I am the reincarnation, began Hawthorne, of an Egyptian priest, whose
name if I were to mention it you would recognize as being as familiar
to you as your own. Having lived several lives I reached this one with
more than the usual sense of ennui. I tried many things: shopkeeping,
the cavalry, gold prospecting, writing for the magazines. None of
these helped, nor could love. For in ancient Egypt I had loved a
handsome and sporting priestess named Isis. After her all other women
were anticlimactic. As Fate would have it, she whom I sincerely and
respectfully loved, never seemed to get reincarnated during the same
era as myself. You know how women are about keeping appointments.
One evening toward the end of 1970 I was strolling through Central
Park long after the hour when most men thought it safe. To a man such
as myself, a man who fought the Red Indians without a qualm, the worst
terrors of Central Park after dark held no dread. Still I was taken
aback when seven youths fell upon me with baseball bats. You have
perhaps found, as I did that night, that even a superb physical being
is no match for seven men with little respect for the correct way of
life, and large clubs. Though I maimed and injured a good number of
them I was nevertheless knocked unconscious.
When I awoke and took a step I bounced twelve feet into the air.
Some reappraisal of my surroundings seemed in order. Central Park had
surely changed considerably. It was now a great red desert. I took
another step and bounced again. Then the awesome truth came home to me.
I was no longer in Central Park. I was on Mars.
I am aware that you scientifically inclined chaps talk of space travel
as being a remote possibility. You will realize, of course, that in
1970 no such thing was even at the experimental stage. Therefore I knew
I had been transported to the Red Planet by some mystical means there
is no way to explain.
I was still engrossed in seeing how high I could bounce when three
large green men rode toward me mounted on gigantic hairy horses that
boasted two extra sets of legs. The green men themselves were twenty
feet high and turned out to have, now that I noticed, an extra set of
green arms. This is not the sort of sight someone who has only recently
been battered with wooden clubs wishes to see on awakening.
But appearances are not always the best indication of the man and I
soon found my green welcomers to be quite decent. By means of a method
too complex to burden you with we soon taught each other our respective
languages.
The green men were named Yarl Zun, Zin Yerg and Yex Zurb. I explained
to them that I had apparently transmigrated to Mars by some strange
means.
"You picked a bad time to transmigrate," said Yarl Zun, shaking his
great green head.
"Why is that?"
The three of them proceeded to explain to me as we shared a breakfast
of kex, which is rather like our cold oatmeal, that Mars was in
the midst of a great depression. It seems that the head of their
government, the Daktor, who is roughly equivalent to two of our
presidents, had been wooed into the camp of the more radical element
in the Martian society and instead of listening to his Yax-Daktros, or
well-wishers as we would call them, and building up comforting supplies
of zugbeams, or what we would call deathrays, he had foolishly poured
the taxpayers' money into Yerb, which is something like our social
security. The result was rampant radicalism and poverty with little or
no respect for Goomba, roughly equal to our patriotism.
The upshot of this enlightening political indoctrination was that I
would have a tough time making my way on Mars at the moment. Zin Yerg
and the rest helpfully offered to bat me over the head with Zoobs,
roughly equivalent to our baseball bats, in the hope that I might then
transmigrate back to Earth. I, though, having been an optimist in nine
out of ten of my previous reincarnations, decided to brazen it out.
Stick I would and albeit I was down and out at the moment I felt I
would not be for long.
Such was indeed the case, as I will next relate.