Alan Burt Akers - Dray Prescot 01 - Transit to Scorpio

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TRANSIT TO

SCORPIO

by Alan Burt Akers

A Note On The Tapes From

Africa

In preparing the strange and remarkable story of

Dray Prescot for publication I have become

overwhelmed at times with the power and presence

of his voice.

I have listened to the tapes Geoffrey Dean gave me,

over and over again, until I feel I know the man

Dray Prescot as much through his voice as by what

he reveals in what he says. At times deep and

reflective, at others animated and passionate with the

fire of his recollections, his voice carries absolute

conviction. I cannot vouch for the truth of his story;

but if ever a human voice invited belief, then this

one does.

How the tapes from Africa came into my possession

is soon told. Geoffrey Dean is a childhood friend, a

gray, prim, dedicated man of fixed habits, yet for the

sake of old friendship when he called me from

Washington I was glad to speak with him. He is a

government man with one of these shadowy

organizations related to the State Department and he

told me three years ago he had had occasion to go to

West Africa to supervise fieldwork in connection

with a famine emergency. Many brilliant young men

and women go out with the Foreign Aid programs,

and Geoffrey told me of one, an idealistic youngster,

Dan Fraser, who had been working harder than a

man should up-country.

Fraser told Geoffrey that one day when the situation

was almost impossible with horrific numbers of

deaths daily a man staggered out of the African

forest. Men were dying everywhere around and there

was nothing unusual in that. But this man was

completely naked, badly wounded, and he was white.

I met Geoffrey Dean for lunch on a flying visit to

Washington. We ate well at an exclusive club.

Geoffrey brought the conversation around to his

telephone call and went on to say that Fraser, who

had almost lost control, was shaken and impressed,

profoundly impressed, by this stranger.

The famine was killing people by the thousand,

massive epidemics were being staved off by daily

miracles, aircraft were encountering near-insuperable

difficulties flying in supplies; yet in the middle of

this chaos and destruction of human life Dan Fraser,

an idealistic but seasoned field-worker, was uplifted

and strengthened by the character and personality of

Dray Prescot. He had given Prescot food and water

and bound up his wounds. Prescot could apparently

live on next to nothing, his wounds healed rapidly,

and when he realized the famine emergency

resolutely refused any special treatment. In return

Fraser handed across his cassette tape recorder in

order that Prescot might record anything he wished.

Prescot had a purpose, Fraser said he could see.

“Dan said he was saved by Prescot. They were miles

from anywhere and he’d been alone. The strength,

the calmness, the vitality of Dray Prescot was

amazing. He was a little above middle height with

shoulders that made Dan’s eyes pop. His hair was

brown, and so were his eyes, and they were level and,

according to Dan, oddly dominating. Dan sensed an

abrasive honesty, a fearless courage, about him. The

man was a dynamo, by Dan’s account.”

Geoffrey pushed the pile of cassettes over to me

across that expensive table with the wine glasses and

the silver and fine china and the remains of a

first-class meal. Outside that exclusive club

Washington, the whole of the United States, seemed

as far away, suddenly, as the wilderness of Africa

from which these tapes had come.

Dray Prescot told Dan Fraser if he did not hear

from him inside three years he could do as he saw fit

with the tapes. The possibility that they might see

publication gave Dray Prescot a deep inner

satisfaction, a sense of purpose that Fraser felt held

more significance than this mysterious stranger

would reveal.

Fraser was extremly busy with the famine—I

gathered more from what Geoffrey did not say that

the end of the boy’s nervous resources was

close—and only the appearance of Dray Prescot had

saved an ugly situation from sliding into a disaster

that would have had international repercussions.

Geoffrey Dean speaks little of his work; but I believe

a great deal of foreign health and happiness is owed

directly to him.

“I promised to abide by the conditions laid down by

Dan Fraser, who would, in any case, have absolutely

refused me permission to take the tapes back to

America had he not known I would respect his

wishes and the wishes of Dray Prescot.”

Geoffrey, I had always thought and saw nothing to

make me change my mind, had little imagination. He

went on: “That famine was a bad one, Alan. Dan had

too much to do. When I arrived, Dray Prescot had

gone. We were both hellishly busy. Dan did say that

he’d seen Prescot, at night, beneath those African

stars, staring up, and he’d felt an unease at the big

man’s expression.”

He touched the cassettes with the tip of his finger.

“So—here they are. You’ll know what to do with

them.”

And so I present in book form a transcript of the

tapes from Africa. The story they tell is remarkable. I

have edited as little as possible. I believe you will

detect from the textual evidence how Dray Prescot

swings from the expressions of one age to that of

another, freely, without any feeling of anachronism. I

have omitted much that he says of the customs and

conditions of Kregen; but it is my hope that one day

a fuller transcript will be possible.

The last cassette ends abruptly in mid-sentence.

The tapes are being published in the hope that

anyone who may be able to shed some light on their

extraordinary contents will come forward. Somehow,

and I cannot explain this, I believe that is why Dray

Prescot told his story in the midst of famine and

epidemic. There is more to learn of that strange and

enigmatic figure, I am confident.

Fraser is a young man dedicated to helping the less

fortunate of the world, and Geoffrey Dean is a civil

servant quite devoid of imagination. I cannot believe

that either of them would have faked these tapes.

They are presented in the conviction that however

much lacking in proof they may be, what they tell is

a real story that really did happen to Dray Prescot on

a world many millions of miles from Earth.

Alan Burt Akers

Chapter One

The Scorpion calls

Although I have had many names and been called

many things by the men and beasts of two worlds, I

was born plain Dray Prescot.

My parents died when I was young; but I knew them

both and loved them deeply. There was no mystery

about my birth and I would consider it shameful

now to wish that my real father had been a prince,

my real mother a princess.

I was born in a small house in the middle of a row of

identically similar houses, an only child, and a loved

one. Now I find myself often wondering what my

parents would make of my strange life and how they

would greet with delight or that delicious family

mockery my walking with kings and my dealing as an

equal with emperors and dictators, and all the

palaces and temples and fantastic settings of distant

Kregen, that have fashioned me into the man I am

today.

My life has been long, incredibly long by any

standards, and yet I know I merely stand at the

threshold of the many possibilities the future holds.

Always, for as long as I can remember, ill-defined

dreams and grand and nebulous ambitions enclosed

me in a fervent belief that life itself held the answers

to everything, and that to understand life was to

understand the universe.

Even as a child I would fall into a strange kind of

daze in which I would sit back and stare upward

sightlessly, my mind blank, receptive of a warm

white light that pulsed everywhere. I cannot now say

what thoughts passed through my brain for I do not

believe I thought at all during those times. If this

was the meditation or contemplation so ardently

sought by Eastern religions then I had stumbled on

secrets far beyond my comprehension.

What is still vividly in my mind of my young days is

my mother’s apparently continuous letting-out of my

clothes as I grew. She would bring out her sewing

basket and select a needle and look at me with such

an expression of loving helplessness as I stood there,

my shirt once more torn across my shoulders.

“You’ll soon not be able to go through a door, Dray,

with those shoulders,” she would scold, and then my

father would come in, laughing perhaps over my

wriggling discomfiture, although we had, as a family,

precious little to laugh at in those days.

The sea which boomed and thundered whitely at the

mouth of the river had always conveyed to me a

siren song; but my father, who carried his certificate

of exemption with him day and night, set his face

against my going to sea. As the gulls wheeled and

called across the marshes and swooped about the old

church tower, I would lie on the grass and ponder

my future. Had anyone then told me of Kregen

beneath Antares and of the marvels and mysteries of

that wild and savage world I would have run as

though from a leper or a madman.

The natural aversion my father held to the sea was

founded on deep suspicion of the morality and

system of those responsible for manning the ships.

He had all his life lived with horses as his chief

interest, capable of dealing with all aspects of their

care and training, and when I was born in 1775 he

was earning our living by horse-doctoring. During

the time I spent with the Clansmen of Felschraung

on Kregen long after my father’s death I felt myself

nearer to him than ever before.

Our spotless kitchen was always crammed with

greenish bottles of mysterious mixtures, and the

smell of liniments and oils struggled with those of

cabbage and freshly-baked bread. There was always

weighty talk of the staggers, glanders, pinkeye and

strangles. I suppose, speaking logically, I could ride a

horse and jump him moderately well before I could

toddle safely from our kitchen to the front door.

One day an old hag woman with curious eyes and a

bent back and dressed in rags stuffed with straw

wandered through the street and suddenly it was the

craze for our neighbors to have their fortunes told. It

was on this day I discovered that my birthday, the

Fifth of November, somehow turned me into a

Scorpion, and that Mars was my planet of the

ascendant. I had no idea of the meanings of these

strange words; but the concept of a scorpion

intrigued me and possessed me, so that, although I

was forced to indulge in the expected fisticuffs with

my friends when they dubbed me The Scorpion, I

was secretly thrilled and exultant. This even

compensated me for not being an Archer, as I

longed, or even a Lion, who I conceived would roar

more loudly than that Bull of Bashan the

schoolmaster loved to imitate. Do not be surprised

that I was taught reading and writing, for my mother

had set her heart on my being an office clerk or

schoolteacher and so raise myself from that sunken

mass of the people for whom I have always felt the

most profound respect and sympathy.

When I was about twelve a group of sailormen

stayed at the inn where my father sometimes helped

with the horses, combing them and speaking to them

and even finding raggedy lumps of West Indian

sugar for them to nibble and slobber from his

upturned palm. On this day, though, my father was

ill and was carried into the back room of the inn and

placed gently on the old settle there. His face

dismayed me. He lay there weak and listless and

without the strength to sup from the bowl of strong

ale the kindly tavern wench brought him. I wandered

disconsolate into the yard with its piles of straw and

dung and the smells of horses and ale filling the air

with an almost solid miasma.

The sailors were laughing and drinking around

something in a wicker cage and, immediately

intrigued like all small boys, I went across and

pushed between the burly bodies.

“How d’ye like that abed with ye at nights, lad?”

“See how it scuttles! Like a foul Sallee Rover!”

They let me look into the wicker basket, quaffing

their ale and laughing and talking in their uncouth

sailor way that was, alas, to be all too familiar to me

in the days to come.

In the basket a strange creature scuttled to and fro,

swinging its tail in the air like a weapon, rocking its

whole body from side to side with the violence of its

movements. Its scaly back and the two fierce pincers

that opened and shut with such malice repelled me.

“What is it?” I asked, all innocently.

“Why, lad. ‘Tis a scorpion.”

So this was the creature whose name I bore as a

nickname!

I felt the hot shame course through me. I had

learned that people like me, Scorpios, are supposed

to be secretive; but there was no hiding my reaction.

The seamen laughed hugely as at a joke and one

clapped me on the back.

“He won’t get at you, lad! Tom, here, brought him all

the way from India.”

I wondered why.

I mumbled out some kind of thank you—politeness

was a drudgery of social custom my parents had

drummed into me—and took myself off.

How these things happen are secrets well kept by

heaven, or by the Star Lords. My father tried to smile

at me and I told him Mother would be coming soon

and some of the neighbors and we would carry him

home on a hurdle. I sat by him for a time and then

went to beg another quart of ale. When I returned

carrying the pewter tankard my heart seemed to stop.

My father was lying half off the settle, his shoulders

on the floor and his legs tangled in the blanket that

had been tucked around him. He was glaring in mute

horror at the thing on the floor before him; yet that

horror was contained within an icy mask of

self-control. The scorpion crept toward my father

with a hideous lurching roll of its obscenely ugly

body. I dashed forward as the thing struck. Filled

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TRANSITTOSCORPIObyAlanBurtAkers ANoteOnTheTapesFromAfricaInpreparingthestrangeandremarkablestoryofDrayPrescotforpublicationIhavebecomeoverwhelmedattimeswiththepowerandpresenceofhisvoice.IhavelistenedtothetapesGeoffreyDeangaveme,overandoveragain,untilIfeelIknowthemanDrayPrescotasmuchthro...

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