Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
The Legion Of Lazarus
By Edmond Hamilton
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Imagination April 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: Being expelled from an air lock into deep space was the legal
method of execution. But it was also the only way a man could qualify
for--The Legion Of Lazarus]
_It isn't the dying itself. It's what comes before. The waiting, alone
in a room without windows, trying to think. The opening of the door, the
voices of the men who are going with you but not all the way, the walk
down the corridor to the airlock room, the faces of the men, closed and
impersonal. They do not enjoy this. Neither do they shrink from it. It's
their job._
_This is the room. It is small and it has a window. Outside there is no
friendly sky, no clouds. There is space, and there is the huge red
circle of Mars filling the sky, looking down like an enormous eye upon
this tiny moon. But you do not look up. You look out._
_There are men out there. They are quite naked. They sleep upon the
barren plain, drowsing in a timeless ocean. Their bodies are white as
ivory and their hair is loose across their faces. Some of them seem to
smile. They lie, and sleep, and the great red eye looks at them forever
as they are borne around it._
"_It isn't so bad," says one of the men who are with you inside this
ultimate room. "Fifty years from now, the rest of us will all be old, or
dead._"
_It is small comfort._
_The one garment you have worn is taken from you and the lock door
opens, and the fear that cannot possibly become greater does become
greater, and then suddenly that terrible crescendo is past. There is no
longer any hope, and you learn that without hope there is little to be
afraid of. You want now only to get it over with._
_You step forward into the lock._
_The door behind you shuts. You sense that the one before you is
opening, but there is not much time. The burst of air carries you
forward. Perhaps you scream, but you are now beyond sound, beyond sight,
beyond everything. You do not even feel that it is cold._
CHAPTER I
There is a time for sleep, and a time for waking. But Hyrst had slept
heavily, and the waking was hard. He had slept long, and the waking was
slow. _Fifty years_, said the dim voice of remembrance. But another part
of his mind said, No, it is only tomorrow morning.
Another part of his mind. That was strange. There seemed to be more
parts to his mind than he remembered having had before, but they were
all confused and hidden behind a veil of mist. Perhaps they were not
really there at all. Perhaps--
_Fifty years. I have been dead_, he thought, _and now I live again.
Half a century. Strange._
Hyrst lay on a narrow bed, in a place of subdued light and
antiseptic-smelling air. There was no one else in the room. There was no
sound.
_Fifty years_, he thought. _What is it like now, the house where I lived
once, the country, the planet? Where are my children, where are my
friends, my enemies, the people I loved, the people I hated?_
_Where is Elena? Where is my wife?_
A whisper out of nowhere, sad, remote. _Your wife is dead and your
children are old. Forget them. Forget the friends and the enemies._
_But I can't forget!_ cried Hyrst silently in the spaces of his own
mind. It was only yesterday--
_Fifty years_, said the whisper. _And you must forget._
_MacDonald_, said Hyrst suddenly. _I didn't kill him. I was innocent. I
can't forget that._
_Careful_, said the whisper. _Watch out._
_I didn't kill MacDonald. Somebody did. Somebody let me pay for it. Who?
Was it Landers? Was it Saul? We four were together out there on Titan,
when he died._
_Careful_, Hyrst. _They're coming. Listen to me. You think this is your
own mind speaking, question-and-answer. But it isn't._
Hyrst sprang upright on the narrow bed, his heart pounding, the sweat
running cold on his skin. _Who are you? Where are you? How--_
_They're here_, said the whisper calmly. _Be quiet._
Two men came into the ward. "I am Dr. Merridew," said the one in the
white coverall, smiling at Hyrst with a brisk professional smile. "This
is Warden Meister. We didn't mean to startle you. There are a few
questions, before we release you--"
_Merridew_, said the whisper in Hyrst's mind, _is a psychiatrist. Let
me handle this._
Hyrst sat still, his hands lax between his knees, his eyes wide and
fixed in astonishment. He heard the psychiatrist's questions, and he
heard the answers he gave to them, but he was merely an instrument, with
no conscious volition, it was the whisperer in his mind who was
answering. Then the warden shuffled some papers he held in his hand and
asked questions of his own.
"You underwent the Humane Penalty without admitting your guilt. For the
record, now that the penalty has been paid, do you wish to change your
final statements?"
The voice in Hyrst's mind, the secret voice, said swiftly to him. _Don't
argue with them, don't get angry, or they'll keep you on and on here._
"But--" thought Hyrst.
_I know you're innocent, but they'll never believe it. They'll keep you
on for further psychiatric tests. They might get near the truth,
Hyrst--the truth about us._
Suddenly Hyrst began to understand, not all and not clearly, something
of what had happened to him. The obscuring mists began to lift from the
borders of his mind.
"What is the truth," he asked in that inner quiet, "about us?"
_You've spent fifty years in the Valley of the Shadow. You're changed,
Hyrst. You're not quite human any more. No one is, who goes through the
freeze. But they don't know that._
"Then you too--"
_Yes. And I too changed. And that is why our minds can speak, even
though I am on Mars and you are on its moon. But they must not know
that. So don't argue, don't show emotion!_
The warden was waiting. Hyrst said aloud to him, slowly. "I have no
statement to make."
The warden did not seem surprised. He went on, "According to your papers
here you also denied knowing the location of the Titanite for which
MacDonald was presumably murdered. Do you still deny that?"
Hyrst was honestly surprised. "But surely, by now--"
The warden shrugged. "According to this data, it never came to light."
"I never knew," said Hyrst, "where it was."
"Well," said the warden, "I've asked the question and that's as far as
my responsibility goes. But there's a visitor who has permission to see
you."
* * * * *
He and the doctor went out. Hyrst watched them go. He thought, So I'm
not quite human. Not quite human any more. Does that make me more, or
less, than a man?
_Both_, said the secret voice. _Their minds are still closed to you.
Only our minds--we who have changed too--are open._
"Who are you?" asked Hyrst.
_My name is Shearing. Now listen. When you are released, they'll bring
you down here to Mars. I'll be waiting for you. I'll help you._
"Why? What do you care about me, or a murder fifty years old?"
_I'll tell you why later_, said the whisper of Shearing. _But you must
follow my guidance. There's danger for you, Hyrst, from the moment
you're released! There are those who have been waiting for you._
"Danger? But--"
The door opened, and Hyrst's visitor came in. He was a man something
over sixty but the deep lines in his face made him look older. His face
was gray and drawn and twitching, but it became perfectly rigid and
white when he came to the foot of the bed and looked at Hyrst. There was
rage in his eyes, a rage so old and weary that it brought tears to them.
"You should have stayed dead," he said to Hyrst. "Why couldn't they let
you stay dead?"
Hyrst was shocked and startled. "Who are you? And why--"
The other man was not even listening. His eyelids had closed, and when
they opened again they looked on naked agony. "It isn't right," he said.
"A murderer should die, and stay dead. Not come back."
"I didn't murder MacDonald," Hyrst said, with the beginnings of anger.
"And I don't know why you--"
He stopped. The white, aging face, the tear-filled, furious eyes, he did
not quite know what there was about them but it was there, like an old
remembered face peeping up through a blur of water for a moment, and
then withdrawing again.
After a moment, Hyrst said hoarsely, "What's your name?"
"You wouldn't know it," said the other. "I changed it, long ago."
Hyrst felt a cold, and it seemed that he could not breathe. He said,
"But you were only eleven--"
He could not go on. There was a terrible silence between them. He must
break it, he could not let it go on. He must speak. But all he could say
was to whisper, "I'm not a murderer. You must believe it. I'm going to
prove it--"
"You murdered MacDonald. And you murdered my mother. I watched her age
and die, spending every penny, spending every drop of her blood and
ours, to get you back again. I pretended for fifty years that I too
believed you were innocent, when all the time I knew."
Hyrst said, "I'm innocent." He tried to say a name, too, but he could
not speak the word.
"No. You're lying, as you lied then. We found out. Mother hired
detectives, experts. Over and over, for decades--and always they found
the same thing. Landers and Saul could not possibly have killed
MacDonald, and you were the only other human being there. Proof? I can
show you barrels of it. And all of it proof that my father was a
murderer."
He leaned a little toward Hyrst, and the tears ran down his lined,
careworn face. He said, "All right, you've come back. Alive, still
young. But I'm warning you. If you try again to get that Titanite, if
you shame us all again after all this time, if you even come near us,
I'll kill you."
He went out. Hyrst sat, looking after him, and he thought that no man
before him had ever felt what tore him now.
Inside his mind came Shearing's whisper, with a totally unexpected note
of compassion. _But some of us have, Hyrst. Welcome to the brotherhood.
Welcome to the Legion of Lazarus._