furbished up, for although, as I have said, I have always considered Achilles to be a poor show beside Hector, the sheer rage and panache and barbarity and honor of those times bears some pale reflection of times on Kregen that go on to this present hour.
The Star Lords had dumped me down on Earth after what has since come to be called the Year of Revolutions. For a time I was too nearly a madman to bother with the world and its doings. There had been a king come and gone on the throne of England and now we had a queen. I knew about queens. The one at this time, though, bore no possible connection with any of the queens I had known, and I thought longingly of the fabled Queens of Pain of Loh. Queen Lilah, Queen Fahia and Queen Thyllis, she who was now the Empress Thyllis. By Vox! What a spectacular collection they were, and all up there on Kregen waiting, waiting. .
As for the kings, because of my connection with the July days in Paris in 1830 and the dismissal of Charles X and the installation of Louis Phillipe, I sought as a change from universities and academies, and as an anodyne to my agony, some light action, as Prince Louis Napoleon, President of the French Republic for three years, overturned that Republic and obtained election as President for ten years. I did not then think that I would still be on Earth when his term came up for renewal; I saw him made Emperor, Napoleon III, and I cursed the day I still remained on Earth. The attempt of Russia to dismember the Sick Man of Europe and the involvement of France and England are well known. As they affected me, however, I let events take their course. The Crimean War, it seemed to me, a fighting man, might give me fresh opportunities to bash a few skulls and so in my sinful way find a trifle of surcease from the despair and anguish consuming me. My part led me to action earlier than the Light Brigade on that fateful day of October 25. As a participant in the Heavy Brigade charge I believe we did a more thorough job than the more highly publicized Charge of the Lights. Three hundred British heavy cavalrymen charging uphill against three thousand Russian cavalrymen. It sounds as maniacal as events on Kregen. The Grays were in the thick of it. General Scarlett’s second line came on, piecemeal, driving through and through the thick gray ranks. The Russians, incredible though it sounds, had enough and broke and scattered and fled. The Light Brigade fiasco — however glorious — followed later. I fancied that even on Kregen soldiers would look askance at generals who had last fought forty years ago, or who had never fought, or who were often so old and doddery, without any clear understanding of what they were about, that they were as much a menace to their own men as to the enemy.
After that came the Indian Mutiny and I went to take a part. I have said that I do not intend to dwell on those portions of my life spent on this Earth. But on this occasion the years ticked by and I grew ever more morose and savage, bitter with the bitterness that eats the spirit, and it is right that you who listen to my story should understand.
My studies progressed by fits and starts. The marvels of steam and engineering and iron ships and the industrial changes that shook and transformed England were absorbed. I followed closely all the developments of science and philosophy and the arts of war I could. Agriculture also repaid study. But through all this I was aware that I was like a man asleep, merely walking through a part on a dimly lit stage.
As for the war in America — the American Civil War or the War between the States — I was there. I shall not say now what side I fought on, although that may appear more obvious than it truly was, and I did not enjoy it. By the end of May on that last dreadful year of war I was sailing back to England. A gentleman I had met and talked with in odd circumstances, a gentleman from Virginia, struck me as a man who would go to far places and, perhaps, hunger for a life akin to mine on Kregen. I wished him well as we parted.
Whenever the opportunity had offered I had made fresh inquiries about Alex Hunter. He had been a Savapim, an agent of the Savanti, recruited from Earth. I had seen him die on a beach in Valka and had buried him and said two prayers over his grave. As a shavetail in the old U.S. Army he had been subject to influences I fancied I could duplicate during my period in the U.S., but the armies of the war were very different from the armies both before and after. There was nothing, I thought, to be gained from the trail of Alex Hunter.
The idea that the Savanti — who labored to bring dignity to Kregen, they had told me — recruited people from this Earth to work for them led me on to a consideration that perhaps they maintained agents here. I had seen the Savapim Wolfgang fight to protect apims against diffs in the
If newspaper advertisements would help I would deluge the daily sheets with advertisements. This was the time I became involved with some of the more dubious aspects of Victorian science. As a trapped rat will turn and struggle against whatever opposes it so I struggled against invisible bonds. In the process I ran across weird people, ordinary human beings, and yet people possessed of some quirk of nature that led them to gather to themselves superior powers. Most of the time they were mere quacks, charlatans, impostors. Of Doctor Quinney, I had my doubts.
A thin, snuffly individual, blessed with a quantity of lank brown hair — hair that grew, it seemed, from every part of his face except his eyes — Doctor Quinney dressed in shiny black clothes, much worn, and a stovepipe hat elegantly blocked out after whoever it was had sat on it. His snuff blew everywhere. His eyes watered and gleamed with fanaticism; he claimed to know the Secrets of the Spheres.
'And I assure you, my dear sir' — his steel-rimmed pince-nez flashed in time to the pendulum motion of his head, the dramatic gestures of his gleaming-knuckled hands — 'inthe Spheres like mystic gossamer balls lie the ultimate Secrets!'
I had taken chambers in a quiet London side street and the landlady, Mrs. Benton, was slowly growing accustomed to the procession of odd characters daily pulling the doorbell. As for my own clothes, they were unremarkable, simple English town clothes of sober cut and style. Doctor Quinney regarded me as a man who, also anxious to unravel the Secrets of the Spheres, happened most fortunately to be blessed with the wherewithal to satisfy that craving.
I tolerated him for what he might bring me, rather as a ponsho might be staked out for a leem.
'Listen to me, Doctor Quinney, and mark me well. I expect results from you. It might go very ill for you else.' He started back and dropped his handkerchief. I know that he had seen in my face that awful mad glare marking a clansman of Segesthes, marking me, Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor.
Chapter Five
Now began a different period of my life on Earth. More and more I mixed with the learned men, the savants, the scientists and chemists, the philosophers and engineers. To speak the truth, many of the new discoveries daily amazing this Victorian world had been spoken of in Aphrasoe. Because of this I was able to hold my own in argument and debate.
When Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace read their paper before the Linnean Society, I had been in India charging about with a saber and uselessly trying either to blot out all thought of Kregen or to imagine myself there as we battled. Many of the ideas expressed in
One day, it seems to me, our selfish brawling Earth may turn into the paradise I still — despite all! -
believe the Swinging City to be. As you must be aware, since I speak to you in the seventies of the twentieth century and much has transpired over the past one hundred years on Kregen, I know much more now than I knew then. At the time of which I speak, though, I knew practically nothing. Nothing. The Savanti had their purposes, and I had surmised these were for the good of Kregen and for the dignity of humanity. As to the purposes of the Star
