Gladiator by Philip Wylie (top reads txt) 📖

raise up the pyramids, walls, and temples; they could do it rapidly and easily. A great enigma was thus resolved. He set out immediately to locate Professor Hardin and with difficulty arranged an interview with him.

Preparations for the expedition were being carried on in an ordinary New York business office. A secretary announced Hugo and he was conducted before the professor. Daniel Hardin was no dusty pedagogue. His knowledge was profound and academic, his books were authoritative, but in himself he belonged to the type of man certain to succeed, whatever his choice of occupation. Much of his life had been spent in field work—arduous toil in bizarre lands where life depended sometimes on tact and sometimes on military strategy. He appraised Hugo shrewdly before he spoke. “What can I do for you, Mr. Danner?”

Hugo came directly to the point. “I should like to join your Yucatan expedition.”

Professor Hardin smiled. “I’m sorry. We’re full up.”

“I’d be glad to go in any capacity—”

“Have you any special qualifications? Knowledge of the language? Of archaeology?”

“No.”

The professor picked up a tray of letters. “These letters—more than three hundred—are all from young men—and women—who would like to join my expedition.”

“I think I should be useful,” Hugo said, and then he played his trump, “and I should be willing to contribute for the favor of being included, a sum of fifty thousand dollars.”

Professor Hardin whistled. Then his eyes narrowed. “What’s your object, young man? Treasure?”

“No. A life—let us say—with ample means at my disposal and no definite purpose.”

“Boredom, then.” He smiled. “A lot of these other young men are independently wealthy, and bored. I must say, I feel sorry for your generation. But—no—I can’t accept. We are already adequately financed.”

Hugo smiled in response. “Then—perhaps—I could organize my own party and camp near you.”

“That would hamper me.”

“Then—a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Good Lord. You are determined.”

“I have decided. I am familiar with the jungle. I am an athlete. I speak a little Spanish—enough to boss a labor gang. I propose to assist you in that way, as well as financially. I will make any contract with you that you desire—and attach no strings whatever to my money.”

Professor Hardin pondered for a long time. His eyes twinkled when he replied. “You won’t believe it, but I don’t give a damn for your money. Not that it wouldn’t assist us. But—the fact is—I could use a man like you. Anybody could. I’ll take you—and you can keep your money.”

“There will be a check in the mail to-morrow,” Hugo answered.

The professor stood. “We’re hoping to get away in three weeks. You’ll leave your address with my secretary and I’ll send a list of the things you’ll want for your kit.” He he’d out his hand and Hugo shook it. When he was gone, the professor looked over the roof-tops and swore gleefully to himself.

Hugo discovered, after the ship sailed, that every one called Professor Hardin “Dan” and they used Hugo’s first name from the second day out. Dan Hardin was too busy to be very friendly with any of the members of his party during the voyage, but they themselves fraternized continually. There were deck games and card games; there were long and erudite arguments about the people whom they were going to study. What was the Mayan time cycle and did it correspond to the Egyptian Sothic cycle or the Greek Metonic cycle. Where did the Mayans gets their jade? Did they come from Asia over Bering Strait or were they a colony of Atlantis? When they knew so much about engineering, why did they not use the keystone arch and the wheel? Why was their civilization decadent, finished when the conquistadores discovered it? How old were they—four thousand years or twelve thousand years? There were innumerable other debates to which Hugo listened like a man new-born.

The cold Atlantic winds were transformed overnight to the balm of the Gulf stream. Presently they passed the West Indies, which lay on the water like marine jewels. Ages turned back through the days of buccaneering to the more remote times. In the port of Xantl a rickety wharf, a single white man, a zinc bar, and a storehouse filled with chicle blocks marked off the realm of the twentieth century. The ship anchored. During the next year it would make two voyages back to the homeland for supplies. But the explorers would not emerge from the jungle in that time.

An antiquated, wood-burning locomotive, which rocked along over treacherous rails, carried them inland. The scientists became silent and pensive. In another car the Maya Indians who were to do the manual labor chattered incessantly in their explosive tongue. At the last sun-baked stop they disembarked, slept through an insect-droning night, and entered the jungle. For three weeks they hacked and hewed their way forward; the vegetation closed behind them, cutting off the universe as completely as the submerging waves of the sea.

It was hot, difficult work, to which Hugo lent himself with an energy that astounded even Hardin, who had judged him valuable.

One day, when the high mountains loomed into view, Hugo caught his first glimpse of Uctotol, the Sacred City. A creeper on the hillside fell before his machete, then another—a hole in the green wall—and there it stood, shining white, huge, desolate, still as the grave. His arm hung in mid-air. Over him passed the mystic feeling of familiarity, that fugitive sense of recognition which springs so readily into belief in immortality. It seemed to him during that staggering instant that he knew every contour of those great structures, that he had run in the streets, lived, loved, died there—that he could almost remember the names and faces of its inhabitants, dead for thousands of years—that he could nearly recall the language and the music—that destiny itself had arranged a home-coming. The vision died. He gave a great shout. The others rushed to his side and found him trembling and pointing.

Tons of verdure were cut down and pushed aside. A hacienda was constructed and a camp for the laborers. Then the shovels and picks were broken from their boxes; the scientists arranged their paraphernalia, and the work began, interrupted frequently by the exultant shouts that marked a new finding. No one regretted Hugo. He made his men work magically; his example was a challenge. He could do more than any of them, and his hair and eyes, black as their own, his granite face, stern and indefatigable, gave him a natural dominion over them.

All this—the dark, starlit, plushy nights with their hypnotic silences, the vivid days of toil, the patient and single-minded men—was respite to Hugo. It salved his tribulations. It brought him to a gradual assurance that any work with such men would be sufficient for him. He was going backward into the world instead of forward; that did not matter. He stood on the frontier of human knowledge. He was a factor in its preparation, and if what they carried back with them was no more than history, if it cast no new light on existing wants and perplexities, it still served a splendid purpose. Months rolled by unheeded; Hugo gathered friends among these men—and the greatest of those friends was Daniel Hardin.

In their isolation and occasional loneliness each of them little by little stripped his past for the others. Only Hugo remained silent about himself until his reticence was conspicuous. He might never have spoken, except for the accident.

It was, in itself, a little thing, which happened apart from the main field of activity. Hugo and two Indians were at work on a small temple at the city’s fringe. Hardin came down to see. The great stone in the roof, crumbled by ages, slipped and teetered. Underneath the professor stood, unheeding. But Hugo saw. He caught the mass of rock in his arms and lifted it to one side. And Dan Hardin turned in time to perceive the full miracle.

When Hugo lifted his head, he knew. Yet, to his astonishment, there was no look of fear in Hardin’s blue eyes. Instead they were moderately surprised, vastly interested. He did not speak for some time. Then he said: “Thanks, Danner. I believe you saved my life. Should you mind picking up that rock again?”

Hugo dismissed the Indians with a few words. He glanced again at Hardin to make sure of his composure. Then he lifted the square stone back to its position.

Hardin was thinking aloud. “That stone must weigh four tons. No man alive can handle four tons like that. How do you do it, Hugo?”

Hot, streaming sun. Tumbled debris. This profound question asked again, asked mildly for the first time. “My father—was a biologist. A great biologist. I was—an experiment.”

“Good Lord! And—and that’s why you’ve kept your past dark, Hugo?”

“Of course. Not many people—”

“Survive the shock? You forget that we—here—are all scientists. I won’t press you.”

“Perhaps,” Hugo heard himself saying, “I’d like to tell you.”

“In that case—in my room—to-night. I should like to hear.” That night, after a day of indecision, Hugo sat in a dim light and poured out the story of his life. Hardin never interrupted, never commented, until the end. Then he said softly: “You poor devil. Oh, you poor bastard.” And Hugo saw that he was weeping. He tried to laugh.

“It isn’t as bad as that—Dan.”

“Son”—his voice choked with emotion—“this thing—this is my lifework. This is why you came to my office last winter. This is—the most important thing on earth. What a story! What a man you are!”

“On the contrary—”

“Don’t be modest. I know. I feel. I understand.”

Hugo’s head shook sadly. “Perhaps not. You can see—I have tried everything. In itself, it is great. I can see that. It is, objectively, the most important thing on earth. But the other way—What can I do? Tell me that. You cannot tell me. I can destroy. As nothing that ever came before or will come again, I can destroy. But destruction—as I believe, as you believe—is at best only a step toward re-creation. And what can I make afterwards? Think. Think, man! Rack your brains! What?” His hands clenched and unclenched. “I can build great halls and palaces. Futile! I can make bridges. I can rip open mountains and take out the gold. I am that strong. It is as if my metabolism was atomic instead of molecular. But what of it? Stretch your imagination to its uttermost limits—and what can I do that is more than an affair of petty profit to myself? Man has already extended his senses and his muscles to their tenth power. He can already command engines to do what I can do. It is not necessary that he become an engine himself. It is preposterous that he should think of it—even to transcend his engines. I defy you, I defy you with all my strength, to think of what I can do to justify myself!”

The words had been wrung from Hugo. Perspiration trickled down his face. He bit his lips to check himself. The older man was grave. “All your emotions, your reflections, your yearnings and passions, come—to that. And yet—”

“Look at me in another light,” Hugo went on. “I’ve tried to give you an inkling of it. You were the first who saw what I could do—glimpsed a fraction of it, rather—and into whose face did not come fear, loathing, even hate. Try to live with a sense of that. I can remember almost back to the cradle that same thing. First it was envy and jealousy. Then, as I grew stronger, it was fear, alarm, and the thing that comes from fear—hatred. That is another and perhaps a greater obstacle. If I found something to do, the whole universe would be against me. These little