Now came the ticklish part. The Prince glanced at it and thought it was all just some crazy scribble, and to my absolute horror he started to toss it in the fire. I had to override him and pull him back to his desk, right in front of the officials who had brought him the scroll. He stopped short, struggled against my override for a second, almost fell down.
God knows what they thought was happening to him— another “stroke,” maybe. Ram didn’t understand it either. But he waved them quickly out of his office, perhaps because he was embarrassed at having them see him staggering around like that and was afraid it might happen again in another minute.
The instant they were out of the room, I put him in trance and read your letter. And re-read it and re-read it, hungrily. It was so wonderful hearing from you at last that I came close to breaking into tears. (With Prince Ram’s eyes!) Then when I knew your letter practically by heart I had the Prince roll it up and hide it away in the alcove where I keep letters waiting to go to you, and I awakened him, after trying to wipe from his memory all recollection of what had been taking place.
If I’m lucky, he won’t recall a thing about the strange scroll with the peculiar writing on it. More likely he’ll be left with some vague, misty impression of having been looking at a document that made no sense to him. My hope is that the Prince will think that he dreamed the whole thing—the way someone can dream of picking up a book in Greek or Arabic and is able, in his sleep, at least, to read it with complete understanding, even though he can’t remember a word of it afterward.
At any rate, you sound happy and healthy and generally in great shape, and I’m glad for you. I’m relieved to hear that the weather isn’t as awful as I feared. Cold, yes, but that’s only to be expected in Ice Age Europe, and at least it hasn’t been snowing much. The description you give of the house where you’re living, made entirely of mammoth bones, is fascinating. The foundation of mammoth skulls, the wall of mammoth jawbones stacked crosswise like that, the huge thighbones forming an entranceway—I guess that’s what passes for a grand mansion out Naz Glesim way. Naturally the Athilantan Provincial Governor would have the best accommodations, such as they are.
Very interesting about that ugly, shaggy-looking character with the receding chin and the sloping forehead who was seen skulking around outside the village. Do you think there’s really any likelihood that he’s a Neanderthal? My understanding of these things is that the Neanderthals have been extinct for a long time now, fifteen or twenty thousand years, at least. But I guess it’s possible that a few of them still linger on in the back woods, drifting around like sad displaced outcasts.
(We keep finding out, don’t we, how little we actually knew about prehistoric man in the days before time exploration began! Of course all we had to go by was a little scattering of skeletons that had survived by flukes here and there, and an assortment of stone tools and weapons. And out of that we conjured up some kind of notion of hundreds of thousands of years of human life. It was a pretty good guess, I suppose, considering the data we had. But now that we’re actually back here seeing it for ourselves, how different it all looks. Neanderthal Man isn’t completely gone after all, if your idea is correct. And the Paleolithic Homo sapiens people have a much more elaborate culture than we ever imagined. And then, of course, there are these spectacular Athilantan folk, whose existence we never even remotely suspected, dominating everything, operating a modern technological civilization all the way back here. With electricity, no less.)
Now that I know you are in fact getting my letters, and are able to write back, I’ll probably write more often. And I hope you will too. It was magical the way hearing from you dissolved the terrible sense of isolation I’ve been feeling, the miserable loneliness, the fidgety worrying about problems that didn’t really need to be worried about. I can hardly wait for the next one from you.
Of course it’s risky, isn’t it? Not only because we have to take control of our host’s body to write our letters, but because having all these bizarre scrolls in an unknown language traveling back and forth is eventually likely to make someone suspect sorcery, or espionage, or something else serious. There could be an investigation, I suppose. But it’s worth it, despite the risks, don’t you think? I’m absolutely convinced of that. Getting that letter from you this morning was one of the great moments of my life. To find out that you’re okay, to hear about what you’ve been doing these past weeks, to read those words, “I love you.” Now I want the next letter. And the next. And the one after that.
Got to stop now. More later.
And now it is later—a little before dawn.
Big trouble. The Prince knows I’m here.
Although I haven’t been monitoring his mind deeply for some time now, for reasons which you already know, I can’t help but be aware of the mental vibrations he gives off. When he’s excited, I feel it. When he’s angry. When he’s tired. When he’s tense. It’s a constant broadcast that I automatically pick up.
Today, a couple of hours after the episode of the arrival of your letter and my overriding of his attempt to throw it on the fire, I began detecting a new and troublesome mood in him. It was somewhere between anxiety and anger, and it was growing stronger moment by moment, a slow, steady buildup of tension that had to be leading to some sort of explosion.
That was pretty scary, feeling him ticking away like a bomb. I was tempted to reach in and try to defuse him before he went off. But I didn’t know where to reach or what to defuse. So I waited uneasily, wondering what was going to happen, while he went on working himself up.
Then at last he spoke—mentally, loud and clear—directly to me. It was like a bomb going off right in my face:
—Who are you, demon, and why are you within me?
Remember when I said that what we really are is demons, taking possession of the minds and bodies of our hosts? That’s the way Prince Ram sees it too.
I was totally stunned. I didn’t know what to say or do or think.
This was my chance, if ever there was one, to make direct contact with the Prince. As you know if my more recent letters have been getting through to you, I’ve been fighting that temptation for days. Successfully. This sudden shot in the dark from the Prince might easily have broken through my will to resist Observer Guilt Syndrome. But it didn’t. When the chips were down, I found myself maintaining total silence after all, just as our training tells us to do. I kept myself sealed off, allowing just minimal contact with Prince Ram’s mind.
But he kept after me.
—I know you are there. I feel you hiding in my mind.
I remained silent. What could I do? Tell him he was imagining things? Any contact I made would have the effect of revealing me, of confirming my presence.
—Who are you, demon? Why do you assail me?
He was growing more excited moment by moment. He trembled and shook. His heart was pounding and there was a throbbing like a hammer blow in his temples. He knelt and covered his face with his hands. Then he pressed his hands to the sides of his head with tremendous force, as if trying to drive me out by sheer pressure. He focused all his power of concentration on the task of expelling me from his mind.
Of course none of this had any effect on me. But the strain on the Prince was fearful. Every muscle of his body was writhing. His eyes bulged, his breath came in wild gasps, sweat broke from all his pores. Stress hormones flooded his system. There was such internal violence going on all over him that it was scary. Could he harm himself like this? I didn’t know.