A Swordsman of Mars

THE MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE

During July and August, when the heat and humidity make living in the city somewhat less than pleasant, I am accustomed to renting a cabin in the woods around Lake Carlopa in upstate New York. I simply carry along food and cigarettes, plenty of books to read, and my favorite dog, a bull terrier named McGurk. We explore the woods and swim in the lake, and enjoy the rustic solitude and the scenery, which is spectacular.

The nights grow chilly, regardless of the month, so after dinner I build a fire in the big fieldstone fireplace and stretch out with a book, while Gurk basks on the hearth, dreaming his doggy dreams.

On this particular occasion I had brought along several new books I had not yet read, and a few old friends with whom I wished to familiarize myself again—Jack Williamson’s Legion of Time, Van Vogt’s The Book of Ptath, Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, and some volumes of verse.

On the night it happened, July 17th, I had been browsing through the verses of one of the most interesting of all the poets of the East, the Syrian poet Abu’l-Ala, who wrote his lovely and haunting quatrains in the last years of the tenth century, a generation before the birth of Omar Khayyam, whom he so much resembles. In his quatrains he examines the claims of religion and mysticism and explores the mysteries of life and death and of the life beyond. I remember being struck by two quatrains in particular, these two:

I cannot explain why, but those lines stirred profound depths of thought within me. I took up the yellow ruled tablet I keep close to hand when reading in case I wish to make a note or jot down a quotation for future use, and the pen that lay beside it. These I rested against my knee, and, with uncapped pen in hand, fell into a somber reverie.

My body was utterly relaxed, my mind clear and lucid but deep in thought. Then there fell over me something strange and eerie, a trance-like state, a waking dream. For I was wide awake and fully aware of my surroundings. I could hear the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, the rustling of leaves in the wind, the crackling of the fire, the whines of my dog as he chased rabbits in his dream.

Without volition, my hand began to move rapidly across the page of the tablet, inditing line after line in a neat, tight script very very unlike my own ungainly scrawl. I was aware of this but it neither frightened nor concerned me. Page after page of handwriting followed in this manner.

Two hours later, or a bit more, I aroused myself from this weird trance, drenched in perspiration and shaking with exhaustion, my right hand and arm numb and trembling from strain. I got up and went to bed, falling at once into a deep and dreamless sleep from which I awoke the next morning, rested and refreshed. Only then, over a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs and Canadian bacon and buttered toast, did I read what my hand had written.

It was the opening pages of the book you are holding at this moment, four or five thousand words of clear, legible handwriting in a hand not my own.

I have no explanation for this, nor do I really expect anyone to believe me. The phenomenon is well known, and a copious literature exists upon it. It is called automatic writing. The psychologists have one explanation for it, involving the creative powers of the subconscious mind; the occultists and spiritualists have another, concerning communications by disembodied spirits in the next life.

I have no explanation to offer, and cannot quite accept either of the alternative answers given by science and religion.

Night after night thereafter, at the same time, again there came upon me that uncanny waking sleep, and each morning more and more of the narrative had written itself.

To this account, I have but one more thing to add. My friend Dr. Kenneth Franklin, the astronomer in residence at New York’s famous Hayden Planetarium, told me in answer to my question that the fourteen days beginning on the night of July 17th are the period of the year when the planet Mars comes closest to the Earth.

—LIN CARTER