Under the Moons of Mars Page 5

  One day the scouting party rode up over the crest of a hill and looked out on the valley below. Before them lay an ancient ghost town, a lonely place of stairways and minarets and white marble. Then the Green Men noticed, off in the distance, a lone figure trudging across the sand toward the village.

  Sutarat said, “Who is that, who dares invade our territory?”

  “Let’s find out,” said Harkan Thul, urging his thoat to a gallop.

  As the beasts thundered down the hill, the stranger broke into a run, racing toward the village. Then, as the Green Men watched, astonished, he took a great flying leap, hurtling through the air. In two bounds he’d reached the outlying buildings, and then he sprang to a third-story window and disappeared.

  Ghar Han’s heart beat faster. John Carter! It must be, for only the unnatural muscles of an Earthman could propel such wondrous leaps. After all these years they would meet again. At last had come his chance for redemption, or perhaps an honorable death.

  When the Green Men reached the city gates, Harkan Thul wheeled his mount and cried, “Circle the village, all of you! Make sure he doesn’t sneak off! I will enter and challenge him to a duel. Sutarat will be my second. Come.”

  “No!” said Ghar Han, riding forward. “John Carter is mine!”

  Harkan Thul glared. “I am jed here, not you, and I say—”

  “No!” yelled one of the warriors. “Ghar Han should face John Carter. If he dares.”

  “Yes,” said another. “He was crippled and shamed by the Earthman. Let him fight.”

  Others muttered agreement, and Harkan Thul saw that he risked mutiny if he tried to press the issue.

  “All right,” he said at last. “Ghar Han will have his chance. But if he fails, I will not. Come on.”

  As the others fanned out around the village, Ghar Han, Harkan Thul, and Sutarat rode through the gates. They tied their thoats to a hitching post, then proceeded on foot through the narrow streets, swords in their hands.

  Ghar Han heard footfalls on a nearby rooftop, and glanced up just as a dark form catapulted across the sky, leaping from building to building. An instant later it was gone, but not before Ghar Han had seen that this Earthman had yellow hair.

  Yellow, not black like John Carter.

  “Come on!” said Harkan Thul. “After him!”

  They pursued the figure, and Ghar Han’s mind raced. What if this was not John Carter?

  If not, then Ghar Han would not be able to exact vengeance upon the man who’d shamed him, but he found that this no longer moved him the way it once had. What disturbed him more was the idea of more than one Earthman on Barsoom. Bad enough that John Carter had found his way here through some arcane means, but now it seemed there might be two, and if two then why not three, or four, or ten? Any one of them a match for even the strongest native warrior. And suddenly Ghar Han imagined the Earthmen building great fleets, imagined those ships soaring across the void and landing here, disgorging armies.

  As the Green Men burst into a courtyard, Harkan Thul cried “There!” and pointed.

  Ghar Han wheeled, and regarded the shadowed third-story window of a palatial manse.

  Harkan Thul shouted to Sutarat, “Go! Down the alley! Make sure he doesn’t slip out the back.” Sutarat took off running.

  Harkan Thul turned to Ghar Han. “I’ll watch this side. Now enter, find the Earthman, and slay him. And do not forget the favor I’ve done you this day, and do not dishonor us.”

  Ghar Han nodded. He leapt through the open doors, then passed through an antechamber and made his way up a spiral stair. He glanced into the room where the Earthman had been, but it was empty.

  “Earthman!” he cried. “Show yourself! I am Ghar Han. I dare you to face me.”

  He explored room after room, all of them empty. He moved cautiously, holding his swords before him, picturing the Earthman crouched in some shadowed nook, just waiting to fall upon him. Finally he grew exhausted. It seemed he’d explored every corner, and still there was no sign of the Earthman.

  He glanced out a window into the courtyard. Harkan Thul was nowhere in sight.

  “Harkan Thul!” he shouted. “Sutarat!”

  Silence.

  He felt a chill. Could they have fallen to the Earthman? Or had the Earthman fled, and they’d gone chasing after him? But surely Ghar Han would have heard the commotion.

  Then he knew.

  It was a trick. The Earthman had never been here at all.

  Ghar Han dashed out into the courtyard, cursing himself. He strained to hear, but heard nothing, so he picked a direction at random and began to run.

  It was near sundown, and shadows filled the streets and alleys. In the empty silence of that dead city, he could almost imagine that he was the only living thing on all of Barsoom, and everywhere the black windows seemed to watch him like the eyes of skulls. He hurried down block after block, certain that he would miss whatever was about to happen.

  But luck was with him. As he passed an ancient fountain, he heard a voice upon the air, and pursued it. He peeked around a corner.

  In the center of a broad avenue stood Harkan Thul, facing one of the dwellings that lined the street. “This is your last chance, Earthman!” he called. “I know you’re in there! My warriors have this village surrounded, and I have come, alone, to challenge you. If you defeat me, you will be permitted to depart in peace.”

  More lies, thought Ghar Han. The others would not allow the Earthman to escape. And where was Sutarat?

  There. Down the street a ways, crouched at the base of a statue. And in his hand he held a radium pistol.

  No! thought Ghar Han. Surely not. For to challenge a man to duel with swords and then ambush him with a pistol was the most heinous crime that could be dreamt of on Barsoom.

  The Earthman appeared in the doorway.

  A woman.

  She was tall, for her kind, and long-limbed, and stern, her pale hair cut short, and she held a sword. She regarded Harkan Thul coldly as she emerged from the building. “All right,” she said. “All right.”

  Sutarat leaned out from behind the statue and took aim at her back.

  “Look out!” Ghar Han yelled.

  The woman spun, and spotted Sutarat, who opened fire. Harkan Thul leapt to the ground as the woman fled, shots bursting all around her. She dove into an alley and disappeared.

  As Ghar Han strode forward, Harkan Thul stood and screamed, “What are you doing?”

  “What are you doing?” said Ghar Han. “This is shameful! Are you afraid to face the Earthman fairly?”

  “No fight with an Earthman is fair,” said Harkan Thul. “They cheat by coming here, from a world with such heavy gravity.”

  I once thought as he does, Ghar Han realized. And now he saw how petulant and contemptible he’d been.

  “Listen, Harkan Thul,” he said. “The Earthmen are stronger than us. That’s a hard truth, but one we must face. With honor.”

  Sutarat approached, and leveled his pistol at Ghar Han’s chest.

  “So,” said Ghar Han, “now you fear a fair fight with me as well?”

  “Yes, put it away,” said Harkan Thul. “Save it for the Earthman.”

  Sutarat tucked the pistol in his belt and drew four swords.

  Harkan Thul raised his own swords as well. “Long have we despised you, Ghar Han, but it pleased us to mock you, so we suffered you to live. But no longer.”

  The two of them advanced, their eyes full of hate, and Ghar Han backed away, drawing his own weapons, knowing he stood no chance against both of them.

  “I challenge Sutarat to single combat,” he said.

  “No, you’ll fight us both,” said Harkan Thul, grinning. “Two opponents, one for each of your arms. It seems fitting.”

  Sutarat laughed.

  Then suddenly the Earth woman was back, rushing Harkan Thul, slashing at him.

  He spun, cursing, just barely in time to bring a sword around to block hers. As the two of them fought, Harkan Thul sho
uted, “Get him! I’ll deal with her.”

  Sutarat leapt at Ghar Han, striking with sword after sword, and Ghar Han fell back before the onslaught, ducking and parrying as the blows fell. For an instant he despaired that his two arms could possibly prevail against Sutarat’s four.

  Then he remembered the day he’d faced John Carter, the way the Earthman had cut him to pieces. It was a battle Ghar Han had replayed in his mind a thousand times.

  The next time Sutarat attacked with an overhand chop, Ghar Han spun aside and hacked the man’s shoulder, causing him to drop a sword, and then Ghar Han battered another of the man’s blades, knocking it from his hand. Then it was two swords against two.

  Ghar Han smiled. What came next felt almost inevitable.

  When Sutarat attacked again, Ghar Han skewered him through the forearm, then kicked him in the chest, knocking him onto his back.

  Sutarat groaned, fumbling at his belt, grasping the radium pistol, raising it. Ghar Han brought his sword screaming down, and both pistol and hand fell away, and the blade plunged deep into Sutarat’s chest, killing him.

  Panting, Ghar Han glanced back over his shoulder.

  Harkan Thul was standing over the woman. She lay in the street, reaching for her blade, which had fallen just out of reach.

  As Harkan Thul raised his swords to deliver a killing blow, Ghar Han snatched up the radium pistol and shot him in the back.

  On the streets of a ghost town, beneath the twin moons, a Green Man knelt, staring at the pistol in his hand. Two corpses lay nearby.

  The Earth woman came and stood beside him. “Hello.”

  He was silent.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  His voice was soft. “I don’t know.”

  After a moment, he added, “We take the names of those we slay in battle. I am no longer worthy of those names. I have broken every law. . . .”

  “You did what you had to,” she said. “You had no choice.”

  “I had a choice,” he said, and fell silent again.

  A bit later, the woman said, “My name is Suzanne. Suzanne Meyers. Of Earth.”

  “Earth,” he echoed. “Tell me, Suzanne, how did you come to Barsoom?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just . . . woke up, and I was here.”

  “Do you know John Carter? Of Virginia?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m from New York. Who’s John Carter?”

  “Someone I met once,” said the Green Man. “Long ago.”

  They were silent for a time.

  The woman said, “Thank you for saving my life. I owe you. I mean, if there’s any way I can help you . . .”

  The Green Man said, “If you would do me one favor, it is this: I foresee a time when Earthmen will come to this world, not one by one, but by the thousands. Do what you can to ensure that, when that day comes, my people will not be utterly wiped away.”

  “You have my word,” she said. “For what it’s worth.”

  “Who are you, on your world?” he asked. “A great warlord? A princess?”

  “No,” she said. “I . . . I’m nobody, really.”

  “I understand,” said the Green Man. “I am also nobody.”

  “Two nobodies,” she said.

  After a moment, she added, “Maybe we should stick together, then. It would be fitting.”

  He raised his head and looked at her.

  And why not? he thought. He could never return to his own people. Not now.

  “Come on,” she said, offering him her hand.

  They stole through the quiet streets, to the place where the thoats were tied, and took two of them, and galloped away through the gates. Under cover of darkness they slipped the cordon of Warhoon scouts, though the warriors heard them, and pursued them.

  When the two of them reached the hills, the Earthwoman said, “Follow me. I came this way before.” And she urged her mount up a narrow trail, near-invisible in the dark, and the Green Man followed.

  Hours later, as dawn broke, they saw that they’d escaped. Then they paused atop a ridge and looked out toward the horizon, knowing that all the weird and wondrous landscapes of Barsoom lay spread before them.

  “Where shall we go?” she said.

  “Wherever we want,” he replied.

  “And what shall I call you?” she asked.

  He reflected on this. Finally he said, “Call me Var Dalan. It means ‘two-arm.’”

  And that concludes our story, a story of three deaths.

  The first death was that of the sly Sutarat, killed in single combat.

  The second death was that of the arrogant Harkan Thul, shot in the back with a radium pistol.

  And the third death was that of the fierce and terrible warrior Ghar Han, reborn now as he gallops his thoat across the yellow hills beneath a purple sky, a two-armed man who rides with a two-armed woman at his side. For the man that he was, who served the cruel whims of the Jeddak, and who longed for the approbation of his people, and who was ashamed of the wounds he bore, and who lived for nothing but to take vengeance on John Carter, that man is dead now, dead as the dead sea bottoms of Mars.

  John Carter’s creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs, is best known for his character Tarzan, an English boy raised by apes in Africa. Tarzan travels to England and inherits the title Lord Greystoke, only to abandon civilization and return to a life of adventure. Tarzan is a formidable fighter who has wrestled pythons, crocodiles, sharks, tigers, rhinos, a man-sized seahorse, and even dinosaurs. His favored outfit is a knife and loincloth, he prefers to sleep nestled on the branch of a tree, and his favorite food is raw meat, preferably from an animal he’s killed himself. (He’s also in the habit of burying his raw meat in the ground for a week or so to soften it up a bit.) Though films have often depicted him as speaking only in fragments (“Me Tarzan, you Jane”), in Burroughs’s novels Tarzan is an incredible intellect who speaks over a dozen languages, both human and animal. Tarzan is one of the best-known and best-loved characters in literature, and has inspired countless adaptations and imitations. (As a girl, Jane Goodall was so inspired by the stories of Tarzan that she later traveled to Africa to study chimpanzees, where she made ground-breaking discoveries in primate behavior.) Burroughs’s two series heroes, Tarzan and John Carter, share many similarities. Both are handsome men with black hair and gray eyes. Both are noble, forthright, and chivalrous. And of course, both are peerless combatants. Our next tale explores what happens when these two legendary personalities collide.

  THE APE-MAN OF MARS

  BY PETER S. BEAGLE

  The ape-man was restless. Even on a night as warmly tranquil as this, here in the West African jungle that was far more his heart’s home than the House of Lords—where, as John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke, he was entitled to sit among its members anytime he wanted to—he could find no sleep in any of his favorite tree crotches or hollows. Nor did the pleasure of exhuming a week-buried haunch of antelope or lesser kudu provide anything more than a satisfactory belch and a good scratch. For the very first time in a life constantly adventurous from his birth, Tarzan was bored.

  Looking longingly up at Goro, the red, gibbous moon, he thought, “What a night this would be to dance the Dum-Dum with a few of the old gang!” But of the Mangani, the great apes who had raised him from his infancy, few yet survived; and their descendants tended to avoid him, wary of his smell—human, yet not-human . . . Tarzan sighed and stretched his mighty arms up toward the star-sown jungle sky . . . and especially toward the brilliant red dot low in the west, stubbornly refusing to be rendered invisible by the moonlight. Mars, god of war—the Warrior Planet! Perhaps it has always drawn me because I was born a warrior, and had to remain so to survive. Mars . . . Mars . . .

  In a strangely detached manner, he felt the soul being drawn out of his body, taking flight toward the glow above . . . beyond the glow. He clutched the knife that dangled on the rawhide cord at his throat, and felt it seemingly dissolve in his hands—then there was only intense cold�
��then: nothing . . .

  Tarzan came to consciousness sprawled naked on dry, hot sand: somewhat dazed and disoriented, but apparently entirely himself in his own body, and in no least doubt of where he had been transmigrated to. This is Mars, he knew, just as surely as he had no slightest grasp on the means or purpose of his unbidden transport. The sky overhead was of a pale, Earthlike blue, but with a curious transparency about it, as though one could almost see through it to the pure blackness of deepest space beyond. There were two moons in this sky, brightly visible even in daylight, and both moving, as he stared, distinctly more swiftly than the satellite he knew. Of all the lost worlds and colonies that Tarzan had discovered on—and even within—his own planet, none had ever made him feel so lonely as he felt now.

  His wide reading in several languages had prepared the ape-man for the low gravity and lighter air pressure on Mars; but all the same, the movement involved merely in rising to his feet almost took him off the ground, and his very first step caused him literally to bounce two or three feet into the air, and then to fall on his face with the second step. Practice, and a good deal of falling down, eventually allowed him to evolve a method of cautious, slogging progression, punctuated by sudden inadvertent kangaroo hops of as much as nine or ten feet straight up. It was at the zenith of one such hop that he discerned the curious glass-roofed structure over the low hills to his right. This being the only suggestion of habitation of any sort, Tarzan determined to make his way to it.

  While the distance was not great, achieving his goal took him well over an hour, since the bounces he was only slowly learning to control frequently took him off in one undesired direction or another. Finally arriving at the building, he recognized it as a kind of giant incubator, containing, as best he could enumerate them, several hundred eggs, all between two and three feet across. Tarzan had seen—and eaten—ostrich eggs from time to time; any one of these would have fed a family of Mangani for over a week.

  Tarzan dropped onto his haunches and scratched his head. A hundred million miles from Big Ben, his only clock was his stomach, and that organ was informing him that interplanetary travel—however long it had actually taken him—was a hungry business. Those eggs undoubtedly belonged to someone, but Tarzan’s stomach belonged to him, and the moral issue was never really up for discussion. He pried open the entrance to the incubator—of glass, like the roof—selected the nearest egg, brought it back outside, and, with his mouth watering in anticipation, used the haft of his knife to crack it open.