Sword of Tomorrow Read online

  Table of Contents

  SWORD OF TOMORROW CHAPTER I Jap Torture Cell

  CHAPTER II Air Accident

  CHAPTER III The Blue-Eyed Girl

  CHAPTER IV An Offer Is Made

  CHAPTER V Deccan Enemies

  CHAPTER VI Globe of Colors

  CHAPTER VII Sinister Dream World

  CHAPTER VIII Traitor To His Trust

  CHAPTER IX Plotters At Bay

  SWORD OF TOMORROW

  Henry Kuttner

  A Complete Novel Of The Future

  * * *

  Thrilling Wonder Stories

  Fall 1945

  Standard Magazines, Inc.

  Trance-borne to a far distant age, Pilot Ethan Court is plunged into peril and adventure on a strange new world where his courage and idealism are put to a stern test!

  CHAPTER I Jap Torture Cell

  It was always easier when he sank into the opium-drugged stupor from which not even torture could rouse him. At first he clung to two memories—his rank, and his Army serial number. By focusing his pain-hazed mind on those realities he was able to keep sane.

  After a while he didn’t want to keep his sanity.

  Men can survive a year, or two years, in a Japanese prison camp. They may emerge maimed, spiritually sick, but alive. They remember their own names.

  He used to say it aloud at first, in the musty darkness of the cell.

  “Ethan Court,” he whispered to the black, hidden walls. “Ethan Court.” And then—“Times Square. Tiffany’s, Bretano’s, Staten Island. The Yankee Stadium, pop corn, whisky sours, Greenwich Village’”

  Presently he noticed that the sound of his voice was different, and after that he scarcely spoke. The horrible lethargy of inaction closed around him. Occasionally, though less often now, he was taken before Japanese officers who questioned him.

  He was somewhere in Occupied China, he knew, but since his plane had been forced down, he had been shunted for a long distance by a roundabout route. He guessed that this was a temporary headquarters, probably on the site of some old Chinese town, and he suspected that it was in the hill country. His savage captors told him nothing, of course. They just asked questions.

  How much could he disclose in the way of military information, the Japanese did not know. Hard-pressed, they were overlooking no bets. His stubbornness enraged them. The commander of the post, a disappointed samurai of a politically-unpopular family, gradually came to believe that a feud existed between Court and himself. It became a contest between the Japanese officer and the American, entirely passive on one side, ruthlessly active on the other.

  Time dragged on, while bombers roared in increasing numbers over Japan and the brown hordes sullenly withdrew from Burma and Thailand and the islands north of Borneo. This headquarters was isolated, but in a strategic spot. The commander saw the tides of war rage past him and recede. The radio gave him no comfort. The Emperor of Japan was silent upon his throne.

  A transfer required time. In enforced idleness, the Nipponese commander devoted himself to breaking the will of the American. Torture failed, and so he tried an ancient Japanese trick—opium. It was mixed in Court’s food, and, after a while, the craving grew in him. The Jap officer kept his prisoner saturated with the drug. Court’s mind dulled.

  * * *

  A Mongol, Kai-Sieng, was put in Court’s cell. He was a prisoner, too, and spoke only a few English words. There had been an uprising, Court gathered. The prison cells of the fort were overflowing. For a month Kai-Sieng remained, and in that time Court learned of the deceptive Peace of the Poppy.

  Curious conversations they had there in the dark—scraps of English and Chinese and lingua franca. The Mongol was a fatalist. Death was inevitable, and meanwhile he had killed very many Japanese.

  The taunts and torments he had undergone had not moved him. He knew the hiding-place of his Chinese guerrilla leader, but the Japs would not learn it from him.

  “They cannot touch me,” he told Court. “The part of me that is—myself—is sunk deep in a well of peace.”

  Yes, he smoked opium. Kai-Sieng said, but it was not that alone. He had been in Tibet, at a lamasery. There he had learned something of the secret of detaching the soul from the body.

  Court wondered.

  In military classes, he himself had studied psychonamics, that strange weapon of psychological defense that is, in essence, self-hypnotism. Here in a prison cell in China, from the mouth of a rancid-smelling Mongolian guerrilla, he was learning an allied science—or mysticism.

  He told Kai-Sieng something of his fears, that he would go mad, or that he would be unable to endure the tortures. His will was weakening under the impact of the cannabis indica, and he was afraid that eventually he would talk.

  “Turn their own weapons against them,” the Mongolian said. “The poppy smoke is the opener of the gate. I will teach you what I can. You must learn to relax utterly in the central peace of the universe.”

  Mysticism, yes, but it was merely a phrasing of psychonamic basics. There was no candle-flame to focus Court’s attention. He was sick, body and soul, and relaxation was impossible.

  If his lips ever came unsealed, he might blurt out everything—including a certain bit of military information that no Japanese knew he possessed. It was vital that the enemy should not get that information, how vital only Court and a few three-star generals in the Eastern Theatre knew. Suicide was impossible. He was watched too closely for that. And so, with his eyes open, Court walked into the trap his captors had set and became an opium addict.

  Kai-Sieng showed him the way. The Japanese were only too glad to supply a layout, and Court found the Peace of the Poppy. But under the Mongolian’s guidance he learned something else, the psychonamic defense that had come out of a Tibetan lamasery. It was hard at first, but the opium helped.

  He visualized the sea, deep, calm, immense, and he let himself sink into the fathomless depths. The farther clown he went, the less the outside world mattered. Soaked in opium, his mind drowning in a shoreless ocean, he sank into the blue deeps, and day by day he left the prison farther behind. It was psychic science of a high order, but the Japanese commander did not understand. He thought that Court’s will was growing more pliant, that soon he could successfully question a mind-dulled, helpless dupe.

  Kai-Sieng was taken way and shot. Dreamily Court knew what was happening. It did not matter. Nothing mattered, really. For only the azure sea was real, that profound deep that took him into its protective embrace and kept him safe.

  The opium supply stopped. The Japs had grown suspicious. But they were too late. Not even the craving of Court’s body far the drug could wake him from his blue dream. Not even torture, ruthless and inhuman, could bring life back into his eyes. He had gone down the ancient Tibetan road and found peace.

  But he was not dead. His body, inactive, required less and less fuel. It was not inhabited. His mind had gone elsewhere. Like the blue-robed lamas who are reputed to live for a thousand years in the Himalayan peaks, Court was prolonging his life-span by—resting. The machine of his corporeal existence was idling. Dimly, in the heart of the machine, the life-spark flickered.

  He did not know it. He did not know his name any more. He remembered nothing. He rocked endlessly in the limpid blue vastness, while the armies swept across the face of the world, and Fujiyama’s white cone reflected the red of burning cities. He slept, while the shark-faced planes flew above him, and while the buildings exploded in thundering ruin. He slept, while his cell was sealed in crashing destruction, and the seal was crimsoned with Japanese blood. He still slept, though above him, on the surface of the earth smoked a lifeless rubble where a Japanese fortress once stood.

  Hermetically loc
ked, there in the dark, Ethan Court lay at rest. In Tibetan monasteries Tibetian priests slept similar sleeps, and wake, and finally died. The earth swung in its tremendous orbit around the sun, and warring nations were stilled.

  And there was peace—for a little while.

  * * *

  The awakening took many, many years. The specialized human body is a fragile organism, and enormously complicated. A man who has slept for—ages—does not start up as from a half-hour’s doze. Moreover, the peculiar psychic factor that made Court’s slumber possible also made his quickening a slow process.

  There was air, first. It filtered through a crack in the rubble roof and stole into Court’s nostrils. Oxygen crept into his stilled lungs and infiltrated the nearly motionless blood-stream. The red corpuscles fed upon it, and the vital spark, slowly and gradually, flamed brighter.

  But in his mind there was no awareness. The blue seat was deep. A little troubled, now—but only a little.

  Finally men found him.

  He did not know it when a dark, bearded face peered down into his cell, and when, a torch was lowered. He did not hear the cry of amazement in an alien tongue. Nor did he sense that he was being carried, in a rough litter, to a village hidden amid mountain peaks.

  * * *

  His clothing had long since rotted, but the corroded metal of his dog-tags was still looped on a rusty chain about his neck, The tribesmen put the tiny plates in a sacred place, and, at the command of their priest, they tended Court. Perhaps some hint of the holy Tibetan lamas had filtered down through the ages, for they recognized Court’s sleep as something mystic and sacred.

  They washed him and rubbed his emaciated body gently with oil. They pressed between his lips the warmed milk of the kharam, which had not existed in the Twentieth Century, and some times they prayed to him.

  The priest himself watched with tired, wise eyes, and wondered. His people had no written history, only folk-tales that turned into superstitious legends of the day the gods had destroyed the world—the gods who strode with enormous, crashing strides and left flame behind them. So he wondered.

  Meanwhile the peaceful life of the nomads went on. They bartered and hunted, and among them, presently, moved the gaunt figure of Ethan Court, unshaved and strange in a native tunic. But behind his eyes the—soul—had not wakened.

  A psychiatrist might have guessed the answer. There was psychic trauma present, induced by shock and nurtured by the blue seas in which Court’s awareness still hung quiescent. A part of his mind roused, He learned the language, word by word—it was not complicated—and he would play quiet games with the children, a blue-eyed, bearded spectre from the past. He became accepted as part of the community life. He was not holy any more. Familiarity had altered that. But his hosts were friendly, and the priest spent long hours trying to find the key to Court’s soul.

  Then a change came. A new face swam into the dark mirror of Court’s realization, and afterward. frighteningly new things. He sank deeper, protectively, into the blue sea. For he was flying again. That terrified him. He scarcely sensed his altered surroundings, the lush magnificence of rainbow plastics and dim music, and he tried not to realize that there were tiny pin-pricks of pain now and then in his arms and legs.

  But something was troubling the waters. Something reached down inexorably toward him, groping, seizing, pulling him to the surface.

  Always, now, voices spoke to him in this new language he had learned. They were urging him to— to seek someone. Who? They did not know, but they said that he knew. They commanded him to remember—what?

  A name.

  Whose name?

  The blue sea was becoming very shallow. Waves of troubling, strange music beat upon him. Color and light quivered and shook before his puzzled eyes.

  The name was—Court. Ethan Court!

  The blue oblivion washed back. It was torn asunder like a veil. It fled far away and was gone, and into the place where it had been came rushing the memories of the man who had been Ethan Court.

  For he remembered now. He was awake. And, in the moment of that awakening, he knew that he was in a new world.

  CHAPTER II Air Accident

  The tense faces ringing him altered. He heard a soft “Ah’h” of satisfaction from many lips. Involuntarily he scowled, his glance flicking from eye to eye. He was half-reclining in a curious sort of chair. It was a bulky chair, with coils of tubed light twining about it. A circle of men stood facing him, watching.

  His lips tightened.

  “What’s going on here?” he said in English. “Where am I?”

  One man, completely bald, with a close-fitting white garment revealing his skinny figure, waved the others back. He spoke a tongue that Court understood.

  “Leave me alone with him now. He is awake. Call Barlen. Notify the Throne. Out, now!”

  They trooped out through a door that lifted silently in the wall. Court lifted himself out of the chair where now the shining coils had dulled. His body felt like an old friend. He had been using it without realization for a long while, and he was in good physical condition. Looking down, he saw that he was wearing a blue-and-brown figured tunic of light, pliable material, and shorts of the same color. There were shoes of elastic, translucent plastic on his feet.

  The room had a strange, exotic appearance. The walls shimmered with color, soft pastels, abstract designs that were curiously soothing in their effect. The furnishings consisted of a few couches and a littered table. Court had never before seen such furniture or such a room.

  The bald man was coming toward him. Court, still frowning, spoke in the new language.

  “What is this? I asked you where I am? Am I a prisoner?”

  “No, you’re no prisoner,” the man said. “You’ve been a patient. I’m Tor Kassel. Can you understand me easily?”

  Court nodded, still wary. “This place is what?”

  “My home.” Kassel hesitated. “You know your name?”

  “Naturally. But that’s about all I do know.”

  “Is it?” The dark eyes were intent. “Your memories haven’t returned?”

  Court shook his head wearily. “I’m mixed up. I expected something else. But this is right, somehow.”

  “It is quite right.” Kassel’s voice was gentle. “There are a few things you should know before you can completely readjust yourself. As for your health—it is perfect. For five months you have been here, under my care. Let me see if my theory is correct. First, are thirsty? Or hungry?”

  “No,” Court said. “I just want to know where I am.”

  Tor Kassel rested his thin hand on the table. “You were in an underground place. There you fell asleep. You caused that sleep yourself. It was a hypnosis, self-induced.”

  “The opium,” Court said suddenly. He used the English word. Kassel stared.

  “Opium?”

  “A—a drug I smoked. It helped me to fall asleep. It was habit-forming.”

  “You do not have the habit now,”

  ‘Cassell said. “Take my word for it. The reason—well, you slept in that hidden place, and time passed. A very long time.”

  Court felt his anger rise. “I know quite well it was a long time. Don’t treat me like like a child. How long? A thousand years?” Once the words were out, he felt their improbability.

  Kassel hesitated. “I don’t know. We can estimate the period after you give us a few facts—the positions of the stars in your era. Our history goes back only a thousand years.”

  “Who are you? What race?”

  “We are Lyrans. That means nothing to you, does it?”

  “No.” Court mused “A thousand years. Why, only that far back? What year is this? Three thousand something?”

  “Seven-eighty-four,” Kassel told him. “Dating from the time of the First Pact, when a few wandering tribes banded together.”

  “All right. Maybe I don’t understand you.”

  “You have a barbarous accent, and you haven’t learned our colloqui
alisms,” Kassel said. “But you learned the language very well during your stay with the Mouranee nomads. You were—mentally asleep—then, but you must have been with the Mouranee for several years.”

  “I want a mirror,” Court said abruptly.

  * * *

  The bald man walked to one of the shimmering walls and made an odd gesture. An oval in the bright surface dimmed and turned silver.

  “Here,” Kassel said.

  Court moved forward hesitantly, uneasily. Whatever he expected to see, it was not the old Ethan Court, of course. But neither had he expected to see a grimy, bearded savage. Yes, he had grown older. There were streaks of white at his temples, and his brown face was thinner. Deep lines bracketed his lips. Under scowling dark brows his blue eyes were sparkling suspiciously.

  Kassel remained near him, talking. “An ethnologist and historian of our race found you with the Mouranee tribe. They learned what they could of your history. You had been found, half-alive, in an ancient, underground chamber. The Mouranee took you to their village and treated you.”

  “I remember,” Court said. “Yes, I remember that.” He touched his lips with hesitating fingers. This flesh—still firm and alive after more than a thousand years? Perhaps more than—ten thousand!

  But he could not believe that. Kassel had cupped something small and bright in his palm.

  “These were found with you. Our scientist could not read them, naturally, but he recognized some of the letters and figures. A very ancient tongue—it is a lost language today, except for a few transcriptions on metal that we cannot decipher.”

  He dropped the objects in Court’s hand. Newly-polished, they were shockingly familiar. Suddenly they were the only real thing in this alien place. Name—blood type typhoid shot—serial number.

  Kassel went on. “You were brought here. We guessed the possible importance of our find. Suspended animation is possible today, but that it should have existed in your era is extraordinary. When was it?”