"... and thou shalt be immortal!" Such was the
curse of that 13th Century sorcerer. Now Carlyle
roamed the uncharted star-seas, seeking Death
as he sought the richly-laden derelicts in that
sargossa of long-vanished space-galleons.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
An unpleasant shudder went through Thaddeus Carlyle as the great iron
door thundered behind him. Reading Gaol's raw, damp atmosphere seemed
to settle into his bones. Hobbling on rheumatic legs, the aged turnkey
preceded him down the vaulted stone corridor.
"'Tis the first time my key has disturbed Friar Bacon's lock these six
months," his grumbling voice came to Carlyle's ears. "Plagued few they
are that visit the roguish priest. Not even the canon comes now, to
exhort him to renounce his black magic."
Thaddeus Carlyle's dark eyes flamed with quick interest. "Then he
practices still these works of the devil?" he queried softly.
The turnkey stopped, his narrowed eyes mirroring fearful thoughts. With
his crooked forefinger he tapped the young nobleman's gold-cloth tabard.
"Only last month he asked for brimstone, charcoal and niter. We gave
him the stuff, seeing no harm. A week ago, as I am passing his cell,
there was a great flash and roar. The devil's powders had exploded as
steam bursts a tight-lidded vessel! He carries still the marks of a
burn."
"No!" Carlyle's smooth features were blank. "Fire--from such stuff as
that?"
"That's not all, my Lord. Friar Bacon tells me that if we would give
him enough of the stuff and a long tube, he could throw an iron ball
across the Thames!"
Turning away with a crafty nod and a meaningful blink, the turnkey led
on to the mean little cell in which Roger Bacon had now spent nine
years. The visitor was openly affected by the jailer's incredulous
story. He had heard strange and terrible things of the Gray Friar. The
church, in incarcerating him, had accused him of consorting with the
devil. Some whispered that he had learned the secret of immortality.
That was the rumor which had brought Thaddeus Carlyle, the second Lord
Monfort, into the gloomy confines of Reading Gaol.
The lock scraped shrilly as the jailer turned it. Throwing the heavy
door open, he grinned: "Lucky for him you came, my Lord! In another
month this lock should have been rusted past turning. Then Friar Bacon
would have been forever without hope!"
"Have I, indeed, such hope now?" a soft and gloomy voice inquired.
The turnkey merely winked at the nobleman and hobbled off.
Carlyle was suddenly seized by panic. Now that he was so close to the
notorious philosopher, fear smote him and he was on the point of
turning back. Yet, ridden by an even greater fear, he stiffened his
purpose and advanced. Closing the door, he stared at the white-bearded
man seated before a great calfskin-bound book on a ponderous table.
"What hast thou with me, young man?" demanded Roger Bacon, peering
shrewdly from under ragged brows.
"Only the admiration of an ignorant man for a very learned one," said
Thaddeus Carlyle simply.
Bacon's eyes misted. Precious years of his waning life had he spent in
prison because there was no man to say such a thing before.
"You--you do not believe what they say of me, that I consort with
Satan?" he queried. "That my science and my secrets are Lucifer's?"
"Well--as to that," said Carlyle, his confidence returning, "I am again
the ignorant one. Where you get your knowledge I neither know nor care.
I only know that your learning is great ... and that that learning can
help me!"
* * * * *
The Gray Friar wagged his head wonderingly. His eyes went over
Thaddeus. He saw a strapping young man over six feet in height, with a
muscular development such as came only from constant participation in
the strenuous contests popular among the nobility. His skin was brown
as leather, burned, Bacon reckoned, by hot Oriental suns during the
last Crusade. He saw a man whose rich clothing spoke of a fat purse.
And he was asked to help him--he, who could not help himself!
"Who are you, young man?" he asked, at last.
"Thaddeus Carlyle, the second Lord Monfort," was the reply.
"A noble--!" Bacon murmured. "But you--you jest with me!"
"Not so!" Carlyle threw a leg across the corner of the table and peered
earnestly into the monk's face. "You are old and wise, Friar Bacon.
Perhaps you do not know the fear of death. I do! Always it is with me,
haunting my pleasures, disturbing my sleep--Fear of growing old and
toothless, of losing my strength--of dying as helpless as the day I was
born!"
"But how can I help you?" frowned Bacon. "All men must face that fear."
"But not as I know it! I, who have so much to make life worth the
living." Thaddeus rubbed his sweaty palms on his velvet-clad thighs,
his brown young face set. Abruptly, he blurted: "They say you possess
the secret of immortality, Friar. Is that true?"
"They say many things of me," muttered the philosopher.
Carlyle leaned toward him. "That doesn't answer my question," he
snapped. "I have heard that you added twenty years to your own life by
magic!"
Bacon stared strangely at him. "You believe that I could save you from
death?"
"Implicitly!" Carlyle replied. "If you wished to!"
* * * * *
For the first time, Bacon stirred from the chair. His eyes flashed
briefly to a brass-bound chest, near his pallet of straw. Then he
stopped with his back to the wall, staring at the young nobleman.
"But even if I could do this--!" he frowned. "You do not know what
immortality means. Perhaps it would be worse than death!"
"If so, I could easily put an end to my immortality," retorted the
other.
Roger Bacon did not speak for long seconds. Then: "They speak true of
me. I do possess this secret. But to release it would mean one more
atom of misery thrown upon the world."
With his first words, Thaddeus had hunched forward, teeth shining
behind drawn lips, eyes glittering. "Has the world been good to you?"
he shot at him. "Do you owe it any consideration?"
"None," the Gray Friar muttered. "Tell me; what month is this?"
"November, Friar," the younger man replied frowningly.
"November!"
In Bacon's mournful syllables lay all the bitter coldness of the winter
itself. "November, Anno Domini twelve hundred and eighty-seven. Nine
years since I was thrown into this place of stone and despair. The
world has little loved me, my friend, and I hold no love for the world.
_Inopem me copia fecit_--abundance made me poor. Abundance of foresight
and inventiveness that might have made the world over."
The monk had paced to the window through which he got his only small
view of the world. Now he swung back. "Yes, my Lord Monfort. I will do
what you ask!"
Carlyle lurched forward to grasp his arm. "Friar," he breathed. "I only
dared hope. But if you do what you promise, I will see that you are
freed within the year!"
"_Dominus vobiscum!_" Bacon said, tiny lights shining in his eyes. He
crossed to the massive chest and opened it. Digging around for a moment
among hundreds of curious objects the like of which Carlyle had never
seen, he at last returned to the table with two shining articles in his
hand.
"I told you this would bring a certain amount of grief to the world,"
he said, when Carlyle was seated beside him on a stool. "I say it
again. For each lifetime you add to your own, another must die. And
always it shall be a woman ... a woman whose love you have won."
Carlyle stared at the philosopher with a mixture of hope and horror in
his face.
"You must understand," said the Gray Friar, "that the life-spirit, as
I call it, is not so deeply rooted in a woman as a man. You hear often
of a woman dying of a broken heart, yet never of a man. This is because
the woman simply wills her spirit to leave her. It will be your task
to cause a woman to give you her life-spirit because she loves you
sufficiently."
"Yes, Friar," Thaddeus whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Bacon placed in his palm a tiny crystal heart dependent from a silver
chain. It was crudely carved, yet alight with unholy brilliance.
"You will give this to the woman to wear. You yourself will wear this
plain silver band I now give you. The process may take days or weeks.
When you are with her, cause your own ring to be always touching the
crystal heart. Gradually she will grow weaker, while your own strength
increases boundlessly. When she dies ... you will have earned perhaps
seventy years more of life."
"Must it be this way?" Thaddeus groaned, staring horrified at the
baubles.
"It is the only way," Bacon murmured. "If at any time you decide that
you prefer death to immortality, destroy either the heart or the ring
and you will not long survive it. Old age will come swiftly."
Thaddeus got to his feet, his stomach a lump of ice in him. He suddenly
felt a necessity to get into the open air, where he could think.
Hastily he muttered:
"I will do as you say, Friar Bacon. Thank you for what you have done. I
will see that you are freed as soon as possible."
Wise old Roger Bacon knew the struggle that was going on within
the young lord, and he made no attempt to prolong the visit. "_Pax
vobiscum_," he nodded soberly. "The Lord guide you in this."
"Th-thank you, Friar!" Thaddeus faltered, and hastily fumbled at the
door and left.
* * * * *
For a month the crystal heart and the ring lay untouched in a small
chest in his treasure-room. Then his old fears and nightmares drove him
to take them out. He had become accustomed to the grisly demands and
they no longer loomed so blackly in his mind. Pictures of himself as an
ancient ruin with the skin hanging loosely from all his bones helped in
this.
For a long time Thaddeus had known that the young daughter of Lord
Cartwright secretly loved him. Tremblingly, one night, he bestowed on
her the gift of death ... in the form of a tiny crystal pendant. Within
a month the girl was dead.
And Thaddeus Carlyle ... in his body surged and leaped such strength
as he had never dreamed of. He felt he must live forever. His friends
began to change, growing wrinkled and less virile, but never he. Soon
he saw he must change his abode, lest men suspect him.
It was ninety years before the need came upon him to renew the
life-spirit in his body. He found a dark-eyed girl in Seville on one
of his journeys whom he nominated for his second victim. It was easier,
this time. Before she was laid away that old feeling of boundless youth
was his again.
And so Thaddeus Carlyle saw kings change and nations dissolve, saw a
German named Gutenberg print the first book and an Englishman named
William Shakespeare write the most perfect prose ever devised. Saw wars
and tragedy and comedy, and grew sick with the seeing. Gladly would he
have given it up, had he the courage.
Down the corridors of time he passed, seeking death as many seek
wealth. In peace and war, he was ever in the most dangerous
occupations. When aviation came in, he was one of the first and most
reckless pilots. Then space travel merged from dreams into reality....
Carlyle became a test pilot, taking on million-mile journeys any craft
with a rocket tube and a steering device. To his disgust, he always
came back.
He had not the courage to shatter the crystal heart and grow old
swiftly. He who had condemned so many beautiful women to death was now
chained to something worse--eternal life.