Page:Melbourne and Mars.djvu/53

Rh and vegetables are grown in great abundance; the whole area is more like a park than a city, so says my new friend.

As we conversed on general topics, I perceived that my new friend regarded me with closer and closer attention, and after a while he appeared to recall something to mind, 'Charles Frankston,' says he 'Charles Frankston' again, as if speaking to himself.

'Did you not have a fall from your father's air boat when you were a little boy?'

'I did, and can remember the sensation to this day.'

'And you were unconscious for some time, several days?'

'Yes; about ten days,'

'You were attended by Doctor Hildreth?'

'I was; she is still the medical officer of our district.'

'Do you remember anything of that time, any peculiar experiences strange thoughts or dreams?'

'No; but I overheard a conversation in which it was said that I was an Earthborn and still living on that planet.'

'Will you allow me to find out if that is correct?'

'Yes, if you can do so. I am entirely unconscious of anything of the kind, though my mother says that I have put questions that indicate some experiences or thoughts that I cannot have had during my present existence.'

'Can you trust me to deprive you of your consciousness for a few moments? I will do you no harm.'

'Certainly I can. I feel that I may trust you with anything, even my present or eternal welfare.'

'Fix your eyes; look steadily into mine.'

I obeyed. In a few moments his eyes appeared to merge into one large brilliant one, and his white head and beard became a mighty mass blocking up half my sky,

Suddenly I lost sight of both eye and head, and attained a new and strange consciousness. I found myself a big, heavy, stiff, slow-moving man moving almost painfully along a street. All the sights around me appeared familiar to one half of me, and entirely unfamiliar to the other half. I was awake, but how strangely awake. What a roar of harsh sounds, grinding wheels, clanging bells, discordant and angry voices, and what faces—stern, hard, selfish, smileless, sickly, pale, wrinkled, careworn, ugly as with sinful passion, and yet these are human faces and being human they are capable of happiness, though not one appears happy. And the buildings how tall and dark, how massed together. I suppose this is what we used to have on our world in the ancient days, and that it is called a city. Clock tower, Town Hall, Collins Street, five o'clock; this information comes to the slow and heavy half of me. And yet this slow half is part of me, and its automatic movements carry me past tram and 'bus and through moving wheels in and