The Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack, Volume 5 Read online

“But suppose I make you free? Give you a place at my right hand?”

  “It would all depend on what was in your right hand,” answered the young physician, and there was no fear in his eye as he said it. “For I have been in the presence of the King of Mo, and I have seen mighty ones sit at his right hand and die there from poisoned wine or the silken cord around the neck.”

  The Emperor frowned; for even so did great men die in Gobi.

  “Can you make me live beyond the age of common men?” he finally asked, and in his words was a great longing for years sufficient to see the ending of Mo.

  “I can.”

  “How?”

  The young man eased himself on the floor, and then spoke in answer:

  “The life of the working bee is six weeks. They work that long, and then they die. Mo is full of flowers; and the bee is there, a sacred insect. For centuries, the Royal Bee-Keepers have studied the habits and manners and diseases of these bees in the Royal Hives. They know that the working bees live six weeks, but the queen bee lives for five, and sometimes six, years. All those years, she is lively and full of vigor, and does her work in the world of bees with a healthy constitution. Long years ago, this difference was seen in the relative age of the bees. The men who worked with the bees tried to lengthen the lives of the workers so that more honey-could be produced, but no one was able to tell why one bee lived six weeks and another five years. Then I was told of the problem, and how the wise men had failed to solve it. I worked on the matter, and now I know why the queen lives so long. It is all a matter of the food she eats from the time she first crawls from the broken egg shell. This food, the ‘queen jelly,’ has in it the elements of immortality. I think, if she were protected from the younger queens, she would never die; but the time comes when she is killed, and perhaps that is best for the hive—but at least she lives a life that is nearly two hundred and fifty times as long as the life of the working bee, who eats what he can and when he can, and dies after six weeks of toil.”

  Thus the young man came to the end of his talking, and the Emperor replied:

  “Would such food work on a man?”

  “I think so.”

  “But how could it be made in quantities to keep a man alive? We have no bees in Gobi; and if there were, it would take large numbers of hives to make a meal for a man.”

  “When I studied this queen jelly, I made thereof an analysis, and found of it the various components and their amounts, and the formula for the making thereof. I can take the blood of a bull, the fat of geese, the oil of the turtle, and the flesh of certain fish; and, by a way that I know, I can make a food in abundance that will do even as the food of the hive. This food I have tried with creeping things and flying things and little mice. All thrive on the food, and their life appears to be greatly lengthened. This food I can make here in Gobi if I have a place to work and dishes of glass and of gold and all the parts of the formula brought to me. I will make the food, and this food you shall drink and eat, and nothing else. Some of the food I will flavor and serve solid, and some will seem like wine with the perfume of the vine and the poppy; and in every way, your thirst and your hunger shall be satisfied. This, only, shall you eat and drink and nothing else.”

  “You shall have what you need to work with!” swore the Emperor with a horrible oath; “and I shall eat and drink of the food, and so shall these Seven Wise Men, and so shall this High Priest, and so shall you. We ten will eat and drink of this food, and we shall see the ending of Mo and the destruction of our enemy. Because of this thing, you shall have great honor and shall sit at my right hand. All the people shall reverence you. I will give you land and places of beauty and women to delight your soul, and you shall be the child of my old age. The ten of us shall one day gather here in this sacred place and hear of the ending of Mo. Now, you Seven Wise Men, harken unto me, and do as I command! For even though your bellies are filled with this bee food, yet can your throats be cut as easily as ever. Give this physicker all he demands, satisfy his every desire, aid him in every way. Do this first; and, after that, use all your power for the hastening of the destruction of Mo. For life will be tiresome to me so long as they rule in splendor all over the South Seas and deny me the right to levy taxes and take tribute from them.”

  Thus the meeting came to an end; and all of the Seven went to worship their special Gods, for that a way had been found to prolong their Lord’s life and thus permit them to live longer with their sons and their wives.

  Heracles, the wise young physician from Mo, was given a place of his own with special rooms for him to work in and others for him to live and love in. All of the wealth and wisdom of Gobi went to aid him in his work. Assigned to help him were certain young men who labored for him as he commanded, but the final preparation of the food was done in secret. At the ending of the third month, the first supply of food was made and ready to feed the ten who were appointed to eat of it. In every way it was delicate, and delicious, and dainty, in its taste and smell, and in the pleasure it gave to the tongue and palate. The Emperor was pleased and sent a dozen dancing girls to Heracles as a present, and each girl bore on her body jewels that would have served as a king’s ransom. Heracles put the jewels in a place he knew and the girls in his harem, and promptly forgot about both for he was engaged in a mighty work. After that, the Emperor and the Seven Wise Men and the Priest ate all their meals together; for after he had found that the food was healthy and not in any way poison, the Emperor would at times excuse Heracles from attending at meat with the others, as he knew how hard he was working preparing food for all of them. Yet this absence from the Royal Table caused the Emperor sadness on account of the great love he bore for the young physician.

  Meantime, the wealth and manpower of Gobi was working as it had never done before. To the North and West lay the Kingdom of Gobi, while to the South and East, for more miles than man could measure, was the beautiful land of Mo. Sixty million men and women of power lived in that land, besides untold slaves and common folk. Between the two lands rolled three hundred miles of ocean. Neither country could transport armies large enough to conquer the other. Thus each grew in greatness and wealth and hatred of the other. They knew of Atlantis, the third kingdom, but that land gave neither of them concern, for her ways were peaceful, and her ambitions more in the conquest of art than of other nations.

  Gobi determined to destroy Mo.

  Mo brooded over the ending of Gobi.

  Each used all the skill and energy and determination they possessed toward the accomplishment of their purpose, and, while each had a partial idea of the plans of the other, they laughed at the impending danger because it seemed so fantastic.

  The plan that Gobi was working out was simple and yet gigantic in its scope. It was nothing more nor less than to blow their enemy to pieces. Tradition and their ancient wise men whispered of large caverns under the land of Mo, huge reservoirs ten miles under the surface of the land; and these were filled with explosive and inflammable gases. It was believed the entire land of Mo rested on a thin crust of earth, and that beneath that crust were vast caves, large caverns, tremendous open spaces, filled only with threats and sullen murmurings from the hidden fires that lived silently so many miles below. Mo rested on top of a living Hell. Unconscious of their danger, the people laughed, and sang, and loved, while beneath them a scarlet doom awaited, with endless patience, the signal for its release.

  This was the way the land of Mo was built, and on this fact the Seven Wise Men of Gobi built all hopes. Their plan was simple in its scope, though it would take years in its working. It was nothing more nor less than the digging of a tunnel under that three hundred miles of ocean, and then from that tunnel a dozen side tunnels, till all of the land of Mo was burrowed under, even as a mole works in a garden after worms. At the end, deep shafts were to be sunk till the fire of the Pit made it impossible to work any longer, and in these pits powder was to be put, not just pounds nor yet tons, but all of each of the twenty-seven vast pit
s were to be filled with powder, and the lateral tunnels were also to be filled and even part of the tunnel under the sea.

  This powder was not the kind made of saltpeter, but was of a power that was mighty and so great in its might that even the men of Gobi dreaded it. No greater punishment could be given a criminal than to be sentenced to work in the houses where it was made.

  All the dirt from these tunnels had to be carried back to the mouth of the tunnel in the land of Gobi, and there it was piled in long rows. The mountains thus made are still to be seen in parts of Asia though few knew how they came there.

  The finishing of this tunnel and the placing of the powder would take thirty years, but the actual exploding of the powder would be but the time of the taking of a deep breath. Even so, it would take a day for the final, distant charges to be exploded, so great was the distance to the far parts of the land.

  Only a part of the destruction would be accomplished by the powder exploding. The flames from this would light the large caverns of lethal gases, and these would explode and blast holes into the very bottomless Pits of Despair. From these pits would come the fire of Hell, and what that fire would do to the hated land of Mo could hardly be guessed.

  Part of this plan had reached Mo through its secret spy system; but it was so fantastic, so peculiarly impossible in its greatness, that little attention was paid to it. Besides, they knew that it would take years for Gobi to dig such tunnels under their land and under the far corners of their kingdom, and before that time had come they had a very pleasant surprise to hand to Gobi which would give the wise men of that land plenty to worry about besides spending an eternity of years digging tunnels under the sea.

  For there were also wise men in Mo. Perhaps their wise men were possessed of more wisdom than the Seven Wise Men of Gobi, though at this time, fourteen thousand years after both lands died and lost their wisdom, it is hard to evaluate such a delicate matter as the intelligence of a nation. However, the end results confirmed the boast of Mo that they would win a victory over their enemies before those enemies could come to an end of their tunnel.

  Now it is an interesting fact that the men of Gobi knew of the plans of Mo just as the men of Mo knew of the plans of Gobi. Each had a partial idea of how the enemy was going to attack, and each felt that the schemes were impracticable and foolish. It is not to be wondered at that the Seven Wise Men made a special report to the Emperor of Gobi, and in that report told him that Mo would try to destroy them; but that the method was an impossible one and opposed to all the known laws of nature. To be brief. Mo intended to have the laws of gravity set aside for a short period over the entire land of Gobi, with the result that the land, no longer held down by gravity or the weight of the atmosphere, would leap into the air and leave the entire kingdom miles above the ocean in an atmosphere of bitter cold where pleasure would cease and men be so occupied with fighting the winter that no time or energy would remain for the pursuit of pleasure or the softer recreations of life. The people of Gobi would have neither time nor energy for building tunnels to destroy Mo. If they remained in their former land, they would have to fight the cold. If they left it, they would have to fight the Barbarians. Meantime, the gentle folk of Mo would continue to live in pleasure and a warm place under the tropical sun.

  Thus each country lived in what proved to be a fool’s paradise.

  Yet not all, for the Emperor of Mo had built in the far east a special retreat and a place of refuge, and there he and his rich men and their wives went for six months every year, when the summer sun was the warmest in Mo. Many centuries before, it had been foretold that when Mo was destroyed it would be during the period of intense heat; and now for several decades the chosen few protected themselves against such a fate even though they laughingly told each other that it was impossible.

  The plans of the wise men of Mo were not as fantastic as might be imagined. Even today, in our dense ignorance, there are East Indians who can suspend themselves in the air in absolute defiance of the laws of gravitation. If a man can do this now in our dark ages, why should not a field or a forest do the same in a time when men knew many things that so far we have failed to learn? At least, what really happened was this: Heracles had not come to Gobi by accident. His capture was simply a part of the plans of the conspirators of Mo. Had he not been captured on ship board, he would have come to Gobi anyway. His ability to make the life-prolonging bee jelly was just a happy coincidence, something accidental in its occurrence; but at the same time such was the wisdom of this young man that had almost anything else been asked of him, he would have been able to give a satisfactory answer. He had come to Gobi to lift that unhappy country three miles into the air; his making of the bee food simply made it easier for him to carry out his plans. Now the trusted friend of the Emperor, in fact, the man who was making his royal food, he had full access to every part of the Kingdom of Gobi.

  What Heracles did is easily told. How he got his results cannot even be guessed, but there is this to say: If any wise man of today duplicated his experiment, there would be no similar result, so it must be true that this man of Mo knew something that the scientists of today do not know. All that Heracles did was to set aside a room, and into that room no one came but himself. In that room, he built with his own hands a table on four legs, and the top of the table was near the floor. The legs were telescoped, so that when air was released into them from a tank where it was stored under pressure, the table slowly rose into the air till it came near the ceiling of the high room. On the top of this table, Heracles built out of sand and stone and little painted pieces of wood a replica or relief map of the Empire of Gobi. When the time came, he intended to raise the table; and even as the table rose into the air, so would the entire land of his enemies.

  The plan was perfect; and yet, at the very end, a little thing destroyed the perfect consummation of it, and allowed things to end as they did.

  To select this room, to secretly build the table, the tank, and the apparatus for compressing the air, and to make a perfect duplicate of the Kingdom of Gobi on top of the table, took time. Even in his moments of greatest fancied security, Heracles could not relax his caution one moment. Every piece of wood and metal had to be carried into the room under his flowing robes or at the dead of night. At times, a year passed without his being able to even enter the room, for often the Emperor insisted on trips of inspection to the far corners of the Kingdom, and on these trips he was careful to see to it that the Seven Wise Men, the Priest, and the Physician accompanied him.

  Meantime, the years passed. The special food, the nourishment of queen bees—the only nutriment of Emperor and Wise Men—was working admirably in every way. The Emperor was not only retaining his original age, but also seemed to be growing younger. It was rumored that the High Priest, who had been nearly ninety at the beginning of the experiment, had become a father through the aid of one of the ladies of the Temple. There was no doubt about the rejuvenating value of the food. The Emperor at fifty-nine had ceased to visit his harem. Now, at eighty-nine, he had his trusted emissaries hunting for the fairest women in the world to help him pass away the time, which sometimes hung so heavy on his hands.

  Thirty years had passed.

  These years had not been idle. Thousands of men worked to destroy Mo, while one man patiently worked to destroy Gobi. Meantime, the Emperor of Mo spent more and more time in his special retreat under the mountains of Arizona. In a royal trireme, he would sail eastward till he came to the mouth of a large river, the one that is now called the Colorado. Up this he would sail to a harbor from which place the royal elephants would carry him and his escort to the mouth of a tunnel. Here he changed to litters carried on the shoulder of slaves, and for twenty-seven miles under the massive mountains they would walk on a pavement of red sandstone through a tunnel illumined by the torches of marble slaves who patiently stood in almost endless rows. The light from their torches never varied and was cold. Since then, the secret of a cold light has never be
en rediscovered.

  At the end of the twenty-seven miles, there came an end to the tunnel, and there, in a natural crater, was built the splendid royal city. It was a small place, room for a hundred of the nobility and their servants at most, but in that little city was the wealth of the land of Mo. For seven hundred years, each Emperor had carried there his finest treasures, and left them there. Such was the place where the great men of Mo waited for the prophecy to come true. From here, every six months, they returned to Mo, glad that another year of safety had passed over them.

  Yearly and half yearly, Heracles sent messages to the King’s Councilors at the capital of Mo, reporting his progress and warning of the dangers that threatened the country; but little attention was given most of these warnings, while the certainty of the destruction of Gobi was fully believed and occasioned much joy.

  Finally, at a meeting of the Wise Men of Gobi and the Emperor, the time for the finishing of the tunnels and the exploding of the powder was determined; and it was announced that in one year this would take place. This filled Heracles with boundless determination to finish his work and thus prevent the destruction of Mo by first hoisting Gobi into an eternity of cold and snow. Of the work he was doing, little remained unfinished. One or two more nights would see an ending of the preparation, and then Gobi would be destroyed.

  But not at once.

  Heracles was not content with simple destruction. The years of study, the sacrifice of a lifetime among strangers, had filled him with the determination for a deeper and more terrible vengeance than simply the freezing of his enemies. For thirty years, he had plotted this vengeance; for all those years, he had studied and planned and experimented and now he was prepared to begin a deed that would strike terror in all people. In after years, when it became known, it would place the name of Heracles, the Physician of Mo, among the names of the Great of the whole Earth.

  During these thirty years, he had fed the Emperor and his Seven Wise Men and the High Priest. He had fed them and given them drink. Nothing passed their lips save what he had prepared for them. Years of wonderful health, boundless vitality, and splendid vigor, gave these men the greatest confidence in the honesty and integrity of the man who had fed them. Now Heracles, with their fate in his hands, prepared for them a future that was so different from what they had expected, that not even their wildest dreams could anticipate It.