Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/136



FOREWORD (OR SMOKE SCREEN):

O those who cannot accept my work as anything but misguided imagination, or who think the whole "Shaver Mystery" is a rather stupid hoax, the following words are to be considered exactly that: more stupid contributions from a man who is purposely hoaxing stupid readers into believing silly things that could not possibly be true. To "Police Psychiatrist," I fearfully apologize for suggesting they might be wrong, and that a George Murmans might exist outside a man's head as well as inside. I apologize to position power and solemnly swear that nothing said here is to be considered as anything but a rather stupid hoax which some readers enjoy being fooled into accepting. To "Public Official" I also apologize for suggesting he knows more than he might publicly admit of such things, and solemnly swear that this is all untrue and he does not have to worry about it at all.

To you gentlemen who are intrigued by this "Hoax," I can only say you will find very interesting data here, and that such people as professors of colleges, psychiatrists and policemen, mayors and insurance investigators have to be allowed their foibles, and we can disregard the necessity for considering them sane quite as much as they can disregard (and do) the need for considering us the same.

IRST, clarifying is in order. Letters in large numbers have accused me of implying this and meaning that—which I didn't. The confusion arises of course from the fictional treatment my message has had to be given.

Some readers have drawn quite a variety of erroneous ideas. Some of them are right. The truth is wild enough to suit anybody. But I wish to get the picture clearer for them.

One of the commonest errors is in the use the word "dero" has been receiving. Readers infer in their letters that all cavern people are "deros," that "dero" and "cavern dwellers" are synonymous. That is wrong! We wouldn't be alive if a large part of the people down there weren't fighting like hell for us and for themselves against the true "dero."

A dero is a cavern wight whose ancestors had the habit of bringing in the sunlight over the penetrays. Their evil nature is due to a constant "hearing" (telepathic) of sun vibrants because those same penetrays they use to bring in the sunlight and warmth were designed to handle thought-waves, to detect and augment waves of those frequencies heard by the brain. Their brains got dis (infections) on the lipoid films of the brain cells, where thought is generated. This went on for centuries, for an age, and the hereditary result was a dero, the ancient "Devil" of mythology, and his people—humans whose minds handle only disintegrant pattern thought. ALL CAVERN PEOPLE ARE NOT DEROS, thank God.

The good ones do a lot of work for us, in subtle unseen ways, avoid tamper accidents by helping out a driver, get some doctor info on how to stop a plague, and are the source of some of our modern inventions by handing over suggestions to an inventor, unbeknownst, because they saw a similar device in the wreckage of the caves.

Even all the bad ones are not deros. A dero is an automaton of evil, and not an ordinary crook. He isn't that smart.

I would like, too, to state clearly and simply and generally the main themes I am trying to get across in my fictional work. Rap has given me the green on such an article, and here it is.

I am trying to say that our civilization is a sham! That our education is a very shoddy substitute for what it could be if the truth of our past were known.

I am trying to say that if we knew who and what some of our present-day bosses really were, we would be vastly worried at their apparent careless and oppressive attitude toward ourselves, 136