Абрахам Меррит - Dwellers in the Mirage

"I'm sure I don't. I'd remember that, by God! I don't even dream of the temple in the Gobi!"

He nodded, as though I had confirmed some thought in his own mind; then was quiet for so long that I became jumpy.

"Well, Old Medicine Man of the Tsalagi', what's the diagnosis? Reincarnation, demonic possession, or just crazy?"

"Leif, you never had any of those dreams before the Gobi?"

"I did not."

"Well—I've been trying to think as Barr would, and squaring it with my own grey matter. Here's the result. I think that everything you've told me is the doing of your old priest. He had you under his control when you saw yourself riding to the Temple of Khalk'ru—and wouldn't go in. You don't know what else he might have suggested at that time, and have commanded you to forget consciously when you came to yourself. That's a simple matter of hypnotism. But he had another chance at you. When you were asleep that night. How do you know he didn't come in and do some more suggesting? Obviously, he wanted to believe you were Dwayanu. He. wanted you to 'remember'—but having had one lesson, he didn't want you to remember what went on with Khalk'ru. That would explain why you dreamed about the pomp and glory and the pleasant things, but not the unpleasant. He was a wise old gentleman—you say that yourself. He knew enough of your psychology to foresee you would balk at a stage of the ritual. So you did—but he had tied you well up. Instantly the post–hypnotic command to the subconscious operated. You couldn't help going on. Although your conscious self was wide–awake, fully aware, it had no control over your will. I think that's what Barr would say. And I'd agree with him. Hell, there are drugs that do all that to you. You don't have to go into migrations of the soul, or demons, or any medieval matter to account for it."

"Yes," I said, hopefully but doubtfully. "And how about the Witch–woman?"

"Somebody like her in your dreams, but forgotten. I think the explanation is what I've said. If it is, Leif, it worries me."

"I don't follow you there," I said.

"No? Well, think this over. If all these things that puzzle you come from suggestions the old priest made—what else did he suggest? Clearly, he knew something of this place. Suppose he foresaw the possibility of your finding it. What would he want you to do when you did find it? Whatever it was, you can bet your chances of getting out that he planted it deep in your subconscious. All right—that being a reasonable deduction, what is it you will do when you come in closer contact with those red–headed ladies we saw, and with the happy few gentlemen who share their Paradise? I haven't the slightest idea—nor have you. And if that isn't something to worry about, tell me what is. Come on—let's go to bed."

We went into the tent. We had been in it before with Evalie. It had been empty then except for a pile of soft pelts and silken stuffs at one side. Now there were two such piles. We shed our clothes in the pale green darkness and turned in. I looked at my watch.

"Ten o'clock," I said. "How many months since morning?"

"At least six. If you keep me awake I'll murder you. I'm tired."

So was I; but I lay long, thinking. I was not so convinced by Jim's argument, plausible as it was. Not that I believed I had been lying dormant in some extra–spatial limbo for centuries. Nor that I had ever been this ancient Dwayanu. There was a third explanation, although I didn't like it a bit better than that of reincarnation; and it had just as many unpleasant possibilities as that of Jim's.

Not long ago an eminent American physician and psychologist had said he had discovered that the average man used only about one–tenth of his brain; and scientists generally agreed he was right. The ablest thinkers, all–round geniuses, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were, might use a tenth more. Any man who could use all his brain could rule the world—but probably wouldn't want to. In the human skull was a world only one–fifth explored at the most.

What was in the terra incognita of the brain—the unexplored eight–tenths?

Well, for one thing there might be a storehouse of ancestral memories, memories reaching back to those of the hairy, ape–like ancestors who preceded man, reaching beyond them even to those of the flippered creatures who crawled out of the ancient seas to begin their march to men—and further back to their ancestors who had battled and bred in the steaming oceans when the continents were being born.

Millions upon millions of years of memories! What a reservoir of knowledge if man's consciousness could but tap it!

There was nothing more unbelievable in this than that the physical memory of the race could be contained in the two single cells which start the cycle of birth. In them are all the complexities of the human body—brain and nerves, muscles, bone and blood. In them, too, are those traits we call hereditary—family resemblances, resemblances not only of face and body but of thought, habits, emotions, reactions to environment: grandfather's nose, great–grandmother's eyes, great–great–grandfather's irascibility, moodiness or what not. If all this can be carried in those seven and forty, and eight and forty, microscopic rods within the birth cells which biologists call the chromosomes, tiny mysterious gods of birth who determine from the beginning what blend of ancestors a boy or girl shall be, why could they not carry, too, the accumulated experiences, the memories of those ancestors?

Somewhere in the human brain might be a section of records, each neatly graven with lines of memories, waiting only for the needle of consciousness to run over them to make them articulate.

Maybe the consciousness did now and then touch and read them. Maybe there were a few people who by some freak had a limited power of tapping their contents.

If that were true, it would explain many mysteries. Jim's ghostly voices, for example. My own uncanny ability of picking up languages.

Suppose that I had come straight down from this Dwayanu. And that in this unknown world of my brain, my consciousness, that which now was I, could and did reach in and touch those memories that had been Dwayanu. Or that those memories stirred and reached my consciousness? When that happened—Dwayanu would awaken and live. And I would be both Dwayanu and Leif Langdon!

Might it not be that the old priest had known something of this? By words and rites and by suggestion, even as Jim had said, had reached into that terra incognita and wakened these memories that were—Dwayanu?

They were strong—those memories. They had not been wholly asleep; else I would not have learned so quickly the Uighur…nor experienced those strange, reluctant flashes of recognition before ever I met the old priest…

Yes, Dwayanu was strong. And in some way I knew he was ruthless. I was afraid of Dwayanu—of those memories that once had been Dwayanu. I had no power to arouse them, and I had no power to control them. Twice they had seized my will, had pushed me aside.

What if they grew stronger?

What if they became—all of me?

Six times the green light of the Shadowed–land had darkened into the pale dusk that was its night, and I had heard nothing, seen nothing of the Witch–woman or of any of those who dwelt on the far side of the white river. They had been six days and nights of curious interest. We had gone with Evalie among the golden pygmies over all their guarded plain; and we had gone at will among them, alone.

We had watched them at their work and at their play, listened to their drumming and looked on in wonder at their dances—dances so intricate, so extraordinary, that they were more like complex choral harmonies than steps and gestures. Sometimes the Little People danced in small groups of a dozen or so, and then it was like some simple song. But sometimes they were dancing by the hundreds, interlaced, over a score of the smooth–turfed dancing greens; and then it was like symphonies translated into choreographic measures.