Under the Moons of Mars Read online

“All I know, Princess,” the ape-man responded gravely, “is that they are not vermin. In some way they are distantly related to my own people, the great apes of Africa, who raised me as one of their own. For good or ill, I could never raise a hand against them ever again.”

  Dejah Thoris stepped closer, peering up at him, as though into the highest branches of a great tree. “You are as tall as my lord,” she mused, “and your eyes are as gray as his. But you are a very strange sort of Earthman, are you not, Tarzan of the Apes?”

  “I believe I am an ape in my deepest heart,” Tarzan replied, “nothing more than an ape of Kerchak’s tribe. But when I look at you, Princess Dejah Thoris of Helium, I cannot but remember that I am also a man.”

  That was how Tarzan of the Apes learned that a Red Martian can indeed blush. One quick, shaky smile that the ape-man took with him to his grave; then Dejah Thoris, without speaking further, fled ahead of him toward the building where he and John Carter and she were to spend the night. Finding the quarters assigned to him, Tarzan dropped into the pile of furs and silks waiting there, and fell asleep with Princess Dejah Thoris’s cloak still around his shoulders.

  In the morning, after an excellent breakfast of items that Tarzan was quite happy not to have identified, he helped John Carter, Dejah Thoris, and their several Red Martian servants pack their belongings onto borrowed thoats, and assumed that they would be setting out shortly for distant Helium. He was getting acquainted with his own thoat, practicing mounting and dismounting, when John Carter suddenly said, “Hear you had a tussle with a few maggots last night.” Tarzan blinked in puzzlement. “The white apes,” John Carter explained, “That’s what I call them, because they’re white like maggots, and because there’s not a thing to be done with them except kill them. Until there aren’t any more.” He was toying with a Thark pistol, a cut-down version of one of the rifles Tarzan had learned were powered by radium. “Show me where the struggle took place, Sir House-of-Lords.”

  “You won’t find them out in daylight,” Tarzan warned him. “And the Princess is clearly anxious to start home.” In fact, Dejah Thoris had hardly spoken all morning.

  “Sir Englishman,” John Carter said without expression, “don’t you ever presume to tell me whether or not my wife is anxious. . . .” He broke open his weapon, casually inspected the load, and snapped it shut again. “I told you, I want to see last night’s battlefield. No one’s going anywhere until I do.”

  If it is not this place, it will be some other. As well have it over with. The ape-man stood up. He said, “I will show you, and then we will get on our way.”

  “Absolutely,” John Carter agreed. “Just indulge an old Johnny Reb, if you would.” Dejah Thoris said nothing, but the fear in her eyes angered Tarzan in a way that he had not thought possible. He strode ahead, and John Carter followed close on his heels.

  Nearing the deserted building where he had been attacked, Tarzan pointed ahead, saying, “There. One of them ambushed me, but I fought him off and he ran away. There was nothing more to it than that.”

  “Really?” John Carter was still toying with his pistol—then, to Tarzan’s alarm, he suddenly lifted it. “Would that be the fellow, do you suppose?”

  A moment of whiteness—a flash of a great hunched body trying to pass an empty window without being seen. John Carter’s finger was already squeezing the trigger when Tarzan struck his arm up, so that the strange bullet whined harmlessly off the wall of the building in a flurry of marble chips. And John Carter struck Tarzan in the face with the butt of the revolver, so that the ape-man reeled backward and sat down hard in the Martian street.

  “Been wanting to do that from the first sight,” John Carter said flatly. “I don’t like you, Sir House-of-Lords. You’re no better than a damn Yankee—worse, in some ways. And I don’t like the way you look at my wife. Not one whit.”

  The ape-man was on his feet now, smiling blood. He said simply, “Thank you for doing that.”

  “You’re the challenged party—the choice of weapons is up to you.” John Carter was smiling genially himself. “I’ve got a couple of Thark swords, or we can make it pistols. Up to you.”

  Tarzan shook his head. He said nothing, but simply beckoned John Carter in toward him. For the first time, the Virginian looked slightly uneasy, but he tossed the pistol aside, said, “Come and get it, then,” and contradicted himself by taking a fifteen-foot spring straight at the ape-man, knocking him down again. The battle was on.

  As against the white ape, Tarzan realized that he was fighting for his life—and perhaps against a less reasonable opponent. John Carter was a peerlessly brave man, and he came at the ape-man with a fury that had only partly to do with Tarzan himself, and more to do with a lost war in which Tarzan had taken no part. Forced onto the defensive at the start of the combat, the ape-man warded off blow after blow as best he could, enduring as much punishment as he had ever taken in his youth from Bolgani or Kerchak. Momentarily dazed, he kept John Carter’s hands from closing forever on his throat only by butting his head desperately into the Virginian’s face, or doubling his legs to push him away, like Sheeta the leopard eviscerating a foe. He was vaguely aware of a growing crowd of noisy Tharks, as always happy to see someone, anyone, being beaten. He could not see Dejah Thoris anywhere.

  Slowly, however, the battle began to turn. John Carter was a splendid fighter under any circumstances, as he had proven on two planets; but most of his victories over Martians had been achieved with the aid of weapons, low gravity, and the fact that Tharks are less muscular than they appear, and far less quick than a reasonably fit human. Strong and fast as he was, nothing in his oddly doubled life had prepared him for an opponent who had taken down lions and gorillas bare-handed, and who could run all the day unwinded across the great African veldt. Against the ape-man his one advantage was familiarity with Martian conditions, and once his measure was taken, that knowledge was not enough. For every blow he struck, he received three, as Tarzan hit him from all sides and all angles, employing not just his jungle-trained fists, but his elbows and knees, his head, and sweeping kicks that shook the Virginian like thunderbolts. But for all the battering, for all the blood, John Carter would not go down, nor would he surrender, not even when the apeman stood back, letting go of his killer animal instincts, holding up his open hands and whispering “Please . . . please fall, please stop . . .” as the Virginian stumbled blindly toward him. John Carter was still coming on at the end, muttering to himself . . . sinking to one knee . . . rising again . . . surely about to fall face forward at last at Tarzan’s feet . . .

  It was then that Dejah Thoris picked up the Martian pistol and hit Tarzan over the head with it.

  The ape-man went down without a sound. Dejah Thoris looked at the two fallen men, glanced at the grinning, cheering Tharks with utter contempt—quickly bent and kissed the ape-man’s cheek, and then turned her attention to her fallen husband. She did not look back at Tarzan again.

  The Lord of the Jungle smelled Africa before he opened his eyes. He was draped, highly uncomfortably, over the crotch of a tree, like the remains of a leopard’s meal, which was exactly the way he felt. His skull thundered, his lower lip was split, and his entire body felt as bewildered as his head. Yet he was grateful for the pain, because it proved everything that had happened to him real, and he could not have borne to have dreamed Dejah Thoris. He smiled slightly at the memory, then winced as his lip started bleeding again.

  Did I vanish there when I awoke here? Am I dead on Mars—Barsoom—and alive on Earth, or is my spirit alive in both worlds? And which, if either, is real? What will happen to my relatives up there, the white apes—can they ever be safe?

  . . . Will she ever think of me?

  At last he simply lay back again on the branch and looked up through the softly shivering leaves at the stars. At the farthest edge of the horizon the red planet still shone dimly, flickering in the haze like a candle flame about to fail. For all the calling of his heart he could not turn hi
s gaze to it.

  In A Princess of Mars, John Carter escapes the Green Men of the Warhoon horde only to find himself lost and starving in the desert. He seeks aid at a giant building, four miles square and two hundred feet high, and is allowed inside by a wizened old man. Carter is able to read the man’s mind, though the man has no inkling of this. The man tells Carter that the building is an atmosphere plant that supplies air to all of Barsoom, and that the doors can be opened only through the use of a secret code, and that this code is revealed to only two men on Barsoom at any given time. At this point Carter reads the man’s mind and learns the code. As the two of them say good night, Carter again reads the man’s mind and learns that the man intends to murder him in his sleep, since the man now suspects that Carter has learned too much. Carter escapes the building, and much later, when the atmosphere plant fails, he’s able to use his knowledge of the secret code to spring the doors and save all of Barsoom. Our next tale shows us this key event in Barsoomian history from an entirely different point of view—that of a very unusual and talented young member of the Warhoon.

  A TINKER OF WARHOON

  BY TOBIAS S. BUCKELL

  “Get up!” snarled three-armed Gar Kofan, silhouetted against the light of Barsoom’s two moons.

  Kaz slowly rose, brushing sand off his gun belt. “It is foolish to stand when someone is shooting at you,” he said sullenly.

  “They weren’t shooting at you,” Gar Kofan said, cuffing him lightly on the side of the head. “It was a warning shot. We’ve found the Jedwar’s party.”

  Kaz looked back toward their wagon. He’d rather be back inside, poring over the insides of an electric range finder.

  His people, the Warhoons, were unpredictable and violent, Kaz had always felt. Even more violent than their mortal enemies, the Tharks. They’d spent the last few days watching men fight to the death in the arena in the ruins of what had once been some glorious city. And now they were moving across the wastes once more, looking for new victims and plunder.

  Kaz hated this. He’d rather be back in Warhoon.

  He’d rather be fixing things.

  Machines didn’t trick you. Machines didn’t have an inscrutable warrior code that always seemed to end with bloodshed. Machines didn’t attack you for accidentally bumping into them.

  Or yell at you for ducking when bullets flew.

  They could cuff him as much as they wanted, or call him coward. He wasn’t about to stand still and be shot.

  Any other young runt of a Warhoon with a single name like Kaz would have been killed long ago for thinking this way. But unlike any of his kind, Kaz could fix things—weapons in particular—and so he was tolerated by his tribe.

  But more importantly, he was tolerated by Gar Kofan.

  Gar Kofan did that mostly because he couldn’t give up his only apprentice. Gar Kofan was old, and one of his eyes was milky white and blind, from an old duel. He stood hunched over, and he was missing an entire arm, leaving him with only three. His remaining hands now shook whenever he tried to fix small machines, and it was difficult for him to see small things, even when they were right in front of him.

  Kaz knew that Gar Kofan needed him more than he needed Gar Kofan. Gar Kofan was really a warrior, not a tinker, and the machines often frustrated and stumped him and left him cursing and throwing them against the wall. Kaz was the far better tinker, because he understood the machines.

  With Gar Kofan’s past reputation as a fighter and his skill (he had taken the name of Kofan in the usual manner: by killing a Kofan Jedwar), they had built a good life in Warhoon. And so, although Gar Kofan had only three arms and was going blind, Gar Kofan would cheerfully kill anyone who threatened Kaz.

  Gar Kofan had turned to tinkering with machines and fixing the electric range finders on rifles after he’d lost his arm. He had taught Kaz all he knew, since the day two years ago when he found Kaz loitering around his wagon and asking questions about how everything worked.

  At first, Gar Kofan had thrown him out of the wagon and told him to go away. But when Kaz showed a knack for fixing things, Gar Kofan took him on as an apprentice.

  Soon Kaz had gained a spot in the back of the wagon to sleep on, a knife and pistol of his own, and food.

  And life was . . . acceptable, Kaz thought.

  At least when people weren’t shooting at him.

  The Jedwar, Aav Kanan, had designs on becoming a jed, if possible. He was always roaming the wastes, looking for new conquests, or new ways to raise his stature. One day, everyone knew, Aav Kanan would challenge a jed and kill him to take his position.

  “Gar Kofan?” Kaz asked, as he followed behind. “Aav Kanan never comes out here to the northwest. It’s filled with Zodangan or Helium scouts who would strike at us from the air.”

  Gar Kofan glanced up. “Then there must be something important enough to bring him out here.”

  And that was all he would say about that.

  In the rocks among an outcropping nearby, a small council had gathered around Aav Kanan, who gestured at them to approach. “Hurry up, cripple,” he snarled at Gar Kofan. “We don’t have much time before the attack.”

  Kaz climbed up the ridge behind Gar Kofan and Aav Kanan, struggling to keep up. Even infirm and half blind, Gar Kofan’s days as a warrior left him energetic and strong enough to outpace him. When Kaz managed to catch up, Aav Kanan was pointing in the distance at a canal and the high trees that ran along its sides.

  And at the massive building that squatted there.

  Two hundred feet high and dominating the landscape for miles, it was a building that brought a smile to Kaz’s lips. Unlike the city of Warhoon—stripped down, crumbling, reused by a people who had no idea how it had even been built—this building gleamed with purpose. It had been built and it had been maintained, and whoever had built it . . . their craft, their purpose seemed to call out to Kaz.

  “The Red Men don’t want us out here, near this . . . thing,” Aav Kanan said. “Which means there must be great riches inside. Look at how massive it is.”

  They all stared for a long, silent moment.

  “There was only one doorway in, that I can perceive,” Aav Kanan said mildly, breaking the silence.

  “Do you want us to try and tinker the doorway open?” Gar Kofan asked.

  Kaz saw straightaway this was not Aav Kanan’s intent. Not if he was planning to attack so soon.

  “I want you to set the detonator for a very large explosion that will disable the doors,” Aav Kanan said. “You will throw it inside that structure when the doors open. There is a guard or a keeper, who comes out once in a great while. The next time he does, we will be nearby to throw the bomb inside, thus wrecking the door’s closing mechanism, and we will storm it and take our plunder and be gone before the next flier comes overhead. The Red warriors might be able to fly, but their stupidity is that they keep regular schedules.”

  Gar Kofan snorted, along with all the other warriors, but Kaz remained silent. Schedules, he thought, were perfectly sensible things. He had to admit, however, if you were guarding something valuable, it was foolish to be predictable.

  The Red warriors—if indeed they had built this great building—had assumed the impenetrable walls were all the protection they needed. The flier patrols were an afterthought.

  One the Warhoons would exploit.

  Aav Kanan’s men were nervous about using explosives. They, like most Green Men, were uniformly excellent marksmen with a rifle, but preferred fighting hand-to-hand with swords. “Real weapons for real warriors,” they said.

  Back in the wagon, Gar Kofan and Kaz set to building a powerful explosive and fitting a timer to it, while Aav Kanan paced around muttering about time.

  If time was of such essence, Kaz thought, then maybe Aav Kanan shouldn’t have sent for them at the last minute.

  But it was not in the nature of Warhoons to plan too far ahead.

  A strange warrior once fought a great fight in the arena when Kaz was just ou
t of the egg. Kaz thought about him often, and was thinking about him as he worked on the bomb. The man had been neither Green nor Red, but almost colorless. Someone had said the stranger called himself Jan Kahrtr, an odd enough sounding name.

  Normally Kaz paid no attention to the bloodshed out in the arena. He had too many rifles to fix. But seeing this oddly colored stranger, who must have traveled from some far corner of Barsoom, had set Kaz’s imagination ablaze. How big was Barsoom? What other people roamed its surface, traversed the great canals that stretched forever over the horizon?

  What other great, ruined cities lay littered under the two moons? And what secrets might they give Kaz?

  He thought about that a lot.

  It was a shame the Kahrtr man had died from the blade of a Zodangan. Kaz had hoped the man might live, so that he could visit his cell and ask him where he came from.

  There was a rumor that Kahrtr was now a Prince of Helium, and had been the one who led the Thark attack on the Zodangans, but who knew if that was true?

  Kaz showed the timer mechanism to one of Aav Kanan’s bolder warriors, and gave him the ball-shaped explosive. “It will roll without harming the timer,” Kaz said. He’d buried the timer into the heart of the explosive, and wrapped it all in husk leaves shaped into a ball.

  The bomb was crudely made of Zodangan explosives, probably stolen by Tharks and traded northward. Kaz always questioned anyone who traded things to him, trying to ascertain where they came from. It was a shame, he thought, that Warhoon couldn’t make explosives of their own. They could use them to divert canals, blow open ancient tunnels, and explore old ruins, or just help fight enemy clans . . . but Warhoons were uninterested in science and building things. So there was no chance of it.

  Aav Kanan’s warrior slowly crawled along the ground and hid behind a bush. And waited.

  And waited.