Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

Other Earthly races had visited Mars…but why had I found the skeleton of one in a pyramid associated with an ancient religion, ancient even to the aged planet of Mars? Could it have been possible … could Terrestrials have been regarded as gods? Could the proud races of Mars … could the proud religion … ?

I stumbled out of the pyramid and tilting my head back, roared in laughter at the two moons which swung above the dead reaches of the desert.

Many things have happened in the past five years, and as I think of it, I remember that it was just five years ago today that Ken Smith and myself, with the jewels and the cylinder which contained Tarsus-Egbo, the Martian, secretly left Mars on the ship of a space captain who was willing to take a few risks for a double handful of jewels. We reached Earth safely, the captain landing us in a remote section of the Rocky Mountain district.

For a year we remained in hiding and discussed our plans. At last, satisfied that both the Earth and Mars had lost all trace of us, I securely hid the jewels, except for a pocketful, with the two cylinders in a cave and journeyed to the outside.

This time there was no need for a disguise. As I look in the glass now I can scarcely believe that I am only slightly over forty. My hair is snow white and my face is the face of an old man, lined with deep wrinkles and scarred with care.

In Chicago I experienced some trouble in retrieving the box which contained the bones of Kell-Rabin from its place in the safety deposit vault, but the papers I presented were all in good order and there was no reason for raising too great an objection, so it was finally handed over to me.

There was much to do and I set about doing it. I realized that my time might be short, so I wasted none of it. There were draftsmen, electricians, radio experts, laborers, orders for steel and other materials, all to be attended to, and I attended to them. It cost money, but the jewels that we possessed represented a colossal fortune and cost meant nothing if it purchased haste and efficient workmanship.

A month ago, I dismissed the last workman whom I had employed to build the huge broadcasting station ten miles from where I sit and write this. It is the most powerful station in the universe, greater even than those mighty stations on Jupiter. It is the pride of the Earth. I am hailed far and wide all over the planet as one of Earth’s greatest benefactors. With that station a message may be flung to the farthest limits of the universe, out to where icy Pluto swings in the outer void and where the sun is no more than a star among many stars.

If only the Earth suspected what would be the first message that is to be hurled out from that station, it would be destroyed immediately by governmental orders. If only Mars suspected, a fleet of warships would leave the surface of that planet within the next few hours, bound for Earth.

The Earth will call me a traitor to the solar system, Mars will list my name on the blackest sheet of the most infamous book, my own people will believe me crazy. I am crazy, crazy with suffering, crazy with a mad desire to humble a cruel and haughty nation. There is a method in my insanity, a terrible, cold, calculating method. And the world does not suspect. The Martians, who have praised my philanthropic work, do not suspect.

Crazy, you say, insane, a raving maniac. How, I ask you, have I come to be insane? Would not any man lose his mind if he sat day after day, face to face with the brain of a friend encased in a metal cylinder? Remembering other days, when this thing in the cylinder walked on two legs, laughed and joked, enjoyed a good smoke …

I must hasten, however. There is little time left.

For the past four years I have lived in dread, dread that someone would recognize me, that I would be unveiled as the murderer of the Martian priests in the Chicago hotel or as the man who had blasphemed the Martian religion and profaned the Temple of Saldebar.

I have kept to myself. I have gained the reputation of being shy, modest, retiring. I have not allowed myself to be photographed, I have granted no interviews. I have remained the Great Enigma and become the better known and gained more publicity because of it.

It was not that I cared for myself, for life is no longer valuable to me. It was fear that I would be discovered before the hour had struck, before I had completed all my plans. Now the hour is near and if I live a few more hours the world will never find me.

Only a few hours now. My plans are well laid, all arrangements are made. The broadcasting station is completed. Here in the cragged hills of North American’s greatest mountains, there is a great vault, carved from the everlasting rock. Tonight Dr. John E. Barston, the world’s greatest surgeon, will perform an important operation in that vault. When he leaves, he will take with him a chest half filled with jewels, all that is left of the great Martian treasure. He will take them with him as the price of silence. The men who built the vault are silenced, too, on the criminal colonies on Mercury. It took several handfuls of the jewels to do that.

At last revenge is in my grasp. In a few hours Mars will be the butt of the entire universe. In a few hours the Martian religion will be a joke.

The Martians, who excluded me from their planet, who stole my friend’s radium deposits and then stole his body, the Martians, who made Kenneth Smith and me outcasts of the solar system, shall feel the point of our wrath. I am striking at them where it will hurt most. I am taking from them their proud religion, I am tumbling their card house down about the ears of their beastly priests. I am stealing their faith as they stole the body of Kenneth Smith.

Good old Ken! We were pals ten years ago and we are still pals. He has played a wonderful game. He has pretended that it didn’t matter. It has been hard for him, as it has been hard for me. He has depended on me so much. It is I who have turned him on and off, who have shifted his cylinder so that he may rest his eyes on a different scene. With the passing of the years his senses and his brain have grown stronger. His reasoning power has increased until he thinks in almost pure logic. His one passion is revenge, revenge on the Martian race, and I am giving that to him.

I have here an electrical transcription of my own voice. In a short time, I shall turn on the power to its fullest in the great station and shall set before the microphone a machine to transcribe the metal cylinder that lies before me, to repeat the transcription over and over again so that all may hear, may hear my voice in a declaration that will seal the doom of the Martian religion. I shall lock the doors of the station and before they batter them down every living soul in the universe will know my story. Every person will know how the bones of Kell-Rabin were filched from the Temple of Saldebar, how the Martian race has worshipped almost six years before an empty box. They will know of the skeleton that I found in the pyramid in the Arantian desert and of the religious frenzy that has driven the Martians to destroy every one of these pyramids they can find.

They will know, too, the truth about Kell-Rabin, whose bones were worshipped for uncounted centuries as the Holy Relics and the Revered Remains. They will know that the bones of Kell-Rabin are the bones of a Terrestrial, of a human being who must have lived on Earth millions of years before Mu rose out of the sea. They will know that a Terrestrial was worshipped as a god by the Martian race and that his bones were religiously placed in a box to be worshipped long after he had died…and from the fact that the bones in the old pyramid and the bones of Kell-Rabin were both Terrestrial skeletons they may draw their own conclusions.

The Martians, what of them? When my words flash out to the mining stations of Mercury and the trading outposts of Pluto, where, then, will be the proud religion of Mars? Crumpled, dissolved, gone! Gone, as are Ken Smith’s radium deposits and his body. My words will rob them of the thing they have held dear, all their teachings will be for nothing, all their creeds will be empty words whistling in the wind.