment a strange rush of sound swept past me.
“Look, Mr. Wylde! It is done!”
I turned.
The bridge was stretched across the rift and Mirrikh stood at my side.
“The way lies open before you,” he said. “Save yourself, save your friends. Be faithful in the use God has given you to perform. I shall ever think of you with kindly remembrance. Farewell!”
He extended his hand; I grasped it warmly. As I did so his feet and limbs seemed to dissolve and he began slowly sinking down—I was forced to stoop low in order to retain my hold upon the hand.
In another instant the body was gone, the head and the hand I grasped alone remaining.
“Farewell!” the familiar voice exclaimed, and then the head vanished also.
I looked at my hand, for I still felt the grasp of his.
Delusion!
My hand was empty.
My friend Mirrikh had disappeared.