<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></SPAN>CHAPTER VIII<br/> Hypnotic Torture</h2>
<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Some</span> twenty minutes later the
ship arrived. It settled down
slowly into the ravine on its repeller
rays until it was but a few
feet above the tree tops. There it
was stopped, and floated steadily,
while a little cage was let down
on a wire. Into this I was hustled
and locked, whereupon the
cage rose swiftly again to a hole
in the bottom of the hull, into
which it fitted snugly, and I
stepped into the interior of a
craft not unlike the one with
which I had had my fateful encounter,
the cage being unlocked.</p>
<p>The cabin in which I was confined
was not an outside compartment,
but was equipped with
a number of viewplates.</p>
<p>The ship rose to a great
height, and headed westward at
such speed that the hum of the
air past its smooth plates rose
to a shrill, almost inaudible
moan. After a lapse of some
hours we came in sight of an
impressive mountain range,
which I correctly guessed to be
the Rockies. Swerving slightly,
we headed down toward one of
the topmost pinnacles of the
range, and there unfolded in one
of the viewplates in my cabin a
glorious view of Lo-Tan, the
Magnificent, a fairy city of glistening
glass spires and iridescent
colors, piled up on sheer
walls of brilliant blue, on the
very tip of this peak.</p>
<p>Nor was there any sheen of
shimmering disintegrator rays
surrounding it, to interfere with
the sparkling sight. So far-flung
were the defenses of Lo-Tan, I
found, that it was considered impossible
for an American rocket
gunner to get within effective
range, and so numerous were the
<i>dis</i> ray batteries on the mountain
peaks and in the ravines, in this
encircling line of defenses,
drawn on a radius of no less than
100 miles, that even the largest
craft, in the opinion of the Hans,
could easily be brought to earth
through air-pocketing tactics.
And this, I was the more ready
to believe after my own recent
experience.</p>
<hr />
<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I spent</span> two months as a prisoner
in Lo-Tan. I can honestly
say that during that entire time
every attention was paid to my
physical comfort. Luxuries were
showered upon me. But I was almost
continuously subjected to
some form of mental torture or
moral assault. Most elaborately
staged attempts at seduction
were made upon me with drugs,
with women. Hypnotism was resorted
to. Viewplates were faked
to picture to me the complete
rout of American forces all over
the continent. With incredible
patience, and laboring under
great handicaps, in view of the
vigor of the American offensive,
the Han intelligence department
dug up the fact that somewhere
in the forces surrounding Nu-Yok,
I had left behind me Wilma,
my bride of less than a year. In
some manner, I will never tell
how, they discovered some likeness
of her, and faked an electronoscopic
picture of her in the
hands of torturers in Nu-Yok, in
which she was shown holding
out her arms piteously toward
me, as though begging me to
save her by surrender.</p>
<p>Surrender of what? Strangely
enough, they never indicated
that to me directly, and to this
day I do not know precisely what
they expected or hoped to get out
of me. I surmise that it was information
regarding the American
sciences.</p>
<p>There was, however, something
about the picture of Wilma
in the hands of the torturers
that did not seem real to me, and
my mind still resisted. I remember
gazing with staring eyes at
that picture, the sweat pouring
down my face, searching eagerly
for some visible evidence of
fraud and being unable to find it.
It was the identical likeness of
Wilma. Perhaps had my love for
her been less great, I would have
succumbed. But all the while I
knew subconsciously that this
was not Wilma. Product of the
utmost of nobility in this modern
virile, rugged American race,
she would have died under even
worse torture than these vicious
Han scientists knew how to inflict,
before she would have
pleaded with me this way to betray
my race and her honor.</p>
<p>But these were things that not
even the most skilled of the Han
hypnotists and psychoanalysts
could drag from me. Their intelligence
division also failed to
pick up the fact that I was myself
the product of the Twentieth
Century and not the Twenty-fifth.
Had they done so, it might
have made a difference. I have no
doubt that some of their most
subtle mental assaults missed
fire because of my own Twentieth
Century "denseness." Their hypnotists
inflicted many horrifying
nightmares on me, and made me
do and say many things that I
would not have done in my right
senses. But even in the Twentieth
Century we had learned that
hypnotism cannot make a person
violate his fundamental concepts
of morality against his will, and
steadfastly I steeled my will
against them.</p>
<hr />
<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I have</span> since thought that I
was greatly aided by my newness
to this age. I have never, as
a matter of fact, become entirely
attuned to it. And even today I
confess to a longing wish that
man might travel backward as
well as forward in time. Now that
my Wilma has been at rest these
many years, I wish that I might
go back to the year 1927, and
take up my old life where I left
it off, in the abandoned mine
near Scranton.</p>
<p>And at the period of which I
speak, I was less attuned than
now to the modern world. Real as
my life was, and my love for my
wife, there was much about it all
that was like a dream, and in the
midst of my tortures by the
Hans, this complex—this habit
of many months—helped me to
tell myself that this, too, was all
a dream, that I must not succumb,
for I would wake up in a
moment.</p>
<p>And so they failed.</p>
<p>More than that, I think I won
something nearer to genuine
respect from those around me
than any other Hans of that generation
accorded to anybody.</p>
<p>Among these was San-Lan
himself, the ruler. In the end it
was he who ordered the cessation
of these tortures, and quite
frankly admitted to me his conviction
that they had been futile
and that I was in many senses a
super-man. Instead of having me
executed, he continued to shower
luxuries and attentions on me,
and frequently commanded my
attendance upon him.</p>
<p>Another was his favorite concubine,
Ngo-Lan, a creature of
the most alluring beauty; young,
graceful and most delicately seductive,
whose skill in the arts
and sciences put many of their
doctors to shame. This creature,
his most prized possession, San-Lan
with the utmost moral callousness
ordered to seduce me,
urging her to apply without
stint and to its fullest extent,
her knowledge of evil arts. Had I
not seen the naked horror of her
soul, that she let creep into her
eyes for just one unguarded instant,
and had it not been for my
conviction of Wilma's faith in
me, I do not know what—but
suffice it to say that I resisted
this assault also.</p>
<p>Had San-Lan only known it,
he might have had a better
chance of breaking down my resistance
through another bit of
femininity in his household, the
little nine-year-old Princess Lu-Yan,
his daughter.</p>
<hr />
<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">I think</span> San-Lan held something
of real affection for this
sprightly little mite, who in spite
of the sickening knowledge of
rottenness she had already acquired
at this early age, was the
nearest thing to innocence I
found in Lo-Tan. But he did not
realize this, and could not; for
even the most natural and fundamental
affection of the human
race, that of parents for their
offspring, had been so degraded
and suppressed in this vicious
Han civilization as to be unrecognizable.
Naturally San-Lan
could not understand the nature
of my pity for this poor child,
nor the fact that it might have
proved a weak spot in my armor.
But had he done so, I truly believe
he would have been ready to
inflict degradation, torture and
even death upon her, to make me
surrender the information he
wanted.</p>
<p>Yet this man, perverted product
of a morally degraded race,
had about him something of true
dignity; something of sincerity,
in a warped, twisted way. There
were times when he seemed to
sense vaguely, gropingly, wonderingly,
that he might have a
soul.</p>
<p>The Han philosophy for centuries
had not admitted the existence
of souls. Its conception
embraced nothing but electrons,
protons and molecules, and still
was struggling desperately for
some shred of evidence that
thoughts, will power and consciousness
of self were nothing
but chemical reactions. However,
it had gotten no further than
the negative knowledge we had
in the Twentieth Century, that a
sick body dulls consciousness of
the material world, and that
knowledge, which all mankind
has had from the beginning of
time, that a dead body means a
departed consciousness. They
had succeeded in producing, by
synthesis, what appeared to be
living tissues, and even animals
of moderately complex structure
and rudimentary brains, but
they could not give these creatures
the full complement of
life's characteristics, nor raise
the brains to more than mechanical
control of muscular tissues.</p>
<p>It was my own opinion that
they never could succeed in doing
so. This opinion impressed
San-Lan greatly. I had expected
him to snort his disgust, as the
extreme school of evolutionists
would have done in the Twentieth
Century. But the idea was as
new to him and the scientists of
his court as Darwinism was to
the late Nineteenth and early
Twentieth Centuries. So it was
received with much respect.
Painfully and with enforced
mental readjustments, they began
a philosophical search for
excuses and justifications for the
idea.</p>
<hr />
<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">All</span> of this amused me greatly,
for of course neither the
newness nor the orthodoxy of a
hypothesis will make it true if it
is not true, nor untrue if it is
true. Nor could the luck or will-power,
with which I had resisted
their hypnotists and psychoanalysts,
make what might or
might not be a universal fact
one whit more or less of a fact
than it really was. But the prestige
I had gained among them,
and the novelty of my expressed
opinion carried much weight
with them.</p>
<p>Yet, did not even brilliant scientists
frequently exhibit the
same lack of logic back in the
Twentieth Century? Did not the
historians, the philosophers of
ancient Greece and Rome show
themselves to be the same
shrewd observers as those of
succeeding centuries, the same
masters of the logical and slaves
of the illogical?</p>
<p>After all, I reflected, man
makes little progress within himself.
Through succeeding generations
he piles up those resources
which he possesses outside
of himself, the tools of his
hands, and the warehouses of
knowledge for his brain, whether
they be parchment manuscripts,
printed book, or electronorecordographs.
For the rest he is born
today, as in ancient Greece, with
a blank brain, and struggles
through to his grave, with a
more or less beclouded understanding,
and with distinct limitations
to what we used to call
his "think tank."</p>
<hr />
<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">This</span> particular reflection of
mine proved unpopular with
them, for it stabbed their vanity,
and neither my prestige nor the
novelty of the idea was sufficient
salve. These Hans for centuries
had believed and taught their
children that they were a super-race,
a race of destiny. Destined
to Whom, for What, was not so
clear to them; but nevertheless
destined to "elevate" humanity
to some sort of super-plane. Yet
through these same centuries
they had been busily engaged in
the extermination of "weaklings,"
whom, by their very persecutions,
they had turned into
"super men," now rising in
mighty wrath to destroy them;
and in reducing themselves to
the depths of softening vice and
flabby moral fiber. Is it strange
that they looked at me in amazed
wonder when I laughed outright
in the midst of some of their
most serious speculations?</p>
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