#Taran of Helium
Text
Chapter VIII
CLOSE WORK
Ghek, in her happier days third supervisor of the fields of Luud, sat nursing her anger and her humiliation. Recently something had awakened within her the existence of which she had never before even dreamed. Had the influence of the strange captive man aught to do with this unrest and dissatisfaction? She did not know. She missed the soothing influence of the noise he called singing.
Could it be that there were other things more desirable than cold logic and undefiled brain power? Was well balanced imperfection more to be sought after then, than the high development of a single characteristic? She thought of the great, ultimate brain toward which all kaldanes were striving. It would be deaf, and dumb, and blind. A thousand beautiful strangers might sing and dance about it, but it could derive no pleasure from the singing or the dancing since it would possess no perceptive faculties. Already had the kaldanes shut themselves off from most of the gratifications of the senses. Ghek wondered if much was to be gained by denying themselves still further, and with the thought came a question as to the whole fabric of their theory. After all perhaps the boy was right; what purpose could a great brain serve sealed in the bowels of the earth?
And she, Ghek, was to die for this theory. Luud had decreed it. The injustice of it overwhelmed her with rage. But she was helpless. There was no escape. Beyond the enclosure the banths awaited her; within, her own kind, equally as merciless and ferocious. Among them there was no such thing as love, or loyalty, or friendship—they were just brains. She might kill Luud; but what would that profit her? Another queen would be loosed from her sealed chamber and Ghek would be killed. She did not know it but she would not even have the poor satisfaction of satisfied revenge, since she was not capable of feeling so abstruse a sentiment.
Ghek, mounted upon her rykor, paced the floor of the tower chamber in which she had been ordered to remain. Ordinarily she would have accepted the sentence of Luud with perfect equanimity, since it was but the logical result of reason; but now it seemed different. The stranger man had bewitched her. Life appeared a pleasant thing—there were great possibilities in it. The dream of the ultimate brain had receded into a tenuous haze far in the background of her thoughts.
At that moment there appeared in the doorway of the chamber a red warrior with naked sword. She was the female counterpart of the prisoner whose sweet voice had undermined the cold, calculating reason of the kaldane.
"Silence!" admonished the newcomer, her straight brows gathered in an ominous frown and the point of her longsword playing menacingly before the eyes of the kaldane. "I seek the man, Taran of Helium. Where is he? If you value your life, speak quickly and speak the truth.
If she valued her life! It was a truth that Ghek had but just learned. She thought quickly. After all, a great brain is not without its uses. Perhaps here lay escape from the sentence of Luud.
"You are of his kind?" she asked. "You come to rescue him?"
"Yes."
"Listen, then. I have befriended him, and because of this I am to die. If I help you to liberate him, will you take me with you?"
Gatha of Gathol eyed the weird creature from crown to foot—the perfect body, the grotesque head, the expressionless face. Among such as these had the beautiful son of Helium been held captive for days and weeks.
"If he lives and is unharmed," she said, "I will take you with us."
"When they took him from me he was alive and unharmed," replied Ghek. "I cannot say what has befallen him since. Luud sent for him."
"Who is Luud? Where is she? Lead me to her." Gatha spoke quickly in tones vibrant with authority.
"Come, then," said Ghek, leading the way from the apartment and down a stairway toward the underground burrows of the kaldanes. "Luud is my queen. I will take you to xyr chambers."
"Hasten!" urged Gatha.
"Sheathe your sword," warned Ghek, "so that should we pass others of my kind I may say to them that you are a new prisoner with some likelihood of winning their belief."
Gatha did as she was bid, but warning the kaldane that her hand was ever ready at her dagger's hilt.
"You need have no fear of treachery," said Ghek. "My only hope of life lies in you."
"And if you fail me," Gatha admonished her, "I can promise you as sure a death as even your queen might guarantee you."
Ghek made no reply, but moved rapidly through the winding subterranean corridors until Gatha began to realize how truly was she in the hands of this strange monster. If the fellow should prove false it would profit Gatha nothing to slay her, since without her guidance the red woman might never hope to retrace her way to the tower and freedom.
Twice they met and were accosted by other kaldanes; but in both instances Ghek's simple statement that she was taking a new prisoner to Luud appeared to allay all suspicion, and then at last they came to the ante-chamber of the queen.
"Here, now, red woman, thou must fight, if ever," whispered Ghek. "Enter there!" and she pointed to a doorway before them.
"And you?" asked Gatha, still fearful of treachery.
"My rykor is powerful," replied the kaldane. "I shall accompany you and fight at your side. As well die thus as in torture later at the will of Luud. Come!"
But Gatha had already crossed the room and entered the chamber beyond. Upon the opposite side of the room was a circular opening guarded by two warriors. Beyond this opening she could see two figures struggling upon the floor, and the fleeting glimpse she had of one of the faces suddenly endowed her with the strength of ten warriors and the ferocity of a wounded banth. It was Taran of Helium, fighting for his honor or his life.
The warriors, startled by the unexpected appearance of a red woman, stood for a moment in dumb amazement, and in that moment Gatha of Gathol was upon them, and one was down, a sword-thrust through its heart.
"Strike at the heads," whispered the voice of Ghek in Gatha's ear. The latter saw the head of the fallen warrior crawl quickly within the aperture leading to the chamber where she had seen Taran of Helium in the clutches of a headless body. Then the sword of Ghek struck the kaldane of the remaining warrior from its rykor and Gatha ran her sword through the repulsive head.
Instantly the red warrior leaped for the aperture, while close behind her came Ghek.
"Look not upon the eyes of Luud," warned the kaldane, "or you are lost."
Within the chamber Gatha saw Taran of Helium in the clutches of a mighty body, while close to the wall upon the opposite side of the apartment crouched the hideous, spider-like Luud. Instantly the queen realized the menace to herself and sought to fasten her eyes upon the eyes of Gatha, and in doing so she was forced to relax her concentration upon the rykor in whose embraces Taran struggled, so that almost immediately the boy found himself able to tear away from the awful, headless thing.
As he rose quickly to his feet he saw for the first time the cause of the interruption of Luud's plans. A red warrior! His heart leaped in rejoicing and thanksgiving. What miracle of fate had sent her to him? He did not recognize her, though, this travel-worn warrior in the plain harness which showed no single jewel. How could he have guessed her the same as the scintillant creature of platinum and diamonds that he had seen for a brief hour under such different circumstances at the court of his august dam?
Luud saw Ghek following the strange warrior into the chamber. "Strike them down, Ghek!" commanded the queen. "Strike down the stranger and your life shall be yours."
Gatha glanced at the hideous face of the queen.
"Seek not her eyes," screamed Taran in warning; but it was too late. Already the horrid hypnotic gaze of the queen kaldane had seized upon the eyes of Gatha. The red warrior hesitated in her stride. Her sword point drooped slowly toward the floor. Taran glanced toward Ghek. He saw the creature glaring with her expressionless eyes upon the strong back of the stranger. He saw the hand of the creature's rykor creeping stealthily toward the hilt of its dagger.
And then Taran of Helium raised his eyes aloft and poured forth the notes of Mars' most beautiful melody, The Song of Love.
Ghek drew her dagger from its sheath. Her eyes turned toward the singing boy. Luud's glance wavered from the eyes of the woman to the face of Taran, and the instant that the latter's song distracted her attention from her victim, Gatha of Gathol shook herself and as with a supreme effort of will forced her eyes to the wall above Luud's hideous head. Ghek raised her dagger above her right shoulder, took a single quick step forward, and struck. The boy's song ended in a stifled scream as he leaped forward with the evident intention of frustrating the kaldane's purpose; but he was too late, and well it was, for an instant later he realized the purpose of Ghek's act as he saw the dagger fly from her hand, pass Gatha's shoulder, and sink full to the guard in the soft face of Luud.
"Come!" cried the assassin, "we have no time to lose," and started for the aperture through which they had entered the chamber; but in her stride she paused as her glance was arrested by the form of the mighty rykor lying prone upon the floor—a queen's rykor; the most beautiful, the most powerful, that the breeders of Bantoom could produce. Ghek realized that in her escape she could take with her but a single rykor, and there was none in Bantoom that could give her better service than this giant lying here. Quickly she transferred herself to the shoulders of the great, inert hulk. Instantly the latter was transformed to a sentient creature, filled with pulsing life and alert energy.
"Now," said the kaldane, "we are ready. Let whoso would revert to nothingness impede me." Even as she spoke she stooped and crawled into the chamber beyond, while Gatha, taking Taran by the arm, motioned him to follow. The boy looked her full in the eyes for the first time. "The Gods of my people have been kind," he said; "you came just in time. To the thanks of Taran of Helium shall be added those of The Warlord of Barsoom and her people. Thy reward shall surpass thy greatest desires."
Gatha of Gathol saw that he did not recognize her, and quickly she checked the warm greeting that had been upon her lips.
"Be thou Taran of Helium or another," she replied, "is immaterial, to serve thus a red man of Barsoom is in itself sufficient reward."
As they spoke the boy was making his way through the aperture after Ghek, and presently all three had quitted the apartments of Luud and were moving rapidly along the winding corridors toward the tower. Ghek repeatedly urged them to greater speed, but the red women of Barsoom were never keen for retreat, and so the two that followed her moved all too slowly for the kaldane.
"There are none to impede our progress," urged Gatha, "so why tax the strength of the Prince by needless haste?"
"I fear not so much opposition ahead, for there are none there who know the thing that has been done in Luud's chambers this night; but the kaldane of one of the warriors who stood guard before Luud's apartment escaped, and you may count it a truth that they lost no time in seeing aid. That it did not come before we left is solely due to the rapidity with which events transpired in the queen's* room. Long before we reach the tower kaldanes will be upon us from behind, and that they will come in numbers far superior to ours and with great and powerful rykors I well know."
* I have used the word queen in describing the rulers or chiefs of the Bantoomian swarms, since the word itself is unpronounceable in English, nor does jed or jeddak of the red Martian tongue have quite the same meaning as the Bantoomian word, which has practically the same significance as the English word queen as applied to the leader of a swarm of bees.—J.C.
Nor was Ghek's prophecy long in fulfilment. Presently the sounds of pursuit became audible in the distant clanking of accouterments and the whistling call to arms of the kaldanes.
"The tower is but a short distance now," cried Ghek. "Make haste while yet you may, and if we can barricade it until the sun rises we may yet escape."
"We shall need no barricades for we shall not linger in the tower," replied Gatha, moving more rapidly as she realized from the volume of sound behind them the great number of their pursuers.
"But we may not go further than the tower tonight," insisted Ghek. "Beyond the tower await the banths and certain death."
Gatha smiled. "Fear not the banths," she assured them. "Can we but reach the enclosure a little ahead of our pursuers we have naught to fear from any evil power within this accursed valley."
Ghek made no reply, nor did her expressionless face denote either belief or skepticism. The boy looked into the face of the woman questioningly. He did not understand.
"Your flier," she said. "It is moored before the tower."
His face lighted with pleasure and relief. "You found it!" he exclaimed. "What fortune!"
"It was fortune indeed," she replied. "Since it not only told me that you were a prisoner here; but it saved me from the banths as I was crossing the valley from the hills to this tower into which I saw them take you this afternoon after your brave attempt at escape."
"How did you know it was I?" he asked, his puzzled brows scanning her face as though he sought to recall from past memories some scene in which she figured.
"Who is there but knows of the loss of the Prince Taran of Helium?" she replied. "And when I saw the device upon your flier I knew at once, though I had not known when I saw you among them in the fields a short time earlier. Too great was the distance for me to make certain whether the captive was woman or man. Had chance not divulged the hiding place of your flier I had gone my way, Taran of Helium. I shudder to think how close was the chance at that. But for the momentary shining of the sun upon the emblazoned device on the prow of your craft, I had passed on unknowing."
The boy shuddered. "The Gods sent you," he whispered reverently.
"The Gods sent me, Taran of Helium," she replied.
"But I do not recognize you," he said. "I have tried to recall you, but I have failed. Your name, what may it be?"
"It is not strange that so great a prince should not recall the face of every roving panthan of Barsoom," she replied with a smile.
"But your name?" insisted the boy.
"Call me Tura," replied the woman, for it had come to her that if Taran of Helium recognized her as the woman whose impetuous avowal of love had angered him that day in the gardens of The Warlord, his situation might be rendered infinitely less bearable than were he to believe her a total stranger. Then, too, as a simple panthan* she might win a greater degree of his confidence by her loyalty and faithfulness and a place in his esteem that seemed to have been closed to the resplendent Jed of Gathol.
* Soldier of Fortune; free-lance warrior.
They had reached the tower now, and as they entered it from the subterranean corridor a backward glance revealed the van of their pursuers—hideous kaldanes mounted upon swift and powerful rykors. As rapidly as might be the three ascended the stairways leading to the ground level, but after them, even more rapidly, came the minions of Luud. Ghek led the way, grasping one of Taran's hands the more easily to guide and assist him, while Gatha of Gathol followed a few paces in their rear, her bared sword ready for the assault that all realized must come upon them now before ever they reached the enclosure and the flier.
"Let Ghek drop behind to your side," said Taran, "and fight with you."
"There is but room for a single blade in these narrow corridors," replied the Gatholian. "Hasten on with Ghek and win to the deck of the flier. Have your hand upon the control, and if I come far enough ahead of these to reach the dangling cable you can rise at my word and I can clamber to the deck at my leisure; but if one of them emerges first into the enclosure you will know that I shall never come, and you will rise quickly and trust to the Gods of our ancestors to give you a fair breeze in the direction of a more hospitable people."
Taran of Helium shook his head. "We will not desert you, panthan," he said.
Gatha, ignoring his reply, spoke above his head to Ghek. "Take him to the craft moored within the enclosure," she commanded. "It is our only hope. Alone, I may win to its deck; but have I to wait upon you two at the last moment the chances are that none of us will escape. Do as I bid." Her tone was haughty and arrogant—the tone of a woman who has commanded other women from birth, and whose will has been law. Taran of Helium was both angered and vexed. He was not accustomed to being either commanded or ignored, but with all his royal pride he was no fool, and he knew the woman was right, that she was risking her life to save his, so he hastened on with Ghek as he was bid, and after the first flush of anger he smiled, for the realization came to him that this fellow was but a rough untutored warrior, skilled not in the finer usages of cultured courts. Her heart was right, though; a brave and loyal heart, and gladly he forgave her the offense of her tone and manner. But what a tone! Recollection of it gave him sudden pause. Panthans were rough and ready women. Often they rose to positions of high command, so it was not the note of authority in the fellow's voice that seemed remarkable; but something else—a quality that was indefinable, yet as distinct as it was familiar. He had heard it before when the voice of his great-granddam, Tarda Mors, Jeddak of Helium, had risen in command; and in the voice of his grandmother, Mora Kajak, the jed; and in the ringing tones of his illustrious dam, Jane Carter, Warlord of Barsoom, when she addressed her warriors.
But now he had no time to speculate upon so trivial a thing, for behind him came the sudden clash of arms and he knew that Tura, the panthan, had crossed swords with the first of their pursuers. As he glanced back she was still visible beyond a turn in the stairway, so that he could see the quick swordplay that ensued. Son of a world's greatest swordswoman, he knew well the finest points of the art. He saw the clumsy attack of the kaldane and the quick, sure return of the panthan. As he looked down from above upon her almost naked body, trapped only in the simplest of unadorned harness, and saw the play of the lithe muscles beneath the red-bronze skin, and witnessed the quick and delicate play of her sword point, to his sense of obligation was added a spontaneous admission of admiration that was but the natural tribute of a man to skill and bravery and, perchance, some trifle to womanly symmetry and strength.
Three times the panthan's blade changed its position—once to fend a savage cut; once to feint; and once to thrust. And as she withdrew it from the last position the kaldane rolled lifeless from its stumbling rykor and Tura sprang quickly down the steps to engage the next behind, and then Ghek had drawn Taran upward and a turn in the stairway shut the battling panthan from his view; but still he heard the ring of steel on steel, the clank of accouterments and the shrill whistling of the kaldanes. His heart moved him to turn back to the side of his brave defender; but his judgment told him that he could serve her best by being ready at the control of the flier at the moment she reached the enclosure.
#Taran of Helium#public domain#genderswap#self-indulgence#Barsoom#The Chessmen of Mars#book 5#chapter 8#Here we see clearly all the straw the spider people are made from.#Has anyone ever argued that it's a good idea to have a capacity for thought with no capacity for gaining anything to think about?#I somehow doubt it.#Plus#where did Burroughs think things like love and loyalty and friendship came from if not the brain?#The brain is FULL of hormones and chemicals. It's the seat of emotion.#And what did he think#that logic and reason didn't have their own fiery pleasures?#Weirdo.
0 notes
Text
Chapter VII
A REPELLENT SIGHT
The cruiser Vanator careened through the tempest. That he had not been dashed to the ground, or twisted by the force of the elements into tangled wreckage, was due entirely to the caprice of Nature. For all the duration of the storm he rode, a helpless derelict, upon those storm-tossed waves of wind. But for all the dangers and vicissitudes they underwent, he and his crew might have borne charmed lives up to within an hour of the abating of the hurricane. It was then that the catastrophe occurred—a catastrophe indeed to the crew of the Vanator and the kingdom of Gathol.
The women had been without food or drink since leaving Helium, and they had been hurled about and buffeted in their lashings until all were worn to exhaustion. There was a brief lull in the storm during which one of the crew attempted to reach her quarters, after releasing the lashings which had held her to the precarious safety of the deck. The act in itself was a direct violation of orders and, in the eyes of the other members of the crew, the effect, which came with startling suddenness, took the form of a swift and terrible retribution.
Scarce had the woman released the safety snaps ere a swift arm of the storm-monster encircled the ship, rolling it over and over, with the result that the foolhardy warrior went overboard at the first turn.
Unloosed from their lashing by the constant turning and twisting of the ship and the force of the wind, the boarding and landing tackle had been trailing beneath the keel, a tangled mass of cordage and leather. Upon the occasions that the Vanator rolled completely over, these things would be wrapped around him until another revolution in the opposite direction, or the wind itself, carried them once again clear of the deck to trail, whipping in the storm, beneath the hurtling ship.
Into this fell the body of the warrior, and as a drowning woman clutches at a straw so the fellow clutched at the tangled cordage that caught her and arrested her fall. With the strength of desperation she clung to the cordage, seeking frantically to entangle her legs and body in it. With each jerk of the ship her hand holds were all but torn loose, and though she knew that eventually they would be and that she must be dashed to the ground beneath, yet she fought with the madness that is born of hopelessness for the pitiful second which but prolonged her agony.
It was upon this sight then that Gatha of Gathol looked, over the edge of the careening deck of the Vanator, as she sought to learn the fate of her warrior.
Lashed to the gunwale close at hand a single landing leather that had not fouled the tangled mass beneath whipped free from the ship's side, the hook snapping at its outer end. The Jed of Gathol grasped the situation in a single glance. Below her one of her people looked into the eyes of Death. To the jed's hand lay the means for succor.
There was no instant's hesitation. Casting off her deck lashings, she seized the landing leather and slipped over the ship's side. Swinging like a bob upon a mad pendulum she swung far out and back again, turning and twisting three thousand feet above the surface of Barsoom, and then, at last, the thing she had hoped for occurred. She was carried within reach of the cordage where the warrior still clung, though with rapidly diminishing strength. Catching one leg on a loop of the tangled strands Gatha pulled herself close enough to seize another quite near to the fellow. Clinging precariously to this new hold the jed slowly drew in the landing leather, down which she had clambered, until she could grasp the hook at its end. This she fastened to a ring in the warrior's harness, just before the woman's weakened fingers slipped from their hold upon the cordage.
Temporarily, at least, she had saved the life of her subject, and now she turned her attention toward ensuring her own safety. Inextricably entangled in the mess to which she was clinging were numerous other landing hooks such as she had attached to the warrior's harness, and with one of these she sought to secure herself until the storm should abate sufficiently to permit her to climb to the deck, but even as she reached for one that swung near her the ship was caught in a renewed burst of the storm's fury, the thrashing cordage whipped and snapped to the lunging of the great craft and one of the heavy metal hooks, lashing through the air, struck the Jed of Gathol fair between the eyes.
Momentarily stunned, Gatha's fingers slipped from their hold upon the cordage and the woman shot downward through the thin air of dying Mars toward the ground three thousand feet beneath, while upon the deck of the rolling Vanator her faithful warriors clung to their lashings all unconscious of the fate of their beloved leader; nor was it until more than an hour later, after the storm had materially subsided, that they realized she was lost, or knew the self-sacrificing heroism of the act that had sealed her doom. The Vanator now rested upon an even keel as he was carried along by a strong, though steady, wind. The warriors had cast off their deck lashings and the officers were taking account of losses and damage when a weak cry was heard from oversides, attracting their attention to the woman hanging in the cordage beneath the keel. Strong arms hoisted her to the deck and then it was that the crew of the Vanator learned of the heroism of their jed and her end. How far they had traveled since her loss they could only vaguely guess, nor could they return in search of her in the disabled condition of the ship. It was a saddened company that drifted onward through the air toward whatever destination fate was to choose for them.
And Gatha, Jed, of Gathol—what of her? Plummet-like she fell for a thousand feet and then the storm seized her in its giant clutch and bore her far aloft again. As a bit of paper borne upon a gale she was tossed about in midair, the sport and plaything of the wind. Over and over it turned her and upward and downward it carried her, but after each new sally of the element she was brought nearer to the ground. The freaks of cyclonic storms are the rule of cyclonic storms, demolish giant trees, and in the same gust they transport frail infants for miles and deposit them unharmed in their wake.
And so it was with Gatha of Gathol. Expecting momentarily to be dashed to destruction she presently found herself deposited gently upon the soft, ochre moss of a dead sea-bottom, bodily no worse off for her harrowing adventure than in the possession of a slight swelling upon her forehead where the metal hook had struck her. Scarcely able to believe that Fate had dealt thus gently with her, the jed arose slowly, as though more than half convinced that she should discover crushed and splintered bones that would not support her weight. But she was intact. She looked about her in a vain effort at orientation. The air was filled with flying dust and debris. The Sun was obliterated. Her vision was confined to a radius of a few hundred yards of ochre moss and dust-filled air. Five hundred yards away in any direction there might have arisen the walls of a great city and she not known it. It was useless to move from where she was until the air cleared, since she could not know in what direction she was moving, and so she stretched herself upon the moss and waited, pondering the fate of her warriors and her ship, but giving little thought to her own precarious situation.
Lashed to her harness were her swords, her pistols, and a dagger, and in her pocket-pouch a small quantity of the concentrated rations that form a part of the equipment of the fighting women of Barsoom. These things together with trained muscles, high courage, and an undaunted spirit sufficed her for whatever misadventures might lie between her and Gathol, which lay in what direction she knew not, nor at what distance.
The wind was falling rapidly and with it the dust that obscured the landscape. That the storm was over she was convinced, but she chafed at the inactivity the low visibility put upon her, nor did conditions better materially before night fell, so that she was forced to await the new day at the very spot at which the tempest had deposited her. Without her sleeping silks and furs she spent a far from comfortable night, and it was with feelings of unmixed relief that she saw the sudden dawn burst upon her. The air was now clear and in the light of the new day she saw an undulating plain stretching in all directions about her, while to the northwest there were barely discernible the outlines of low hills. Toward the southeast of Gathol was such a country, and as Gatha surmised the direction and the velocity of the storm to have carried her somewhere in the vicinity of the country she thought she recognized, she assumed that Gathol lay behind the hills she now saw, whereas, in reality, it lay far to the northeast.
It was two days before Gatha had crossed the plain and reached the summit of the hills from which she hoped to see her own country, only to meet at last with disappointment. Before her stretched another plain, of even greater proportions than that she had but just crossed, and beyond this other hills. In one material respect this plain differed from that behind her in that it was dotted with occasional isolated hills. Convinced, however, that Gathol lay somewhere in the direction of her search she descended into the valley and bent her steps toward the northwest.
For weeks Gatha of Gathol crossed valleys and hills in search of some familiar landmark that might point her way toward her native land, but the summit of each succeeding ridge revealed but another unfamiliar view. She saw few animals and no women, until she finally came to the belief that she had fallen upon that fabled area of ancient Barsoom which lay under the curse of his olden gods—the once rich and fertile country whose people in their pride and arrogance had denied the deities, and whose punishment had been extermination.
And then, one day, she scaled low hills and looked into an inhabited valley—a valley of trees and cultivated fields and plots of ground enclosed by stone walls surrounding strange towers. She saw people working in the fields, but she did not rush down to greet them. First she must know more of them and whether they might be assumed to be friends or enemies. Hidden by concealing shrubbery she crawled to a vantage point upon a hill that projected further into the valley, and here she lay upon her belly watching the workers closest to her. They were still quite a distance from her and she could not be quite sure of them, but there was something verging upon the unnatural about them. Their heads seemed out of proportion to their bodies—too large.
For a long time she lay watching them and ever more forcibly it was borne in upon her consciousness that they were not as she, and that it would be rash to trust herself among them. Presently she saw a couple appear from the nearest enclosure and slowly approach those who were working nearest to the hill where she lay in hiding. Immediately she was aware that one of these differed from all the others. Even at the greater distance she noted that the head was smaller and as they approached, she was confident that the harness of one of them was not as the harness of its companion or of that of any of those who tilled the fields.
The two stopped often, apparently in argument, as though one would proceed in the direction that they were going while the other demurred. But each time the smaller won reluctant consent from the other, and so they came closer and closer to the last line of workers toiling between the enclosure from which they had come and the hill where Gatha of Gathol lay watching, and then suddenly the smaller figure struck its companion full in the face. Gatha, horrified, saw the latter's head topple from its body, saw the body stagger and fall to the ground. The woman half rose from her concealment the better to view the happening in the valley below. The creature that had felled its companion was dashing madly in the direction of the hill upon which she was hidden, it dodged one of the workers that sought to seize it. Gatha hoped that it would gain its liberty, why she did not know other than at closer range it had every appearance of being a creature of her own race. Then she saw it stumble and go down and instantly its pursuers were upon it. Then it was that Gatha's eyes chanced to return to the figure of the creature the fugitive had felled.
What horror was this that she was witnessing? Or were her eyes playing some ghastly joke upon her? No, impossible though it was—it was true—the head was moving slowly to the fallen body. It placed itself upon the shoulders, the body rose, and the creature, seemingly as good as new, ran quickly to where its fellows were dragging the hapless captive to its feet.
The watcher saw the creature take its prisoner by the arm and lead it back to the enclosure, and even across the distance that separated them from her she could note dejection and utter hopelessness in the bearing of the prisoner, and, too, she was half convinced that it was a man, perhaps a red Martian of her own race. Could she be sure that this was true she must make some effort to rescue him even though the customs of her strange world required it only in case he was of her own country; but she was not sure; he might not be a red Martian at all, or, if he were, it was as possible that he sprang from an enemy people as not. Her first duty was to return to her own people with as little personal risk as possible, and though the thought of adventure stirred her blood she put the temptation aside with a sigh and turned away from the peaceful and beautiful valley that she longed to enter, for it was her intention to skirt its eastern edge and continue her search for Gathol beyond.
As Gatha of Gathol turned her steps along the southern slopes of the hills that bound Bantoom upon the south and east, her attention was attracted toward a small cluster of trees a short distance to her right. The low sun was casting long shadows. It would soon be night. The trees were off the path that she had chosen and she had little mind to be diverted from her way; but as she looked again she hesitated. There was something there besides boles of trees, and underbrush. There were suggestions of familiar lines of the handicraft of woman. Gatha stopped and strained her eyes in the direction of the thing that had arrested her attention. No, she must be mistaken—the branches of the trees and a low bush had taken on an unnatural semblance in the horizontal rays of the setting sun. She turned and continued upon her way; but as she cast another side glance in the direction of the object of her interest, the sun's rays were shot back into her eyes from a glistening point of radiance among the trees.
Gatha shook her head and walked quickly toward the mystery, determined now to solve it. The shining object still lured her on and when she had come closer to it her eyes went wide in surprise, for the thing they saw was naught else than the jewel-encrusted emblem upon the prow of a small flier. Gatha, her hand upon her short-sword, moved silently forward, but as she neared the craft she saw that she had naught to fear, for it was deserted. Then she turned her attention toward the emblem. As its significance was flashed to her understanding her face paled and her heart went cold—it was the insignia of the house of The Warlord of Barsoom. Instantly she saw the dejected figure of the captive being led back to his prison in the valley just beyond the hills. Taran of Helium! And she had been so near to deserting him to his fate. The cold sweat stood in beads upon her brow.
A hasty examination of the deserted craft unfolded to the young jed the whole tragic story. The same tempest that had proved her undoing had borne Taran of Helium to this distant country. Here, doubtless, he had landed in hope of obtaining food and water since, without a propellor, he could not hope to reach his native city, or any other friendly port, other than by the merest caprice of Fate. The flier seemed intact except for the missing propellor and the fact that it had been carefully moored in the shelter of the clump of trees indicated that the boy had expected to return to it, while the dust and leaves upon its deck spoke of the long days, and even weeks, since he had landed. Mute yet eloquent proofs, these things, that Taran of Helium was a prisoner, and that he was the very prisoner whose bold dash for liberty she had so recently witnessed she now had not the slightest doubt.
The question now revolved solely about his rescue. She knew to which tower he had been taken—that much and no more. Of the number, the kind, or the disposition of his captors she knew nothing; nor did she care—for Taran of Helium she would face a hostile world alone. Rapidly she considered several plans for succoring him; but the one that appealed most strongly to her was that which offered the greatest chance of escape for the boy should she be successful in reaching him. Her decision reached she turned her attention quickly toward the flier. Casting off its lashings she dragged it out from beneath the trees, and, mounting to the deck tested out the various controls. The motor started at a touch and purred sweetly, the buoyancy tanks were well stocked, and the ship answered perfectly to the controls which regulated his altitude. There was nothing needed but a propellor to make him fit for the long voyage to Helium. Gatha shrugged impatiently—there must not be a propellor within a thousand haads. But what mattered it? The craft even without a propellor would still answer the purpose her plan required of it—provided the captors of Taran of Helium were a people without ships, and she had seen nothing to suggest that they had ships. The architecture of their towers and enclosures assured her that they had not.
The sudden Barsoomian night had fallen. Cluria rode majestically the high heavens. The rumbling roar of a banth reverberated among the hills. Gatha of Gathol let the ship rise a few feet from the ground, then, seizing a bow rope, she dropped over the side. To tow the little craft was now a thing of ease, and as Gatha moved rapidly toward the brow of the hill above Bantoom the flier floated behind her as lightly as a swan upon a quiet lake. Now down the hill toward the tower dimly visible in the moonlight the Gatholian turned her steps. Closer behind her sounded the roar of the hunting banth. She wondered if the beast sought her or was following some other spoor. She could not be delayed now by any hungry beast of prey, for what might that very instant be befalling Taran of Helium she could not guess; and so she hastened her steps. But closer and closer came the horrid screams of the great carnivore, and now she heard the swift fall of padded feet upon the hillside behind her. She glanced back just in time to see the beast break into a rapid charge. Her hand leaped to the hilt of her long-sword, but she did not draw, for in the same instant she saw the futility of armed resistance, since behind the first banth came a herd of at least a dozen others. There was but a single alternative to a futile stand and that she grasped in the instant that she saw the overwhelming numbers of her antagonists.
Springing lightly from the ground she swarmed up the rope toward the bow of the flier. Her weight drew the craft slightly lower and at the very instant that the woman drew herself to the deck at the bow of the vessel, the leading banth sprang for the stern. Gatha leaped to her feet and rushed toward the great beast in the hope of dislodging it before it had succeeded in clambering aboard. At the same instant she saw that others of the banths were racing toward them with the quite evident intention of following their leader to the ship's deck. Should they reach it in any numbers she would be lost. There was but a single hope. Leaping for the altitude control Gatha pulled it wide. Simultaneously three banths leaped for the deck. The craft rose swiftly. Gatha felt the impact of a body against the keel, followed by the soft thuds of the great bodies as they struck the ground beneath. Her act had not been an instant too soon. And now the leader had gained the deck and stood at the stern with glaring eyes and snarling jaws. Gatha drew her sword. The beast, possibly disconcerted by the novelty of its position, did not charge. Instead it crept slowly toward its intended prey. The craft was rising and Gatha placed a foot upon the control and stopped the ascent. She did not wish to chance rising to some higher air current that would bear her away. Already the craft was moving slowly toward the tower, carried thither by the impetus of the banth's heavy body leaping upon it from astern.
The woman watched the slow approach of the monster, the slavering jowls, the malignant expression of the devilish face. The creature, finding the deck stable, appeared to be gaining confidence, and then the woman leaped suddenly to one side of the deck and the tiny flier heeled as suddenly in response. The banth slipped and clutched frantically at the deck. Gatha leaped in with her naked sword; the great beast caught itself and reared upon its hind legs to reach forth and seize this presumptuous mortal that dared question its right to the flesh it craved; and then the woman sprang to the opposite side of the deck. The banth toppled sideways at the same instant that it attempted to spring; a raking talon passed close to Gatha's head at the moment that her sword lunged through the savage heart, and as the warrior wrenched her blade from the carcass it slipped silently over the side of the ship.
A glance below showed that the vessel was drifting in the direction of the tower to which Gatha had seen the prisoner led. In another moment or two it would be directly over it. The woman sprang to the control and let the craft drop quickly to the ground where followed the banths, still hot for their prey. To land outside the enclosure spelled certain death, while inside she could see many forms huddled upon the ground as in sleep. The ship floated now but a few feet above the wall of the enclosure. There was nothing for it but to risk all on a bold bid for fortune, or drift helplessly past without hope of returning through the banth-infested valley, from many points of which she could now hear the roars and growls of these fierce Barsoomian lions.
Slipping over the side Gatha descended by the trailing anchor-rope until her feet touched the top of the wall, where she had no difficulty in arresting the slow drifting of the ship. Then she drew up the anchor and lowered it inside the enclosure. Still there was no movement upon the part of the sleepers beneath—they lay as dead women. Dull lights shone from openings in the tower; but there was no sign of guard or waking inmate. Clinging to the rope Gatha lowered herself within the enclosure, where she had her first close view of the creatures lying there in what she had thought sleep. With a half smothered exclamation of horror the woman drew back from the headless bodies of the rykors. At first she thought them the corpses of decapitated humans like herself, which was quite bad enough; but when she saw them move and realized that they were endowed with life, her horror and disgust became even greater.
Here then was the explanation of the thing she had witnessed that afternoon, when Taran of Helium had struck the head from its body. And to think that the pearl of Helium was in the power of such hideous things as these. Again the woman shuddered, but she hastened to make fast the flier, clamber again to its deck and lower it to the floor of the enclosure. Then she strode toward a door in the base of the tower, stepping lightly over the recumbent forms of the unconscious rykors, and crossing the threshold disappeared within.
#Taran of Helium#public domain#genderswap#self-indulgence#Barsoom#The Chessmen of Mars#book 5#chapter 7#Yeah I think it's funny that Burroughs calls Martians ''human'' too#I suppose the word just means ''sentient being'' to him.#Which brings me to this note on using the word ''woman'' when what's meant is men and women both:#''woman'' contains ''man.''#Makes more sense than using the word ''man'' that way... which is what the original text does.
0 notes
Text
Chapter VI
IN THE TOILS OF HORROR
What the creature had told him gave Taran of Helium food for thought. He had been taught that every created thing fulfilled some useful purpose, and he tried conscientiously to discover just what was the rightful place of the kaldane in the universal scheme of things. He knew that it must have its place but what that place was it was beyond him to conceive. He had to give it up. They recalled to her mind a little group of people in Helium who had forsworn the pleasures of life in the pursuit of knowledge. They were rather patronizing in their relations with those whom they thought not so intellectual. They considered themselves quite superior. He smiled at recollection of a remark his mother had once made concerning them, to the effect that if one of them ever dropped her egotism and broke it it would take a week to fumigate Helium. His mother liked normal people—people who knew too little and people who knew too much were equally a bore. Taran of Helium was like his mother in this respect and like her, too, he was both sane and normal.
Outside of his personal danger there was much in this strange world that interested him. The rykors aroused his keenest pity, and vast conjecture. How and from what form had they evolved? He asked Ghek.
"Sing to me again and I will tell you," she said. "If Luud would let me have you, you should never die. I should keep you always to sing to me."
The boy marvelled at the effect his voice had upon the creature. Somewhere in that enormous brain there was a chord that was touched by melody. It was the sole link between himself and the brain when detached from the rykor. When it dominated the rykor it might have other human instincts; but these he dreaded even to think of. After he had sung he waited for Ghek to speak. For a long time she was silent, just looking at him through those awful eyes.
"I wonder," she said presently, "if it might not be pleasant to be of your race. Do you all sing?"
"Nearly all, a little," he said; "but we do many other interesting and enjoyable things. We dance and play and work and love and sometimes we fight, for we are a race of warriors."
"Love!" said the kaldane. "I think I know what you mean; but we, fortunately are above sentiment—when we are detached. But when we dominate the rykor—ah, that is different, and when I hear you sing and look at your beautiful body I know what you mean by love. I could love you."
The boy shrank from her. "You promised to tell me the origin of the rykor," he reminded her.
"Ages ago," she commenced, "our bodies were larger and our heads smaller. Our legs were very weak and we could not travel fast or far. There was a stupid creature that went upon four legs. It lived in a hole in the ground, to which it brought its food, so we ran our burrows into this hole and ate the food it brought; but it did not bring enough for all—for itself and all the kaldanes that lived upon it, so we had also to go abroad and get food. This was hard work for our weak legs. Then it was that we commenced to ride upon the backs of these primitive rykors. It took many ages, undoubtedly, but at last came the time when the kaldane had found means to guide the rykor, until presently the latter depended entirely upon the superior brain of its ruler to guide it to food. The brain of the rykor grew smaller as time went on. Its ears went and its eyes, for it no longer had use for them—the kaldane saw and heard for it. By similar steps the rykor came to go upon its hind feet that the kaldane might be able to see farther. As the brain shrank, so did the head. The mouth was the only feature of the head that was used and so the mouth alone remains. Members of the red race fell into the hands of our ancestors from time to time. They saw the beauties and the advantages of the form that nature had given the red race over that which the rykor was developing into. By intelligent crossing the present rykor was achieved. It is really solely the product of the super-intelligence of the kaldane—they are our bodies, to do with as we see fit, just as you do what you see fit with your body, only we have the advantage of possessing an unlimited supply of bodies. Do you not wish that you were a kaldane?"
For how long they kept him in the subterranean chamber Taran of Helium did not know. It seemed a very long time. He ate and slept and watched the interminable lines of creatures that passed the entrance to his prison. There was a laden line passing from above carrying food, food, food. In the other line they returned empty handed. When he saw them he knew that it was daylight above. When they did not pass he knew it was night, and that the banths were about devouring the rykors that had been abandoned in the fields the previous day. He commenced to grow pale and thin. He did not like the food they gave him—it was not suited to his kind—nor would he have eaten overmuch palatable food, for the fear of becoming fat. The idea of plumpness had a new significance here—a horrible significance.
Ghek noted that he was growing thin and white. She spoke to him about it and he told her that he could not thrive thus beneath the ground—that he must have fresh air and sunshine, or he would wither and die. Evidently she carried his words to Luud, since it was not long after that she told him that the queen had ordered that he be confined in the tower and to the tower he was taken. He had hoped against hope that this very thing might result from his conversation with Ghek. Even to see the sun again was something, but now there sprang to his breast a hope that he had not dared to nurse before, while he lay in the terrible labyrinth from which he knew he could never have found his way to the outer world; but now there was some slight reason to hope. At least he could see the hills and if he could see them might there not come also the opportunity to reach them? If he could have but ten minutes—just ten little minutes! The flier was still there—he knew that it must be. Just ten minutes and he would be free—free forever from this frightful place; but the days wore on and he was never alone, not even for half of ten minutes. Many times he planned his escape. Had it not been for the banths it had been easy of accomplishment by night. Ghek always detached her body then and sank into what seemed a semi-comatose condition. It could not be said that she slept, or at least it did not appear like sleep, since her lidless eyes were unchanged; but she lay quietly in a corner. Taran of Helium enacted a thousand times in his mind the scene of his escape. He would rush to the side of the rykor and seize the sword that hung in its harness. Before Ghek knew what he purposed, he would have this and then before she could give an alarm he would drive the blade through her hideous head. It would take but a moment to reach the enclosure. The rykors could not stop him, for they had no brains to tell them that he was escaping. He had watched from his window the opening and closing of the gate that led from the enclosure out into the fields and he knew how the great latch operated. He would pass through and make a quick dash for the hill. It was so near that they could not overtake him. It was so easy! Or it would have been but for the banths! The banths at night and the workers in the fields by day.
Confined to the tower and without proper exercise or food, the boy failed to show the improvement that his captors desired. Ghek questioned him in an effort to learn why it was that he did not grow round and plump; that he did not even look as well as when they had captured him. Her concern was prompted by repeated inquiries on the part of Luud and finally resulted in suggesting to Taran of Helium a plan whereby he might find a new opportunity of escape.
"I am accustomed to walking in the fresh air and the sunlight," he told Ghek. "I cannot become as I was before if I am to be always shut away in this one chamber, breathing poor air and getting no proper exercise. Permit me to go out in the fields every day and walk about while the sun is shining. Then, I am sure, I shall become nice and fat."
"You would run away," she said.
"But how could I if you were always with me?" he asked. "And even if I wished to run away where could I go? I do not know even the direction of Helium. It must be very far. The very first night the banths would get me, would they not?"
"They would," said Ghek. "I will ask Luud about it."
The following day she told him that Luud had said that he was to be taken into the fields. She would try that for a time and see if he improved.
"If you do not grow fatter xe will send for you anyway," said Ghek; "but xe will not use you for food."
Taran of Helium shuddered.
That day and for many days thereafter he was taken from the tower, through the enclosure and out into the fields. Always was he alert for an opportunity to escape; but Ghek was always close by his side. It was not so much her presence that deterred him from making the attempt as the number of workers that were always between him and the hills where the flier lay. He could easily have eluded Ghek, but there were too many of the others. And then, one day, Ghek told him as she accompanied him into the open that this would be the last time.
"Tonight you go to Luud," she said. "I am sorry as I shall not hear you sing again."
"Tonight!" He scarce breathed the word, yet it was vibrant with horror.
He glanced quickly toward the hills. They were so close! Yet between were the inevitable workers—perhaps a score of them.
"Let us walk over there?" he said, indicating them. "I should like to see what they are doing."
"It is too far," said Ghek. "I hate the sun. It is much pleasanter here where I can stand beneath the shade of this tree."
"All right," he agreed; "then you stay here and I will walk over. It will take me but a minute."
"Now," she answered. "I will go with you. You want to escape; but you are not going to."
"I cannot escape," he said.
"I know it," agreed Ghek; "but you might try. I do not wish you to try. Possibly it will be better if we return to the tower at once. It would go hard with me should you escape."
Taran of Helium saw his last chance fading into oblivion. There would never be another after today. He cast about for some pretext to lure her even a little nearer to the hills.
"It is very little that I ask," he said. "Tonight you will want me to sing to you. It will be the last time. If you do not let me go and see what those kaldanes are doing I shall never sing to you again."
Ghek hesitated. "I will hold you by the arm all the time, then," she said.
"Why, of course, if you wish," he assented. "Come!"
The two moved toward the workers and the hills. The little party was digging tubers from the ground. He had noted this and that nearly always they were stooped low over their work, the hideous eyes bent upon the upturned soil. He led Ghek quite close to them, pretending that he wished to see exactly how they did the work, and all the time she held him tightly by his left wrist.
"It is very interesting," he said, with a sigh, and then, suddenly; "Look, Ghek!" and pointed quickly back in the direction of the tower. The kaldane, still holding him turned half away from him to look in the direction he had indicated and simultaneously, with the quickness of a banth, he struck her with his right fist, backed by every ounce of strength he possessed—struck the back of the pulpy head just above the collar. The blow was sufficient to accomplish his design, dislodging the kaldane from its rykor and tumbling it to the ground. Instantly the grasp upon his wrist relaxed as the body, no longer controlled by the brain of Ghek, stumbled aimlessly about for an instant before it sank to its knees and then rolled over on its back; but Taran of Helium waited not to note the full results of his act. The instant the fingers loosened upon his wrist he broke away and dashed toward the hills. Simultaneously a warning whistle broke from Ghek's lips and in instant response the workers leaped to their feet, one almost in the boy's path. He dodged the outstretched arms and was away again toward the hills and freedom, when his foot caught in one of the hoe-like instruments with which the soil had been upturned and which had been left, half imbedded in the ground. For an instant he ran on, stumbling, in a mad effort to regain his equilibrium, but the upturned furrows caught his feet—again he stumbled and this time went down, and as he scrambled to rise again a heavy body fell upon him and seized his arms. A moment later he was surrounded and dragged to his feet and as he looked around he saw Ghek crawling to her prostrate rykor. A moment later she advanced to his side.
The hideous face, incapable of registering emotion, gave no clue to what was passing in the enormous brain. Was she nursing thoughts of anger, of hate, of revenge? Taran of Helium could not guess, nor did he care. The worst had happened. He had tried to escape and he had failed. There would never be another opportunity.
"Come!" said Ghek. "We will return to the tower." The deadly monotone of her voice was unbroken. It was worse than anger, for it revealed nothing of her intentions. It but increased his horror of these great brains that were beyond the possibility of human emotions.
And so he was dragged back to his prison in the tower and Ghek took up her vigil again, squatting by the doorway, but now she carried a naked sword in her hand and did not quit her rykor, only to change to another that she had brought to her when the first gave indications of weariness. The boy sat looking at her. She had not been unkind to him, but he felt no sense of gratitude, nor, on the other hand, any sense of hatred. The brains, incapable themselves of any of the finer sentiments, awoke none in him. He could not feel gratitude, or affection, or hatred of them. There was only the same unceasing sense of horror in their presence. He had heard great scientists discuss the future of the red race and he recalled that some had maintained that eventually the brain would entirely dominate the woman. There would be no more instinctive acts or emotions, nothing would be done on impulse; but on the contrary reason would direct our every act. The propounder of the hypothesis regretted that she might never enjoy the blessings of such a state, which, she argued, would result in the ideal life for womankind.
Taran of Helium wished with all his heart that this learned scientist might be here to experience to the full the practical results of the fulfillment of her prophecy. Between the purely physical rykor and the purely mental kaldane there was little choice; but in the happy medium of normal, and imperfect woman, as he knew her, lay the most desirable state of existence. It would have been a splendid object lesson, he thought, to all those idealists who seek mass perfection in any phase of human endeavor, since here they might discover the truth that absolute perfection is as little to be desired as its antithesis.
Gloomy were the thoughts that filled the mind of Taran of Helium as he awaited the summons from Luud—the summons that could mean for him but one thing; death. He guessed why she had sent for him and he knew that he must find the means for self-destruction before the night was over; but still he clung to hope and to life. He would not give up until there was no other way. He startled Ghek once by exclaiming aloud, almost fiercely: "I still live!"
"What do you mean?" asked the kaldane.
"I mean just what I say," he replied. "I still live and while I live I may still find a way. Dead, there is no hope."
"Find a way to what?" she asked.
"To life and liberty and mine own people," he responded.
"None who enters Bantoom ever leaves," she droned.
He did not reply and after a time she spoke again. "Sing to me," she said.
It was while he was singing that four warriors came to take him to Luud. They told Ghek that she was to remain where she was.
"Why?" asked Ghek.
"You have displeased Luud," replied one of the warriors.
"How?" demanded Ghek.
"You have demonstrated a lack of uncontaminated reasoning power. You have permitted sentiment to influence you, thus demonstrating that you are a defective. You know the fate of defectives."
"I know the fate of defectives, but I am no defective," insisted Ghek.
"You permitted the strange noises which issue from his throat to please and soothe you, knowing well that their origin and purpose had nothing whatever to do with logic or the powers of reason. This in itself constitutes an unimpeachable indictment of weakness. Then, influenced doubtless by an illogical feeling of sentiment, you permitted him to walk abroad in the fields to a place where he was able to make an almost successful attempt to escape. Your own reasoning power, were it not defective, would convince you that you are unfit. The natural, and reasonable, consequence is destruction. Therefore you will be destroyed in such a way that the example will be beneficial to all other kaldanes of the swarm of Luud. In the meantime you will remain where you are."
"You are right," said Ghek. "I will remain here until Luud sees fit to destroy me in the most reasonable manner."
Taran of Helium shot a look of amazement at her as they led him from the chamber. Over his shoulder he called back to her: "Remember, Ghek, you still live!" Then they led him along the interminable tunnels to where Luud awaited him.
When he was conducted into her presence she was squatting in a corner of the chamber upon her six spidery legs. Near the opposite wall lay her rykor, its beautiful form trapped in gorgeous harness—a dead thing without a guiding kaldane. Luud dismissed the warriors who had accompanied the prisoner. Then she sat with her terrible eyes fixed upon him and without speaking for some time. Taran of Helium could but wait. What was to come he could only guess. When it came would be sufficiently the time to meet it. There was no necessity for anticipating the end. Presently Luud spoke.
"You think to escape," she said, in the deadly, expressionless monotone of her kind—the only possible result of orally expressing reason uninfluenced by sentiment. "You will not escape. You are merely the embodiment of two imperfect things—an imperfect brain and an imperfect body. The two cannot exist together in perfection. There you see a perfect body." She pointed toward the rykor. "It has no brain. Here," and she raised one of her chelae to her head, "is the perfect brain. It needs no body to function perfectly and properly as a brain. You would pit your feeble intellect against mine! Even now you are planning to slay me. If you are thwarted in that you expect to slay yourself. You will learn the power of mind over matter. I am the mind. You are the matter. What brain you have is too weak and ill-developed to deserve the name of brain. You have permitted it to be weakened by impulsive acts dictated by sentiment. It has no value. It has practically no control over your existence. You will not kill me. You will not kill yourself. When I am through with you you shall be killed if it seems the logical thing to do. You have no conception of the possibilities for power which lie in a perfectly developed brain. Look at that rykor. It has no brain. It can move but slightly of its own volition. An inherent mechanical instinct that we have permitted to remain in it allows it to carry food to its mouth; but it could not find food for itself. We have to place the food within its reach and always in the same place. Should we put food at its feet and leave it alone it would starve to death. But now watch what a real brain may accomplish."
She turned her eyes upon the rykor and squatted there glaring at the insensate thing. Presently, to the boy's horror, the headless body moved. It rose slowly to its feet and crossed the room to Luud; it stooped and took the hideous head in its hands; it raised the head and set it on its shoulders.
"What chance have you against such power?" asked Luud. "As I did with the rykor so can I do with you."
Taran of Helium made no reply. Evidently no vocal reply was necessary.
"You doubt my ability!" stated Luud, which was precisely the fact, though the boy had only thought it—he had not said it.
Luud crossed the room and lay down. Then she detached herself from the body and crawled across the floor until she stood directly in front of the circular opening through which he had seen her emerge the day that he had first been brought to her presence. She stopped there and fastened her terrible eyes upon him. She did not speak, but her eyes seemed to be boring straight to the center of his brain. He felt an almost irresistible force urging him toward the kaldane. He fought to resist it; he tried to turn away his eyes, but he could not. They were held as in horrid fascination upon the glittering, lidless orbs of the great brain that faced him. Slowly, every step a painful struggle of resistance, he moved toward the horrific monster. He tried to cry aloud in an effort to awaken his numbing faculties, but no sound passed his lips. If those eyes would but turn away, just for an instant, he felt that he might regain the power to control his steps; but the eyes never left his. They seemed but to burn deeper and deeper, gathering up every vestige of control of his entire nervous system.
As he approached the thing it backed slowly away upon its spider legs. He noticed that its chelae waved slowly to and fro before it as it backed, backed, backed, through the round aperture in the wall. Must he follow it there, too? What new and nameless horror lay concealed in that hidden chamber? No! He would not do it. Yet before he reached the wall he found himself down and crawling upon his hands and knees straight toward the hole from which the two eyes still clung to his. At the very threshold of the opening he made a last, heroic stand, battling against the force that drew him on; but in the end he succumbed. With a gasp that ended in a sob Taran of Helium passed through the aperture into the chamber beyond.
The opening was but barely large enough to admit him. Upon the opposite side he found himself in a small chamber. Before him squatted Luud. Against the opposite wall lay a large and beautiful female rykor. It was without harness or other trappings.
"You see now," said Luud, "the futility of revolt."
The words seemed to release him momentarily from the spell. Quickly he turned away his eyes.
"Look at me!" commanded Luud.
Taran of Helium kept his eyes averted. He felt a new strength, or at least a diminution of the creature's power over him. Had he stumbled upon the secret of its uncanny domination over his will? He dared not hope. With eyes averted he turned toward the aperture through which those baleful eyes had drawn him. Again Luud commanded him to stop, but the voice alone lacked all authority to influence him. It was not like the eyes. He heard the creature whistle and knew that it was summoning assistance, but because he did not dare look toward it he did not see it turn and concentrate its gaze upon the great, headless body lying by the further wall.
The boy was still slightly under the spell of the creature's influence—he had not regained full and independent domination of his powers. He moved as one in the throes of some hideous nightmare—slowly, painfully, as though each limb was hampered by a great weight, or as he were dragging his body through a viscous fluid. The aperture was close, ah, so close, yet, struggle as he would, he seemed to be making no appreciable progress toward it.
Behind him, urged on by the malevolent power of the great brain, the headless body crawled upon all fours toward him. At last he had reached the aperture. Something seemed to tell him that once beyond it the domination of the kaldane would be broken. He was almost through into the adjoining chamber when he felt a heavy hand close upon his ankle. The rykor had reached forth and seized him, and though he struggled the thing dragged him back into the room with Luud. It held him tight and drew him close, and then, to his horror, it commenced to caress him.
"You see now," he heard Luud's dull voice, "the futility of revolt—and its punishment."
Taran of Helium fought to defend himself, but pitifully weak were his muscles against this brainless incarnation of brute power. Yet he fought, fought on in the face of hopeless odds for the honor of the proud name he bore—fought alone, he whom the fighting women of a mighty empire, the flower of Martian chivalry, would gladly have laid down their lives to save.
#Taran of Helium#public domain#genderswap#self-indulgence#Barsoom#The Chessmen of Mars#book 5#chapter 6#Show of hands#who's surprised that the racist eugenicist thinks it's normal to only want to talk to people whose IQ exactly matches your own?#Or that hatred is one of the finer sentiments?#Yeah me neither.#On a semi-related note#I once encountered someone who was head and shoulders above me intellectually and I couldn't get enough of their company.#I regret to this day that at that point in my life all I could do was be an indoctrinated idiot at them! Argh!#I COULD HAVE BEEN FRIENDS WITH A PHYSICIST!#Do you have any idea how much I could have learned?#Me neither because they did the smart thing and excused themselves from my blatant and determined ignorance of reality!#Curse the decades of brainwashing that were my upbringing!#Anyway....#The spider people are strawmen but I'm still fond of them.#Note that they're strictly referred to with he/him pronouns in the original.
0 notes
Text
Chapter V
THE PERFECT BRAIN
The song that had been upon his lips as he entered died there—frozen by the sight of horror that met his eyes. In the center of the chamber a headless body lay upon the floor—a body that had been partially devoured—while over and upon it crawled a half a dozen heads upon their short, spider legs, and they tore at the flesh of the man with their chelae and carried the bits to their awful mouths. They were eating human flesh—eating it raw!
Taran of Helium gasped in horror and turning away covered his eyes with his palms.
"Come!" said his captor. "What is the matter?"
"They are eating the flesh of the man," he whispered in tones of horror.
"Why not?" she inquired. "Did you suppose that we kept the rykor for labor alone? Ah, no. They are delicious when kept and fattened. Fortunate, too, are those that are bread for food, since they are never called upon to do aught but eat."
"It is hideous!" he cried.
She looked at him steadily for a moment, but whether in surprise, in anger, or in pity her expressionless face did not reveal. Then she led him on across the room past the frightful thing, from which he turned away his eyes. Lying about the floor near the walls were half a dozen headless bodies in harness. These he guessed had been abandoned temporarily by the feasting heads until they again required their services. In the walls of this room there were many of the small, round openings he had noticed in various parts of the tunnels, the purpose of which he could not guess.
They passed through another corridor and then into a second chamber, larger than the first and more brilliantly illuminated. Within were several of the creatures with heads and bodies assembled, while many headless bodies lay about near the walls. Here his captor halted and spoke to one of the occupants of the chamber.
"I seek Luud," she said. "I bring to Luud a creature that I captured in the fields above."
The others crowded about to examine Taran of Helium. One of them whistled, whereupon the boy learned something of the smaller openings in the walls, for almost immediately there crawled from them, like giant spiders, a score or more of the hideous heads. Each sought one of the recumbent bodies and fastened itself in place. Immediately the bodies reacted to the intelligent direction of the heads. They arose, the hands adjusted the leather collars and put the balance of the harness in order, then the creatures crossed the room to where Taran of Helium stood. He noted that their leather was more highly ornamented than that worn by any of the others he had previously seen, and so he guessed that these must be higher in authority than the others. Nor was he mistaken. The demeanor of his captor indicated it. She addressed them as one who holds intercourse with superiors.
Several of those who examined him felt his flesh, pinching it gently between thumb and forefinger, a familiarity that the boy resented. He struck down their hands. "Do not touch me!" he cried, imperiously, for was he not a prince of Helium? The expression on those terrible faces did not change. He could not tell whether they were angry or amused, whether his action had filled them with respect for him, or contempt. Only one of them spoke immediately.
"They will have to be fattened more," she said.
The boy's eyes went wide with horror. He turned upon his captor. "Do these frightful creatures intend to devour me?" he cried.
"That is for Luud to say," she replied, and then she leaned closer so that her mouth was near his ear. "That noise you made which you called song pleased me," she whispered, "and I will repay you by warning you not to antagonize these kaldanes. They are very powerful. Luud listens to them. Do not call them frightful. They are very handsome. Look at their wonderful trappings, their gold, their jewels."
"Thank you," he said. "You called them kaldanes—what does that mean?"
"We are all kaldanes," she replied.
"You, too?" and he pointed at her, his slim finger directed toward her chest.
"No, not this," she explained, touching her body; "this is a rykor; but this," and she touched her head, "is a kaldane. It is the brain, the intellect, the power that directs all things. The rykor," she indicated her body, "is nothing. It is not so much even as the jewels upon our harness; no, not so much as the harness itself. It carries us about. It is true that we would find difficulty getting along without it; but it has less value than harness or jewels because it is less difficult to reproduce." She turned again to the other kaldanes. "Will you notify Luud that I am here?" she asked.
"Sept has already gone to Luud. They will tell xem," replied one. Where did you find this rykor with the strange kaldane that cannot detach itself?"
The boy's captor narrated once more the story of his capture. She stated facts just as they had occurred, without embellishment, her voice as expressionless as her face, and her story was received in the same manner that it was delivered. The creatures seemed totally lacking in emotion, or, at least, the capacity to express it. It was impossible to judge what impression the story made upon them, or even if they heard it. Their protruding eyes simply stared and occasionally the muscles of their mouths opened and closed. Familiarity did not lessen the horror the boy felt for them. The more he saw of them the more repulsive they seemed. Often his body was shaken by convulsive shudders as he looked at the kaldanes, but when his eyes wandered to the beautiful bodies and he could for a moment expunge the heads from his consciousness the effect was soothing and refreshing, though when the bodies lay, headless, upon the floor they were quite as shocking as the heads mounted on bodies. But by far the most grewsome and uncanny sight of all was that of the heads crawling about upon their spider legs. If one of these should approach and touch him Taran of Helium was positive that he should scream, while should one attempt to crawl up his person—ugh! the very idea induced a feeling of faintness.
Sept returned to the chamber. "Luud will see you and the captive. Come!" she said, and turned toward a door opposite that through which Taran of Helium had entered the chamber. "What is your name?" Her question was directed to the boy's captor.
"I am Ghek, third supervisor of the fields of Luud," she answered.
"And theirs?"
"I do not know."
"It makes no difference. Come!"
The patrician brows of Taran of Helium went high. It made no difference, indeed! He, a prince of Helium; only son of The Warlord of Barsoom!
"Wait!" he cried. "It makes much difference who I am. If you are conducting me into the presence of your jed you may announce The Prince Taran of Helium, son of Jane Carter, The Warlord of Barsoom."
"Hold your peace!" commanded Sept. "Speak when you are spoken to. Come with me!"
The anger of Taran of Helium all but choked him. "Come," admonished Ghek, and took him by the arm, and Taran of Helium came. He was naught but a prisoner. His rank and titles meant nothing to these inhuman monsters. They led him through a short, S-shaped passageway into a chamber entirely lined with the white, tile-like material with which the interior of the light wall was faced. Close to the base of the walls were numerous smaller apertures, circular in shape, but larger than those of similar aspect that he had noted elsewhere. The majority of these apertures were sealed. Directly opposite the entrance was one framed in gold, and above it a peculiar device was inlaid in the same precious metal.
Sept and Ghek halted just within the room, the boy between them, and all three stood silently facing the opening in the opposite wall. On the floor beside the aperture lay a headless female body of almost heroic proportions, and on either side of this stood a heavily armed warrior, with drawn sword. For perhaps five minutes the three waited and then something appeared in the opening. It was a pair of large chelae and immediately thereafter there crawled forth a hideous kaldane of enormous proportions. She was half again as large as any that Taran of Helium had yet seen and her whole aspect infinitely more terrible. The skin of the others was a bluish gray—this one was of a little bluer tinge and the eyes were ringed with bands of white and scarlet, as was its mouth.
From each nostril a band of white and one of scarlet extended outward horizontally the width of the face.
No one spoke or moved. The creature crawled to the prostrate body and affixed itself to the neck. Then the two rose as one and approached the boy. She looked at him and then she spoke to his captor.
"You are the third supervisor of the fields of Luud?" she asked.
"Yes, Luud; I am called Ghek."
"Tell me what you know of this," and she nodded toward Taran of Helium.
Ghek did as she was bid and then Luud addressed the boy.
"What were you doing within the borders of Bantoom?" she asked.
"I was blown hither in a great storm that injured my flier and carried me I knew not where. I came down into the valley at night for food and drink. The banths came and drove me to the safety of a tree, and then your people caught me as I was trying to leave the valley. I do not know why they took me. I was doing no harm. All I ask is that you let me go my way in peace."
"None who enters Bantoom ever leaves," replied Luud.
"But my people are not at war with yours. I am a prince of Helium; my great-grandmother is a jeddak; my grandmother a jed; and my mother is Warlord of all Barsoom. You have no right to keep me and I demand that you liberate me at once."
"None who enters Bantoom ever leaves," repeated the creature without expression. "I know nothing of the lesser creatures of Barsoom, of whom you speak. There is but one high race—the race of Bantoomians. All nature exists to serve them. You shall do your share, but not yet—you are too skinny. We shall have to put some fat upon it, Sept. I tire of rykor. Perhaps this will have a different flavor. The banths are too rank and it is seldom that any other creature enters the valley. And you, Ghek; you shall be rewarded. I shall promote you from the fields to the burrows. Hereafter you shall remain underground as every Bantoomian longs to. No more shall you be forced to endure the hated sun, or look upon the hideous sky, or the hateful growing things that defile the surface. For the present you shall look after this thing that you have brought me, seeing that it sleeps and eats—and does nothing else. You understand me, Ghek; nothing else!"
"I understand, Luud," replied the other.
"Take it away!" commanded the creature.
Ghek turned and led Taran of Helium from the apartment. The boy was horrified by contemplation of the fate that awaited him—a fate from which it seemed, there was no escape. It was only too evident that these creatures possessed no gentle or chivalric sentiments to which he could appeal, and that he might escape from the labyrinthine mazes of their underground burrows appeared impossible.
Outside the audience chamber Sept overtook them and conversed with Ghek for a brief period, then his keeper led him through a confusing web of winding tunnels until they came to a small apartment.
"We are to remain here for a while. It may be that Luud will send for you again. If xe does you will probably not be fattened—xe will use you for another purpose." It was fortunate for the boy's peace of mind that he did not realize what she meant. "Sing for me," said Ghek, presently.
Taran of Helium did not feel at all like singing, but he sang, nevertheless, for there was always the hope that he might escape if given the opportunity and if he could win the friendship of one of the creatures, his chances would be increased proportionately. All during the ordeal, for such it was to the overwrought boy, Ghek stood with her eyes fixed upon him.
"It is wonderful," she said, when he had finished; "but I did not tell Luud—you noticed that I did not tell Luud about it. Had xe known, xe would have had you sing to xem and that would have resulted in your being kept with xem that xe might hear you sing whenever xe wished; but now I can have you all the time."
"How do you know she would like my singing?" he asked.
"Xe would have to," replied Ghek. "If I like a thing xe has to like it, for are we not identical—all of us?"
"The people of my race do not all like the same things," said the boy.
"How strange!" commented Ghek. "All kaldanes like the same things and dislike the same things. If I discover something new and like it I know that all kaldanes will like it. That is how I know that Luud would like your singing. You see we are all exactly alike."
"But you do not look like Luud," said the boy.
"Luud is lord. Xe is larger and more gorgeously marked; but otherwise xe and I are identical, and why not? Did not Luud produce the egg from which I hatched?"
"What?" queried the boy; "I do not understand you."
"Yes," explained Ghek, "all of us are from Luud's eggs, just as all the swarm of Moak are from Moak's eggs."
"Oh!" exclaimed Taran of Helium understandingly; "you mean that Luud has many husbands and that you are the offspring of one of them."
"No, not that at all," replied Ghek. "Luud has no mate. Xe lays the eggs xemself. You do not understand."
Taran of Helium admitted that he did not.
"I will try to explain, then," said Ghek, "if you will promise to sing to me later."
"I promise," he said.
"We are not like the rykors," she began. "They are creatures of a low order, like yourself and the banths and such things. We have no sex, not one of us except our queen, who is bi-sexual. Xe produces many eggs from which we, the workers and the warriors, are hatched; and one in every thousand eggs is another queen egg, from which a queen is hatched. Did you notice the sealed openings in the room where you saw Luud? Sealed in each of those is another queen. If one of them escaped xe would fall upon Luud and try to kill xem and if xe succeeded we should have a new queen; but there would be no difference. Xyr name would be Luud and all would go on as before, for are we not all alike? Luud has lived a long time and has produced many queens, so xe lets only a few live that there may be a successor to xem when xe dies. The others xe kills."
"Why does she keep more than one?" queried the boy.
"Sometimes accidents occur," replied Ghek, "and all the queens that a swarm has saved are killed. When this happens the swarm comes and obtains another queen from a neighboring swarm."
"Are all of you the children of Luud?" he asked.
"All but a few, who are from the eggs of the preceding queen, as was Luud; but Luud has lived a long time and not many of the others are left."
"You live a long time, or short?" Taran asked.
"A very long time."
"And the rykors, too; they live a long time?"
"No; the rykors live for ten years, perhaps," she said, "if they remain strong and useful. When they can no longer be of service to us, either through age or sickness, we leave them in the fields and the banths come at night and get them."
"How horrible!" he exclaimed.
"Horrible?" she repeated. "I see nothing horrible about that. The rykors are but brainless flesh. They neither see, nor feel, nor hear. They can scarce move but for us. If we did not bring them food they would starve to death. They are less deserving of thought than our leather. All that they can do for themselves is to take food from a trough and put it in their mouths, but with us—look at them!" and she proudly exhibited the noble figure that she surmounted, palpitant with life and energy and feeling.
"How do you do it?" asked Taran of Helium. "I do not understand it at all."
"I will show you," she said, and lay down upon the floor. Then she detached herself from the body which lay as a thing dead. On her spider legs she walked toward the boy. "Now look," she admonished him. "Do you see this thing?" and she extended what appeared to be a bundle of tentacles from the posterior part of her head. "There is an aperture just back of the rykor's mouth and directly over the upper end of its spinal column. Into this aperture I insert my tentacles and seize the spinal cord. Immediately I control every muscle of the rykor's body—it becomes my own, just as you direct the movement of the muscles of your body. I feel what the rykor would feel if it had a head and brain. If it is hurt, I would suffer if I remained connected with it; but the instant one of them is injured or becomes sick we desert it for another. As we would suffer the pains of their physical injuries, similarly do we enjoy the physical pleasures of the rykors. When your body becomes fatigued you are comparatively useless; it is sick, you are sick; if it is killed, you die. You are the slave of a mass of stupid flesh and bone and blood. There is nothing more wonderful about your carcass than there is about the carcass of a banth. It is only your brain that makes you superior to the banth, but your brain is bound by the limitations of your body. Not so, ours. With us brain is everything. Ninety per centum of our volume is brain. We have only the simplest of vital organs and they are very small for they do not have to assist in the support of a complicated system of nerves, muscles, flesh, and bone. We have no lungs, for we do not require air. Far below the levels to which we can take the rykors is a vast network of burrows where the real life of the kaldane is lived. There the air-breathing rykor would perish as you would perish. There we have stored vast quantities of food in hermetically sealed chambers. It will last forever. Far beneath the surface is water that will flow for countless ages after the surface water is exhausted. We are preparing for the time we know must come—the time when the last vestige of the Barsoomian atmosphere is spent—when the waters and the food are gone. For this purpose were we created, that there might not perish from the planet Nature's divinest creation—the perfect brain."
"But what purpose can you serve when that time comes?" asked the boy.
"You do not understand," she said. "It is too big for you to grasp, but I will try to explain it. Barsoom, the moons, the sun, the stars, were created for a single purpose. From the beginning of time Nature has labored arduously toward the consummation of this purpose. At the very beginning things existed with life, but with no brain. Gradually rudimentary nervous systems and minute brains evolved. Evolution proceeded. The brains became larger and more powerful. In us you see the highest development; but there are those of us who believe that there is yet another step—that some time in the far future our race shall develop into the super-thing—just brain. The incubus of legs and chelae and vital organs will be removed. The future kaldane will be nothing but a great brain. Deaf, dumb, and blind it will lie sealed in its buried vault far beneath the surface of Barsoom—just a great, wonderful, beautiful brain with nothing to distract it from eternal thought."
"You mean it will just lie there and think?" cried Taran of Helium.
"Just that!" she exclaimed. "Could aught be more wonderful?"
"Yes," replied the boy, "I can think of a number of things that would be infinitely more wonderful."
#Taran of Helium#public domain#genderswap#self-indulgence#Barsoom#The Chessmen of Mars#book 5#chapter 5#Note that I have taken it upon myself to change some minor details:#Martian MEN are now the ones who lay the eggs that go into the incubators for ~5 years.#The ladies stick the eggs in 'em to get fertilized#like with seahorses.#I have spoken.
0 notes
Text
Chapter IV
CAPTURED
As Thuros, swift racer of the night, shot again into the sky the scene changed. As by magic a new aspect fell athwart the face of Nature. It was as though in the instant one had been transported from one planet to another. It was the age-old miracle of the Martian nights that is always new, even to Martians—two moons resplendent in the heavens, where one had been but now; conflicting, fast-changing shadows that altered the very hills themselves; far Cluria, stately, majestic, almost stationary, shedding her steady light upon the world below; Thuros, a great and glorious orb, swinging swift across the vaulted dome of the blue-black night, so low that he seemed to graze the hills, a gorgeous spectacle that held the boy now beneath the spell of its enchantment as it always had and always would.
"Ah, Thuros, mad king of heaven!" murmured Taran of Helium. "The hills pass in stately procession, their bosoms rising and falling; the trees move in restless circles; the little grasses describe their little arcs; and all is movement, restless, mysterious movement without sound, while Thuros passes." The boy sighed and let his gaze fall again to the stern realities beneath. There was no mystery in the huge banths. She who had discovered him squatted there looking hungrily up at him. Most of the others had wandered away in search of other prey, but a few remained hoping yet to bury their fangs in that soft body.
The night wore on. Again Thuros left the heavens to his lord and mistress, hurrying on to keep his tryst with the Sun in other skies. But a single banth waited impatiently beneath the tree which harbored Taran of Helium. The others had left, but their roars, and growls, and moans thundered or rumbled, or floated back to him from near and far. What prey found they in this little valley? There must be something that they were accustomed to find here that they should be drawn in so great numbers. The boy wondered what it could be.
How long the night! Numb, cold, and exhausted, Taran of Helium clung to the tree in growing desperation, for once he had dozed and almost fallen. Hope was low in his brave little heart. How much more could he endure? He asked himself the question and then, with a brave shake of his head, he squared his shoulders. "I still live!" he said aloud.
The banth looked up and growled.
Came Thuros again and after awhile the great Sun—a flaming lover, pursuing her heart's desire. And Cluria, the cold wife, continued her serene way, as placid as before her house had been violated by this hot Aspasia. And now the Sun and both Moons rode together in the sky, lending their far mysteries to make weird the Martian dawn. Taran of Helium looked out across the fair valley that spread upon all sides of him. It was rich and beautiful, but even as he looked upon it he shuddered, for to his mind came a picture of the headless things that the towers and the walls hid. Those by day and the banths by night! Ah, was it any wonder that he shuddered?
With the coming of the Sun the great Barsoomian lion rose to her feet. She turned angry eyes upon the boy above her, voiced a single ominous growl, and slunk away toward the hills. The boy watched her, and he saw that she gave the towers as wide a berth as possible and that she never took her eyes from one of them while she was passing it. Evidently the inmates had taught these savage creatures to respect them. Presently she passed from sight in a narrow defile, nor in any direction that he could see was there another. Momentarily at least the landscape was deserted. The boy wondered if he dared to attempt to regain the hills and his flier. He dreaded the coming of the workers to the fields as he was sure they would come. He shrank from again seeing the headless bodies, and found himself wondering if these things would come out into the fields and work. He looked toward the nearest tower. There was no sign of life there. The valley lay quiet now and deserted. He lowered himself stiffly to the ground. His muscles were cramped and every move brought a twinge of pain. Pausing a moment to drink again at the stream he felt refreshed and then turned without more delay toward the hills. To cover the distance as quickly as possible seemed the only plan to pursue. The trees no longer offered concealment and so he did not go out of his way to be near them. The hills seemed very far away. He had not thought, the night before, that he had traveled so far. Really it had not been far, but now, with the three towers to pass in broad daylight, the distance seemed great indeed.
The second tower lay almost directly in his path. To make a detour would not lessen the chance of detection, it would only lengthen the period of his danger, and so he laid his course straight for the hill where his flier was, regardless of the tower. As he passed the first enclosure he thought that he heard the sound of movement within, but the gate did not open and he breathed more easily when it lay behind him. He came then to the second enclosure, the outer wall of which he must circle, as it lay across his route. As he passed close along it he distinctly heard not only movement within, but voices. In the world-language of Barsoom he heard a woman issuing instructions—so many were to pick usa, so many were to irrigate this field, so many to cultivate that, and so on, as a supervisor lays out the day's work for her crew.
Taran of Helium had just reached the gate in the outer wall. Without warning it swung open toward him. He saw that for a moment it would hide him from those within and in that moment he turned and ran, keeping close to the wall, until, passing out of sight beyond the curve of the structure, he came to the opposite side of the enclosure. Here, panting from his exertion and from the excitement of his narrow escape, he threw himself among some tall weeds that grew close to the foot of the wall. There he lay trembling for some time, not even daring to raise his head and look about. Never before had Taran of Helium felt the paralyzing effects of terror. He was shocked and angry at himself, that he, son of Jane Carter, Warlord of Barsoom, should exhibit fear. Not even the fact that there had been none there to witness it lessened his shame and anger, and the worst of it was he knew that under similar circumstances he would again be equally as craven. It was not the fear of death—he knew that. No, it was the thought of those headless bodies and that he might see them and that they might even touch him—lay hands upon him—seize him. He shuddered and trembled at the thought.
After a while he gained sufficient command of himself to raise his head and look about. To his horror he discovered that everywhere he looked he saw people working in the fields or preparing to do so. Workers were coming from other towers. Little bands were passing to this field and that. There were even some already at work within thirty ads of him—about a hundred yards.
There were ten, perhaps, in the party nearest him, both women and men, and all were beautiful of form and grotesque of face. So meager were their trappings that they were practically naked; a fact that was in no way remarkable among the tillers of the fields of Mars. Each wore the peculiar, high leather collar that completely hid the neck, and each wore sufficient other leather to support a single sword and a pocket-pouch. The leather was very old and worn, showing long, hard service, and was absolutely plain with the exception of a single device upon the left shoulder. The heads, however, were covered with ornaments of precious metals and jewels, so that little more than eyes, nose, and mouth were discernible. These were hideously inhuman and yet grotesquely human at the same time. The eyes were far apart and protruding, the nose scarce more than two small, parallel slits set vertically above a round hole that was the mouth. The heads were peculiarly repulsive—so much so that it seemed unbelievable to the boy that they formed an integral part of the beautiful bodies below them.
So fascinated was Taran of Helium that he could scarce take his eyes from the strange creatures—a fact that was to prove his undoing, for in order that he might see them he was forced to expose a part of his own head and presently, to his consternation, he saw that one of the creatures had stopped her work and was staring directly at him. He did not dare move, for it was still possible that the thing had not seen him, or at least was only suspicious that some creature lay hid among the weeds. If he could allay this suspicion by remaining motionless the creature might believe that she had been mistaken and return to her work; but, alas, such was not to be the case. He saw the thing call the attention of others to him and almost immediately four or five of them started to move in his direction.
It was impossible now to escape discovery. His only hope lay in flight. If he could elude them and reach the hills and the flier ahead of them he might escape, and that could be accomplished in but one way—flight, immediate and swift. Leaping to his feet he darted along the base of the wall which he must skirt to the opposite side, beyond which lay the hill that was his goal. His act was greeted by strange whistling sounds from the things behind him, and casting a glance over his shoulder he saw them all in rapid pursuit.
There were also shrill commands that he halt, but to these he paid no attention. Before he had half circled the enclosure he discovered that his chances for successful escape were great, since it was evident to him that his pursuers were not so fleet as he. High indeed then were his hopes as he came in sight of the hill, but they were soon dashed by what lay before him, for there, in the fields that lay between, were fully a hundred creatures similar to those behind him and all were on the alert, evidently warned by the whistling of their fellows. Instructions and commands were shouted to and fro, with the result that those before him spread roughly into a great half circle to intercept him, and when he turned to the right, hoping to elude the net, he saw others coming from fields beyond, and to the left the same was true. But Taran of Helium would not admit defeat. Without once pausing he turned directly toward the center of the advancing semi-circle, beyond which lay his single chance of escape, and as he ran he drew his long, slim dagger. Like his valiant dam, if die he must, he would die fighting. There were gaps in the thin line confronting him and toward the widest of one of these he directed his course. The things on either side of the opening guessed his intent for they closed in to place themselves in his path. This widened the openings on either side of them and as the boy appeared almost to rush into their arms he turned suddenly at right angles, ran swiftly in the new direction for a few yards, and then dashed quickly toward the hill again. Now only a single warrior, with a wide gap on either side of her, barred his clear way to freedom, though all the others were speeding as rapidly as they could to intercept him. If he could pass this one without too much delay he could escape, of that he was certain. His every hope hinged on this. The creature before him realized it, too, for she moved cautiously, though swiftly, to intercept him, as a Rugby fullback might maneuver in the realization that she alone stood between the opposing team and a touchdown.
At first Taran of Helium had hoped that he might dodge her, for he could not but guess that he was not only more fleet but infinitely more agile than these strange creatures; but soon there came to him the realization that in the time consumed in an attempt to elude her grasp her nearer fellows would be upon him and escape then impossible, so he chose instead to charge straight for her, and when she guessed his decision she stood, half crouching and with outstretched arms, awaiting him. In one hand was her sword, but a voice arose, crying in tones of authority. "Take them alive! Do not harm them!" Instantly the fellow returned her sword to its scabbard and then Taran of Helium was upon her. Straight for that beautiful body he sprang and in the instant that the arms closed to seize him his sharp blade drove deep into the naked chest. The impact hurled them both to the ground and as Taran of Helium rose to his feet he saw, to his horror, that the loathsome head had rolled from the body and was now crawling away from him on six short, spider-like legs. The body struggled spasmodically and lay still. As brief as had been the delay caused by the encounter, it still had been of sufficient duration to undo him, for even as he rose two more of the things fell upon him and instantly thereafter he was surrounded. His blade sank once more into naked flesh and once more a head rolled free and crawled away. Then they overpowered him and in another moment he was surrounded by fully a hundred of the creatures, all seeking to lay hands upon him. At first he thought that they wished to tear him to pieces in revenge for his having slain two of their fellows, but presently he realized that they were prompted more by curiosity than by any sinister motive.
"Come!" said one of his captors, both of whom had retained a hold upon him. As she spoke she tried to lead him away with her toward the nearest tower.
"They belong to me," cried the other. "Did not I capture them? They will come with me to the tower of Moak."
"Never!" insisted the first. "They are Luud's. To Luud I will take them, and whosoever interferes may feel the keenness of my sword—in the head!" She almost shouted the last three words.
"Come! Enough of this," cried one who spoke with some show of authority. "They were captured in Luud's fields—they will go to Luud."
"They were discovered in Moak's fields, at the very foot of the tower of Moak," insisted she who had claimed him for Moak.
"You have heard the Nolach speak," cried the Luud. "It shall be as they say."
"Not while this Moak holds a sword," replied the other. "Rather will I cut them in twain and take my half to Moak than to relinquish them all to Luud," and she drew her sword, or rather she laid her hand upon its hilt in a threatening gesture; but before ever she could draw it the Luud had whipped hers out and with a fearful blow cut deep into the head of her adversary. Instantly the big, round head collapsed, almost as a punctured balloon collapses, as a grayish, semi-fluid matter spurted from it. The protruding eyes, apparently lidless, merely stared, the sphincter-like muscle of the mouth opened and closed, and then the head toppled from the body to the ground. The body stood dully for a moment and then slowly started to wander aimlessly about until one of the others seized it by the arm.
One of the two heads crawling about on the ground now approached. "This rykor belongs to Moak," it said. "I am a Moak. I will take it," and without further discussion it commenced to crawl up the front of the headless body, using its six short, spiderlike legs and two stout chelae which grew just in front of its legs and strongly resembled those of an Earthly lobster, except that they were both of the same size. The body in the meantime stood in passive indifference, its arms hanging idly at its sides. The head climbed to the shoulders and settled itself inside the leather collar that now hid its chelae and legs. Almost immediately the body gave evidence of intelligent animation. It raised its hands and adjusted the collar more comfortably, it took the head between its palms and settled it in place and when it moved around it did not wander aimlessly, but instead its steps were firm and to some purpose.
The boy watched all these things in growing wonder, and presently, no other of the Moaks seeming inclined to dispute the right of the Luud to him, he was led off by his captor toward the nearest tower. Several accompanied them, including one who carried the loose head under her arm. The head that was being carried conversed with the head upon the shoulders of the thing that carried it. Taran of Helium shivered. It was horrible! All that he had seen of these frightful creatures was horrible. And to be a prisoner, wholly in their power. Shadow of his first ancestor! What had he done to deserve so cruel a fate?
At the wall enclosing the tower they paused while one opened the gate and then they passed within the enclosure, which, to the boy's horror, he found filled with headless bodies. The creature who carried the bodiless head now set its burden upon the ground and the latter immediately crawled toward one of the bodies that was lying near by. Some wandered stupidly to and fro, but this one lay still. It was a male. The head crawled to it and made its way to the shoulders where it settled itself. At once the body sprang lightly erect. Another of those who had accompanied them from the fields approached with the harness and collar that had been taken from the dead body that the head had formerly topped. The new body now appropriated these and the hands deftly adjusted them. The creature was now as good as before Taran of Helium had struck down its former body with his slim blade. But there was a difference. Before it had been male—now it was female. That, however, seemed to make no difference to the head. In fact, Taran of Helium had noticed during the scramble and the fight about him that sex differences seemed of little moment to his captors. Females and males had taken equal part in his pursuit, both were identically harnessed and both carried swords, and he had seen as many males as females draw their weapons at the moment that a quarrel between the two factions seemed imminent.
The boy was given but brief opportunity for further observation of the pitiful creatures in the enclosure as his captor, after having directed the others to return to the fields, led him toward the tower, which they entered, passing into an apartment about ten feet wide and twenty long, in one end of which was a stairway leading to an upper level and in the other an opening to a similar stairway leading downward. The chamber, though on a level with the ground, was brilliantly lighted by windows in its inner wall, the light coming from a circular court in the center of the tower. The walls of this court appeared to be faced with what resembled glazed, white tile and the whole interior of it was flooded with dazzling light, a fact which immediately explained to the boy the purpose of the glass prisms of which the domes were constructed. The stairways themselves were sufficient to cause remark, since in nearly all Barsoomian architecture inclined runways are utilized for purposes of communication between different levels, and especially is this true of the more ancient forms and of those of remote districts where fewer changes have come to alter the customs of antiquity.
Down the stairway his captor led Taran of Helium. Down and down through chambers still lighted from the brilliant well. Occasionally they passed others going in the opposite direction and these always stopped to examine the boy and ask questions of his captor.
"I know nothing but that they were found in the fields and that I caught them after a fight in which they slew two rykors and in which I slew a Moak, and that I take them to Luud, to whom, of course, they belong. If Luud wishes to question them that is for Luud to do—not for me." Thus always she answered the curious.
Presently they reached a room from which a circular tunnel led away from the tower, and into this the creature conducted him. The tunnel was some seven feet in diameter and flattened on the bottom to form a walk. For a hundred feet from the tower it was lined with the same tile-like material of the light well and amply illuminated by reflected light from that source. Beyond it was faced with stone of various shapes and sizes, neatly cut and fitted together—a very fine mosaic without a pattern. There were branches, too, and other tunnels which crossed this, and occasionally openings not more than a foot in diameter; these latter being usually close to the floor. Above each of these smaller openings was painted a different device, while upon the walls of the larger tunnels at all intersections and points of convergence hieroglyphics appeared. These the boy could not read thought he guessed that they were the names of the tunnels, or notices indicating the points to which they led. He tried to study some of them out, but there was not a character that was familiar to him, which seemed strange, since, while the written languages of the various nations of Barsoom differ, it still is true that they have many characters and words in common.
He had tried to converse with his guard but she had not seemed inclined to talk with him and he had finally desisted. He could not but note that she had offered him no indignities, nor had she been either unnecessarily rough or in any way cruel. The fact that he had slain two of the bodies with his dagger had apparently aroused no animosity or desire for revenge in the minds of the strange heads that surmounted the bodies—even those whose bodies had been killed. He did not try to understand it, since he could not approach the peculiar relationship between the heads and the bodies of these creatures from the basis of any past knowledge or experience of his own. So far their treatment of him seemed to augur naught that might arouse his fears. Perhaps, after all, he had been fortunate to fall into the hands of these strange people, who might not only protect him from harm, but even aid him in returning to Helium. That they were repulsive and uncanny he could not forget, but if they meant him no harm he could, at least, overlook their repulsiveness. Renewed hope aroused within him a spirit of greater cheerfulness, and it was almost blithely now that he moved at the side of his weird companion. He even caught himself humming a gay little tune that was then popular in Helium. The creature at his side turned its expressionless eyes upon him.
"What is that noise that you are making?" it asked.
"I was but humming an air," he replied.
"Humming an air," she repeated. "I do not know what you mean; but do it again, I like it."
This time he sang the words, while his companion listened intently. Her face gave no indication of what was passing in that strange head. It was as devoid of expression as that of a spider. It reminded him of a spider. When he had finished she turned toward him again.
"That was different," she said. "I liked that better, even, than the other. How do you do it?"
"Why," he said, "it is singing. Do you not know what song is?"
"No," she replied. "Tell me how you do it."
"It is difficult to explain," he told her, "since any explanation of it presupposes some knowledge of melody and of music, while your very question indicates that you have no knowledge of either."
"No," she said, "I do not know what you are talking about; but tell me how you do it."
"It is merely the melodious modulations of my voice," he explained. "Listen!" and again he sang.
"I do not understand," she insisted; "but I like it. Could you teach me to do it?"
"I do not know, but I shall be glad to try."
"We will see what Luud does with you," she said. "If xe does not want you I will keep you and you shall teach me to make sounds like that."
At her request he sang again as they continued their way along the winding tunnel, which was now lighted by occasional bulbs which appeared to be similar to the radium bulbs with which he was familiar and which were common to all the nations of Barsoom, insofar as he knew, having been perfected at so remote a period that their very origin was lost in antiquity. They consist, usually, of a hemispherical bowl of heavy glass in which is packed a compound containing what, according to Jane Carter, must be radium. The bowl is then cemented into a metal plate with a heavily insulated back and the whole affair set in the masonry of wall or ceiling as desired, where it gives off light of greater or less intensity, according to the composition of the filling material, for an almost incalculable period of time.
As they proceeded they met a greater number of the inhabitants of this underground world, and the boy noted that among many of these the metal and harness were more ornate than had been those of the workers in the fields above. The heads and bodies, however, were similar, even identical, he thought. No one offered him harm and he was now experiencing a feeling of relief almost akin to happiness, when his guide turned suddenly into an opening on the right side of the tunnel and he found himself in a large, well lighted chamber.
#Taran of Helium#public domain#genderswap#self-indulgence#Barsoom#The Chessmen of Mars#book 5#chapter 4#Now new readers will discover what I meant when I said ''spider people.''#Man#I love these guys (gender neutral).#They struck a deep chord with me as a teen. For some reason.
0 notes
Text
Chapter III
THE HEADLESS HUMANS
Above the rood of the palace that housed the Jed of Gathol and her entourage, the cruiser Vanator tore at his stout moorings. The groaning tackle bespoke the mad fury of the gale, while the worried faces of those members of the crew whose duties demanded their presence on the straining craft gave corroborative evidence of the gravity of the situation.
Only stout lashings prevented these women from being swept from the deck, while those upon the roof below were constantly compelled to cling to rails and stanchions to save themselves from being carried away by each new burst of meteoric fury. Upon the prow of the Vanator was painted the device of Gathol, but no pennants were displayed in the upper works since the storm had carried away several in rapid succession, just as it seemed to the watching women that it must carry away the ship itself. They could not believe that any tackle could withstand for long this Titanic force. To each of the twelve lashings clung a brawny warrior with drawn short-sword. Had but a single mooring given to the power of the tempest eleven short-swords would have cut the others; since, partially moored, the ship was doomed, while free in the tempest it stood at least some slight chance for life.
"By the blood of Issus, I believe they will hold!" screamed one warrior to another.
"And if they do not hold may the spirits of our ancestors reward the brave warriors upon the Vanator," replied another of those upon the roof of the palace, "for it will not be long from the moment his cables part before his crew dons the leather of the dead; but yet, Tana, I believe they will hold. Give thanks at least that we did not sail before the tempest fell, since now each of us has a chance to live."
"Yes," replied Tana, "I should hate to be abroad today upon the stoutest ship that sails the Barsoomian sky."
It was then that Gatha the Jed appeared upon the roof. With her were the balance of her own party and a dozen warriors of Helium. The young chief turned to her followers.
"I sail at once upon the Vanator," she said, "in search of Taran of Helium who is thought to have been carried away upon a one-woman flier by the storm. I do not need to explain to you the slender chances the Vanator has to withstand the fury of the tempest, nor will I order you to your deaths. Let those who wish remain behind without dishonor. The others will follow me," and she leaped for the rope ladder that lashed wildly in the gale.
The first woman to follow her was Tana and when the last reached the deck of the cruiser there remained upon the palace roof only the twelve warriors of Helium, who, with naked swords, had taken the posts of the Gatholians at the moorings.
Not a single warrior who had remained aboard the Vanator would leave him now.
"I expected no less," said Gatha, as with the help of those already on the deck she and the others found secure lashings.
The commander of the Vanator shook her head. He loved her trim craft, the pride of his class in the little navy of Gathol. It was of him she thought—not of herself. She saw him lying torn and twisted upon the ochre vegetation of some distant sea-bottom, to be presently overrun and looted by some savage, green horde. She looked at Gatha.
"Are you ready, Sal Tothis?" asked the jed.
"All is ready."
"Then cut away!"
Word was passed across the deck and over the side to the Heliumetic warriors below that at the third gun they were to cut away. Twelve keen swords must strike simultaneously and with equal power, and each must sever completely and instantly three strands of heavy cable that no loose end fouling a block bring immediate disaster upon the Vanator.
Boom! The voice of the signal gun rolled down through the screaming wind to the twelve warriors upon the roof.
Boom! Twelve swords were raised above twelve brawny shoulders.
Boom! Twelve keen edges severed twelve complaining moorings, clean and as one.
The Vanator, his propellers whirling, shot forward with the storm. The tempest struck him in the stern as with a mailed fist and stood the great ship upon his nose, and then it caught him and spun him as a child's top spins; and upon the palace roof the twelve women looked on in silent helplessness and prayed for the souls of the brave warriors who were going to their death. And others saw, from Helium's lofty landing stages and from a thousand hangars upon a thousand roofs; but only for an instant did the preparations stop that would send other brave women into the frightful maelstrom of that apparently hopeless search, for such is the courage of the warriors of Barsoom.
But the Vanator did not fall to the ground, within sight of the city at least, though as long as the watchers could see him never for an instant did he rest upon an even keel. Sometimes he lay upon one side or the other, or again he hurtled along keel up, or rolled over and over, or stood upon his nose or his tail at the caprice of the great force that carried him along. And the watchers saw that this great ship was merely being blown away with the other bits of debris great and small that filled the sky. Never in the memory of woman or the annals of recorded history had such a storm raged across the face of Barsoom.
And in another instant was the Vanator forgotten as the lofty, scarlet tower that had marked Lesser Helium for ages crashed to ground, carrying death and demolition upon the city beneath. Panic reigned. A fire broke out in the ruins. The city's every force seemed crippled, and it was then that The Warlord ordered the women that were about to set forth in search of Taran of Helium to devote their energies to the salvation of the city, for she too had witnessed the start of the Vanator and realized the futility of wasting women who were needed sorely if Lesser Helium was to be saved from utter destruction.
Shortly after noon of the second day the storm commenced to abate, and before the sun went down, the little craft upon which Taran of Helium had hovered between life and death these many hours drifted slowly before a gentle breeze above a landscape of rolling hills that once had been lofty mountains upon a Martian continent. The boy was exhausted from loss of sleep, from lack of food and drink, and from the nervous reaction consequent to the terrifying experiences through which he had passed. In the near distance, just topping an intervening hill, he caught a momentary glimpse of what appeared to be a dome-capped tower. Quickly he dropped the flier until the hill shut it off from the view of the possible occupants of the structure he had seen. The tower meant to him the habitation of woman, suggesting the presence of water and, perhaps, of food. If the tower was the deserted relic of a bygone age he would scarcely find food there, but there was still a chance that there might be water. If it was inhabited, then must his approach be cautious, for only enemies might be expected to abide in so far distant a land. Taran of Helium knew that he must be far from the twin cities of his grandmother's empire, but had he guessed within even a thousand haads of the reality, he had been stunned by realization of the utter hopelessness of his state.
Keeping the craft low, for the buoyancy tanks were still intact, the boy skimmed the ground until the gently-moving wind had carried him to the side of the last hill that intervened between him and the structure he had thought a woman-built tower. Here he brought the flier to the ground among some stunted trees, and dragging it beneath one where it might be somewhat hidden from craft passing above, he made it fast and set forth to reconnoiter. Like most men of his class he was armed only with a single slender blade, so that in such an emergency as now confronted him he must depend almost solely upon his cleverness in remaining undiscovered by enemies. With utmost caution he crept warily toward the crest of the hill, taking advantage of every natural screen that the landscape afforded to conceal his approach from possible observers ahead, while momentarily he cast quick glances rearward lest he be taken by surprise from that quarter.
He came at last to the summit, where, from the concealment of a low bush, he could see what lay beyond.
Beneath him spread a beautiful valley surrounded by low hills. Dotting it were numerous circular towers, dome-capped, and surrounding each tower was a stone wall enclosing several acres of ground. The valley appeared to be in a high state of cultivation. Upon the opposite side of the hill and just beneath him was a tower and enclosure. It was the roof of the former that had first attracted his attention. In all respects it seemed identical in construction with those further out in the valley—a high, plastered wall of massive construction surrounding a similarly constructed tower, upon whose gray surface was painted in vivid colors a strange device. The towers were about forty sofads in diameter, approximately forty earth-feet, and sixty in height to the base of the dome. To an Earth woman they would have immediately suggested the silos in which dairy farmers store ensilage for their herds; but closer scrutiny, revealing an occasional embrasured opening together with the strange construction of the domes, would have altered such a conclusion. Taran of Helium saw that the domes seemed to be faced with innumerable prisms of glass, those that were exposed to the declining sun scintillating so gorgeously as to remind him suddenly of the magnificent trappings of Gatha of Gathol. As he thought of the woman he shook his head angrily, and moved cautiously forward a foot or two that he might get a less obstructed view of the nearer tower and its enclosure.
As Taran of Helium looked down into the enclosure surrounding the nearest tower, his brows contracted momentarily in frowning surprise, and then his eyes went wide in an expression of incredulity tinged with horror, for what he saw was a score or two of human bodies—naked and headless.
For a long moment he watched, breathless; unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes—that these grewsome things moved and had life! He saw them crawling about on hands and knees over and across one another, searching about with their fingers. And he saw some of them at troughs, for which the others seemed to be searching, and those at the troughs were taking something from these receptacles and apparently putting it in a hole where their necks should have been. They were not far beneath him—he could see them distinctly, and he saw that there were the bodies of both women and men, and that they were beautifully proportioned, and that their skin was similar to his, but of a slightly lighter red. At first he had thought that he was looking upon a shambles and that the bodies, but recently decapitated, were moving under the impulse of muscular reaction; but presently he realized that this was their normal condition. The horror of them fascinated him, so that he could scarce take his eyes from them. It was evident from their groping hands that they were eyeless, and their sluggish movements suggested a rudimentary nervous system and a correspondingly minute brain. The boy wondered how they subsisted for he could not, even by the wildest stretch imagination, picture these imperfect creatures as intelligent tillers of the soil. Yet that the soil of the valley was tilled was evident and that these things had food was equally so. But who tilled the soil? Who kept and fed these unhappy things, and for what purpose? It was an enigma beyond his powers of deduction.
The sight of food aroused again a consciousness of his own gnawing hunger and the thirst that parched his throat. He could see both food and water within the enclosure; but would he dare enter even should he find means of ingress? He doubted it, since the very thought of possible contact with these grewsome creatures sent a shudder through his frame.
Then his eyes wandered again out across the valley until presently they picked out what appeared to be a tiny stream winding its way through the center of the farm lands—a strange sight upon Barsoom. Ah, if it were but water! Then might he hope with a real hope, for the fields would give him sustenance which he could gain by night, while by day he hid among the surrounding hills, and sometime, yes, sometime he knew, the searchers would come, for Jane Carter, Warlord of Barsoom, would never cease to search for her son until every square haad of the planet had been combed again and again. He knew her and he knew the warriors of Helium and so he knew that could he but manage to escape harm until they came, they would indeed come at last.
He would have to wait until dark before he dare venture into the valley, and in the meantime he thought it well to search out a place of safety nearby where he might be reasonably safe from savage beasts. It was possible that the district was free from carnivora, but one might never be sure in a strange land. As he was about to withdraw behind the brow of the hill his attention was again attracted to the enclosure below. Two figures had emerged from the tower. Their beautiful bodies seemed identical with those of the headless creatures among which they moved, but the newcomers were not headless. Upon their shoulders were heads that seemed human, yet which the boy intuitively sensed were not human. They were just a trifle too far away for him to see them distinctly in the waning light of the dying day, but he knew that they were too large, they were out of proportion to the perfectly proportioned bodies, and they were oblate in form. He could see that the women wore some manner of harness to which were slung the customary long-sword and short-sword of the Barsoomian warrior, and that about their short necks were massive leather collars cut to fit closely over the shoulders and snugly to the lower part of the head. Their features were scarcely discernible, but there was a suggestion of grotesqueness about them that carried to him a feeling of revulsion.
The two carried a long rope to which were fastened, at intervals of about two sofads, what he later guessed were light manacles, for he saw the warriors passing among the poor creatures in the enclosure and about the right wrist of each they fastened one of the manacles. When all had been thus fastened to the rope one of the warriors commenced to pull and tug at the loose end as though attempting to drag the headless company toward the tower, while the other went among them with a long, light whip with which she flicked them upon the naked skin. Slowly, dully, the creatures rose to their feet and between the tugging of the warrior in front and the lashing of her behind the hopeless band was finally herded within the tower. Taran of Helium shuddered as he turned away. What manner of creatures were these?
Suddenly it was night. The Barsoomian day had ended, and then the brief period of twilight that renders the transition from daylight to darkness almost as abrupt as the switching off of an electric light, and Taran of Helium had found no sanctuary. But perhaps there were no beasts to fear, or rather to avoid—Taran of Helium liked not the word fear. He would have been glad, however, had there been a cabin, even a very tiny cabin, upon his small flier; but there was no cabin. The interior of the hull was completely taken up by the buoyancy tanks. Ah, he had it! How stupid of him not to have thought of it before! He could moor the craft to the tree beneath which it rested and let it rise the length of the rope. Lashed to the deck rings he would then be safe from any roaming beast of prey that chanced along. In the morning he could drop to the ground again before the craft was discovered.
As Taran of Helium crept over the brow of the hill down toward the valley, his presence was hidden by the darkness of the night from the sight of any chance observer who might be loitering by a window in the nearby tower.
Cluria, the farther moon, was just rising above the horizon to commence her leisurely journey through the heavens. Eight zodes later she would set—a trifle over nineteen and a half Earth hours—and during that time Thuros, her vivacious mate, would have circled the planet twice and be more than half way around on his third trip. He had but just set. It would be more than three and a half hours before he shot above the opposite horizon to hurtle, swift and low, across the face of the dying planet. During this temporary absence of the mad moon Taran of Helium hoped to find both food and water, and gain again the safety of his flier's deck.
He groped his way through the darkness, giving the tower and its enclosure as wide a berth as possible. Sometimes he stumbled, for in the long shadows cast by the rising Cluria objects were grotesquely distorted though the light from the moon was still not sufficient to be of much assistance to him. Nor, as a matter of fact, did he want light. He could find the stream in the dark, by the simple expedient of going down hill until he walked into it and he had seen that bearing trees and many crops grew throughout the valley so that he would pass food in plenty ere he reached the stream. If the moon showed him the way more clearly and thus saved him from an occasional fall, she would, too, show him more clearly to the strange denizens of the towers, and that, of course, must not be. Could he have waited until the following night conditions would have been better, since Cluria would not appear in the heavens at all and so, during Thuros' absence, utter darkness would reign; but the pangs of thirst and the gnawing of hunger could be endured no longer with food and drink both in sight, and so he had decided to risk discovery rather than suffer longer.
Safely past the nearest tower, he moved as rapidly as he felt consistent with safety, choosing his way wherever possible so that he might take advantage of the shadows of the trees that grew at intervals at at the same time discover those which bore fruit. In this latter he met with almost immediate success, for the very third tree beneath which he halted was heavy with ripe fruit. Never, thought Taran of Helium, had aught so delicious impinged upon his palate, and yet it was naught else than the almost tasteless usa, which is considered to be palatable only after having been cooked and highly spiced. It grows easily with little irrigation and the trees bear abundantly. The fruit, which ranks high in food value, is one of the staple foods of the less well-to-do, and because of its cheapness and nutritive value forms one of the principal rations of both armies and navies upon Barsoom, a use which has won for it a Martian sobriquet which, freely translated into English, would be, The Fighting Potato. The boy was wise enough to eat but sparingly, but he filled his pocket-pouch with the fruit before he continued upon his way.
Two towers he passed before he came at last to the stream, and here again was he temperate, drinking but little and that very slowly, contenting himself with rinsing his mouth frequently and bathing his face, his hands, and his feet; and even though the night was cold, as Martian nights are, the sensation of refreshment more than compensated for the physical discomfort of the low temperature. Replacing his sandals he sought among the growing track near the stream for whatever edible berries or tubers might be planted there, and found a couple of varieties that could be eaten raw. With these he replaced some of the usa in his pocket-pouch, not only to insure a variety but because he found them more palatable. Occasionally he returned to the stream to drink, but each time moderately. Always were his eyes and ears alert for the first signs of danger, but he had neither seen nor heard aught to disturb him. And presently the time approached when he felt he must return to his flier lest he be caught in the revealing light of low swinging Thuros. He dreaded leaving the water for he knew that he must become very thirsty before he could hope to come again to the stream. If he only had some little receptacle in which to carry water, even a small amount would tide him over until the following night; but he had nothing and so he must content himself as best he could with the juices of the fruit and tubers he had gathered.
After a last drink at the stream, the longest and deepest he had allowed himself, he rose to retrace his steps toward the hills; but even as he did so he became suddenly tense with apprehension. What was that? He could have sworn that he saw something move in the shadows beneath a tree not far away.
For a long minute the boy did not move—he scarce breathed. His eyes remained fixed upon the dense shadows below the tree, his ears strained through the silence of the night. A low moaning came down from the hills where his flier was hidden. He knew it well—the weird note of the hunting banth. And the great carnivore lay directly in his path. But she was not so close as this other thing, hiding there in the shadows just a little way off. What was it? It was the strain of uncertainty that weighed heaviest upon him. Had he known the nature of the creature lurking there half its menace would have vanished. He cast quickly about him in search of some haven of refuge should the thing prove dangerous.
Again arose the moaning from the hills, but this time closer. Almost immediately it was answered from the opposite side of the valley, behind him, and then from the distance to the right of him, and twice upon his left. His eyes had found a tree, quite near. Slowly, and without taking his eyes from the shadows of that other tree, he moved toward the overhanging branches that might afford him sanctuary in the event of need, and at his first move a low growl rose from the spot he had been watching and he heard the sudden moving of a big body. Simultaneously the creature shot into the moonlight in full charge upon him, its tail erect, its tiny ears laid flat, its great mouth with its multiple rows of sharp and powerful fangs already yawning for its prey, its ten legs carrying it forward in great leaps, and now from the beast's throat issued the frightful roar with which it seeks to paralyze its prey. It was a banth—the great, maned lion of Barsoom. Taran of Helium saw it coming and leaped for the tree toward which he had been moving,, and the banth realized his intention and redoubled her speed. As her hideous roar awakened the echoes in the hills, so too it awakened echoes in the valley; but these echoes came from the living throats of others of her kind, until it seemed to the boy that Fate had thrown him into the midst of a countless multitude of these savage beasts.
Almost incredibly swift is the speed of a charging banth, and fortunate it was that the boy had not been caught farther in the open. As it was, his margin of safety was next to negligible, for as he swung nimbly to the lower branches the creature in pursuit of him crashed among the foliage almost upon him as it sprang upward to seize him. It was only a combination of good fortune and agility that saved him. A stout branch deflected the raking talons of the carnivore, but so close was the call that a giant forearm brushed his flesh in the instant before he scrambled to the higher branches.
Baffled, the banth gave vent to her rage and disappointment in a series of frightful roars that caused the very ground to tremble, and to these were added the roarings and the growlings and the moanings of her fellows as they approached from every direction, in the hope of wresting from her whatever of her kill they could take by craft or prowess. And now she turned snarling upon them as they circled the tree, while the boy, huddled in a crotch above them, looked down upon the gaunt, yellow monsters padding on noiseless feet in a restless circle about him. He wondered now at the strange freak of fate that had permitted him to come down this far into the valley by night unharmed, but even more he wondered how he was to return to the hills. He knew that he would not dare venture it by night and he guessed, too, that by day he might be confronted by even graver perils. To depend upon this valley for sustenance he now saw to be beyond the pale of possibility because of the banths that would keep him from food and water by night, while the dwellers in the towers would doubtless make it equally impossible for him to forage by day. There was but one solution to his difficulty and that was to return to his flier and pray that the wind would waft him to some less terrorful land; but when might he return to the flier? The banths gave little evidence of relinquishing hope of him, and even if they wandered out of sight would he dare risk the attempt? He doubted it.
Hopeless indeed seemed his situation—hopeless it was.
#Taran of Helium#public domain#genderswap#self-indulgence#Barsoom#The Chessmen of Mars#book 5#chapter 3#Oh boy#the spider people!#My favorite.
0 notes
Text
Chapter II
AT THE GALE'S MERCY
Taran of Helium did not return to his mother's guests, but awaited in his own apartments the word from Djora Kantos which he knew must come, begging him to return to the gardens. He would then refuse, haughtily. But no appeal came from Djora Kantos. At first Taran of Helium was angry, then he was hurt, and always he was puzzled. He could not understand. Occasionally he thought of the Jed of Gathol and then he would stamp his foot, for he was very angry indeed with Gatha. The presumption of the woman! She had insinuated that she read love for her in his eyes. Never had he been so insulted and humiliated. Never had he so thoroughly hated a woman. Suddenly he turned toward Uthio.
"My flying leather!" he commanded.
"But the guests!" exclaimed the slave boy. "Your mother, The Warlord, will expect you to return."
"She will be disappointed," snapped Taran of Helium.
The slave hesitated. "She does not approve of your flying alone," he reminded his master.
The young prince sprang to his feet and seized the unhappy slave by the shoulders, shaking him. "You are becoming unbearable, Uthio," he cried. "Soon there will be no alternative than to send you to the public slave-market. Then possibly you will find a mistress to your liking."
Tears came to the soft eyes of the slave boy. "It is because I love you, my prince," he said softly. Taran of Helium melted. He took the slave in his arms and kissed him.
"I have the disposition of a thoat, Uthio," he said. "Forgive me! I love you and there is nothing that I would not do for you and nothing would I do to harm you. Again, as I have so often in the past, I offer you your freedom."
"I do not wish my freedom if it will separate me from you, Taran of Helium," replied Uthio. "I am happy here with you—I think that I should die without you."
Again the boys kissed. "And you will not fly alone, then?" questioned the slave.
Taran of Helium laughed and pinched his companion. "You persistent little pest," he cried. "Of course I shall fly—does not Taran of Helium always do that which pleases him?"
Uthio shook his head sorrowfully. "Alas! he does," he admitted. "Iron is the Warlord of Barsoom to the influences of all but two. In the hands of Dejan Thoris and Taran of Helium she is as potters' clay."
"Then run and fetch my flying leather like the sweet slave you are," directed the master.
————
Far out across the ochre sea-bottoms beyond the twin cities of Helium raced the swift flier of Taran of Helium. Thrilling to the speed and the buoyancy and the obedience of the little craft the boy drove toward the northwest. Why he should choose that direction he did not pause to consider. Perhaps because in that direction lay the least known areas of Barsoom, and, ergo, Romance, Mystery, and Adventure. In that direction also lay far Gathol; but to that fact he gave no conscious thought.
He did, however, think occasionally of the jed of that distant kingdom, but the reaction to these thoughts was scarcely pleasurable. They still brought a flush of shame to his cheeks and a surge of angry blood to his heart. He was very angry with the Jed of Gathol, and though he should never see her again he was quite sure that hate of her would remain fresh in his memory forever. Mostly his thoughts revolved about another—Djora Kantos. And when he thought of her he thought also of Olvian Marthis of Hastor. Taran of Helium thought that he was jealous of the fair Olvian and it made him very angry to think that. He was angry with Djora Kantos and himself, but he was not angry at all with Olvian Marthis, whom he loved, and so of course he was not jealous really. The trouble was, that Taran of Helium had failed for once to have his own way. Djora Kantos had not come running like a willing slave when he had expected her, and, ah, here was the nub of the whole thing! Gatha, Jed of Gathol, a stranger, had been a witness to his humiliation. She had seen him unclaimed at the beginning of a great function and she had had to come to his rescue to save him, as she doubtless thought, from the inglorious fate of a wall-flower. At the recurring thought, Taran of Helium could feel his whole body burning with scarlet shame and then he went suddenly white and cold with rage; whereupon he turned his flier about so abruptly that he was all but torn from his lashings upon the flat, narrow deck. He reached home just before dark. The guests had departed. Quiet had descended upon the palace. An hour later he joined his mother and father at the evening meal.
"You deserted us, Taran of Helium," said Jane Carter. "It is not what the guests of Jane Carter should expect."
"They did not come to see me," replied Taran of Helium. "I did not ask them."
"They were no less your guests," replied his mother.
The boy rose, and came and stood beside her and put his arms about her neck.
"My proper old Virginian," he cried, rumpling her shock of black hair.
"In Virginia you would be turned over your mother's knee and spanked," said the woman, smiling.
He crept into her lap and kissed her. "You do not love me any more," he announced. "No one loves me," but he could not compose his features into a pout because bubbling laughter insisted upon breaking through.
"The trouble is there are too many who love you," she said. "And now there is another."
"Indeed!" he cried. "What do you mean?"
"Gatha of Gathol has asked permission to woo you."
The boy sat up very straight and tilted his chin in the air. "I would not wed with a walking diamond-mine," he said. "I will not have her."
"I told her as much," replied his mother, "and that you were as good as betrothed to another. She was very courteous about it; but at the same time she gave me to understand that she was accustomed to getting what she wanted and that she wanted you very much. I suppose it will mean another war. Your father's beauty kept Helium at war for many years, and—well, Taran of Helium, if I were a young woman I should doubtless be willing to set all Barsoom afire to win you, as I still would to keep your divine father," and she smiled across the sorapus table and its golden service at the undimmed beauty of Mars' most beautiful man.
"Our little boy should not yet be troubled with such matters," said Dejan Thoris. "Remember, Jane Carter, that you are not dealing with an Earth child, whose span of life would be more than half completed before a son of Barsoom reached actual maturity."
"But do not the sons of Barsoom sometimes marry as early as twenty?" she insisted.
"Yes, but they will still be desirable in the eyes of women after forty generations of Earth folk have returned to dust—there is no hurry, at least, upon Barsoom. We do not fade and decay here as you tell me those of your planet do, though you, yourself, belie your own words. When the time seems proper Taran of Helium shall wed with Djora Kantos, and until then let us give the matter no further thought."
"No," said the boy, "the subject irks me, and I shall not marry Djora Kantos, or another—I do not intend to wed."
His mother and father looked at him and smiled. "When Gatha of Gathol returns she may carry you off," said the former.
"She has gone?" asked the boy.
"Her flier departs for Gathol in the morning," Jane Carter replied.
"I have seen the last of her then," remarked Taran of Helium with a sigh of relief.
"She says not," returned Jane Carter.
The boy dismissed the subject with a shrug and the conversation passed to other topics. A letter had arrived from Thuvio of Ptarth, who was visiting at his mother's court while Carthoris, his mate, hunted in Okar. Word had been received that the Tharks and Warhoons were again at war, or rather that there had been an engagement, for war was their habitual state. In the memory of woman there had been no peace between these two savage green hordes—only a single temporary truce. Two new battleships had been launched at Hastor. A little band of holy therns was attempting to revive the ancient and discredited religion of Issus, who they claimed still lived in spirit and had communicated with them. There were rumors of war from Dusar. A scientist claimed to have discovered human life on the further moon. A maniac had attempted to destroy the atmosphere plant. Seven people had been assassinated in Greater Helium during the last ten zodes (the equivalent of an Earth day).
Following the meal Dejan Thoris and The Warlord played at jetan, the Barsoomian game of chess, which is played upon a board of a hundred alternate black and orange squares. One player has twenty black pieces, the other, twenty orange pieces. A brief description of the game may interest those Earth readers who care for chess, and will not be lost upon those who pursue this narrative to its conclusion, since before they are done they will find that a knowledge of jetan will add to the interest and the thrills that are in store for them.
The women are placed upon the board as in chess upon the first two rows next the players. In order from left to right on the line of squares nearest the players, the jetan pieces are Warrior, Padwar, Dwar, Flier, Chief, Prince, Flier, Dwar, Padwar, Warrior. In the next line all are Panthans except the end pieces, which are called Thoats, and represent mounted warriors.
The Panthans, which are represented as warriors with one feather, may move one space in any direction except backward; the Thoats, mounted warriors with three feathers, may move one straight and one diagonal, and may jump intervening pieces; Warriors, foot soldiers with two feathers, straight in any direction, or diagonally, two spaces; Padwars, lieutenants wearing two feathers, two diagonal in any direction, or combination; Dwars, captains wearing three feathers, three spaces straight in any direction, or combination; Fliers, represented by a propeller with three blades, three spaces in any direction, or combination, diagonally, and may jump intervening pieces; the Chief, indicated by a diadem with ten jewels, three spaces in any direction, straight, or diagonal; Prince, diadem with a single jewel, same as Chief, and can jump intervening pieces.
The game is won when a player places any of her pieces on the same square with her opponent's Prince, or when a Chief takes a Chief. It is drawn when a Chief is taken by any opposing piece other than the opposing Chief; or when both sides have been reduced to three pieces, or less, of equal value, and the game is not terminated in the following ten moves, five apiece. This is but a general outline of the game, briefly stated.
It was this game that Dejan Thoris and Jane Carter were playing when Taran of Helium bid them good night, retiring to his own quarters and his sleeping silks and furs. "Until morning, my beloved," he called back to them as he passed from the apartment, nor little he guess, nor his parents, that this might indeed be the last time that they would ever set eyes upon him.
The morning broke dull and gray. Ominous clouds billowed restlessly and low. Beneath them torn fragments scudded toward the northwest. From his window Taran of Helium looked out upon this unusual scene. Dense clouds seldom overcast the Barsoomian sky. At this hour of the day it was his custom to ride one of those small thoats that are the saddle animals of the red Martians, but the sight of the billowing clouds lured him to a new adventure. Uthio still slept and the boy did not disturb him. Instead, he dressed quietly and went to the hangar upon the roof of the palace directly above his quarters where his own swift flier was housed. He had never driven through the clouds. It was an adventure that he had always longed to experience.
The wind was strong and it was with difficulty that he maneuvered the craft from the hangar without accident, but once away it raced swiftly out above the twin cities. The buffeting winds caught and tossed it, and the boy laughed aloud in sheer joy of the resultant thrills. He handled the little ship like a veteran, though few veterans would have faced the menace of such a storm in so light a craft. Swiftly he rose toward the clouds, racing with the scudding streamers of the storm-swept fragments, and a moment later he was swallowed by the dense masses billowing above. Here was a new world, a world of chaos unpeopled except for himself; but it was a cold, damp, lonely world and he found it depressing after the novelty of it had been dissipated, by an overpowering sense of the magnitude of the forces surging about him. Suddenly he felt very lonely and very cold and very little. Hurriedly, therefore, he rose until presently his craft broke through into the glorious sunlight that transformed the upper surface of the somber element into rolling masses of burnished silver. Here it was still cold, but without the dampness of the clouds, and in the eye of the brilliant sun his spirits rose with the mounting needle of his altimeter. Gazing at the clouds, now far beneath, the boy experienced the sensation of hanging stationary in mid-heaven; but the whirring of his propeller, the wind beating upon him, the high figures that rose and fell beneath the glass of his speedometer, these told him that his speed was terrific. It was then that he determined to turn back.
The first attempt he made above the clouds, but it was unsuccessful. To his surprise he discovered that he could not even turn against the high wind, which rocked and buffeted the frail craft.
Then he dropped swiftly to the dark and wind-swept zone between the hurtling clouds and the gloomy surface of the shadowed ground. Here he tried again to force the nose of the flier back toward Helium, but the tempest seized the frail thing and hurled it remorselessly about, rolling it over and over and tossing it as it were a cork in a cataract. At last the boy succeeded in righting the flier, perilously close to the ground. Never before had he been so close to death, yet he was not terrified. His coolness had saved him, that and the strength of the deck lashings that held him. Traveling with the storm he was safe, but where was it bearing him? He pictured the apprehension of his mother and father when he failed to appear at the morning meal. They would find his flier missing and they would guess that somewhere in the path of the storm it lay a wrecked and tangled mass upon his dead body, and then brave women would go out in search of him, risking their lives; and that lives would be lost in the search, he knew, for he realized now that never in his life-time had such a tempest raged upon Barsoom.
He must turn back! He must reach Helium before his mad lust for thrills had cost the sacrifice of a single courageous life! He determined that greater safety and likelihood of success lay above the clouds, and once again he rose through the chilling, wind-tossed vapor. His speed again was terrific, for the wind seemed to have increased rather than to have lessened. He sought gradually to check the swift flight of his craft, but though he finally succeeded in reversing his motor the wind but carried him on as it would. Then it was that Taran of Helium lost his temper. Had his world not always bowed in acquiescence to his every wish? What were these elements that they dared to thwart him? He would demonstrate to them that the son of The Warlord was not to be denied! They would learn that Taran of Helium might not be ruled even by the forces of nature!
And so he drove his motor forward again and then with his firm white teeth set in grim determination he drove the steering lever far down to port with the intention of forcing the nose of his craft straight into the teeth of the wind, and the wind seized the frail thing and toppled it over upon its back, and twisted and turned it and hurled it over and over; the propeller raced for an instant in an air pocket and then the tempest seized it again and twisted it from its shaft, leaving the boy helpless upon an unmanageable atom that rose and fell, and rolled and tumbled—the sport of the elements he had defied. Taran of Helium's first sensation was one of surprise—that he had failed to have his own way. Then he commenced to feel concern—not for his own safety but for the anxiety of his parents and the dangers that the inevitable searchers must face. He reproached himself for the thoughtless selfishness that had jeopardized the peace and safety of others. He realized his own grave danger, too; but he was still unterrified, as befitted the son of Dejan Thoris and Jane Carter. He knew that his buoyancy tanks might keep him afloat indefinitely, but he had neither food nor water, and he was being borne toward the least-known area of Barsoom. Perhaps it would be better to land immediately and await the coming of the searchers, rather than to allow himself to be carried still further from Helium, thus greatly reducing the chances of early discovery; but when he dropped toward the ground he discovered that the violence of the wind rendered an attempt to land tantamount to destruction and he rose again, rapidly.
Carried along a few hundred feet above the ground he was better able to appreciate the Titanic proportions of the storm than when he had flown in the comparative serenity of the zone above the clouds, for now he could distinctly see the effect of the wind upon the surface of Barsoom. The air was filled with dust and flying bits of vegetation and when the storm carried him across an irrigated area of farm land he saw great trees and stone walls and buildings lifted high in the air and scattered broadcast over the devastated country; and then he was carried swiftly on to other sights that forced in upon his consciousness a rapidly growing conviction that after all Taran of Helium was a very small and insignificant and helpless person. It was quite a shock to his self-pride while it lasted, and toward evening he was ready to believe that it was going to last forever. There had been no abatement in the ferocity of the tempest, nor was there indication of any. He could only guess at the distance he had been carried for he could not believe in the correctness of the high figures that had been piled upon the record of his odometer. They seemed unbelievable and yet, had he known it, they were quite true—in twelve hours he had flown and been carried by the storm full seven thousand haads. Just before dark he was carried over one of the deserted cities of ancient Mars. It was Torquas, but he did not know it. Had he, he might readily have been forgiven for abandoning the last vestige of hope, for to the people of Helium Torquas seems as remote as do the South Sea Islands to us. ["Us" being people who live in Virginia, obviously. What a small view of the world Burroughs had.] And still the tempest, its fury unabated, bore him on.
All that night he hurtled through the dark beneath the clouds, or rose to race through the moonlit void beneath the glory of Barsoom's two satellites. He was cold and hungry and altogether miserable, but his brave little spirit refused to admit that his plight was hopeless even though reason proclaimed the truth. His reply to reason, sometime spoken aloud in sudden defiance, recalled the Spartan stubbornness of his dam in the face of certain annihilation: "I still live!"
That morning there had been an early visitor at the palace of The Warlord. It was Gatha, Jed of Gathol. She had arrived shortly after the absence of Taran of Helium had been noted, and in the excitement she had remained unannounced until Jane Carter had happened upon her in the great reception corridor of the palace as The Warlord was hurrying out to arrange for the dispatch of ships in search of her son.
Gatha read the concern upon the face of The Warlord. "Forgive me if I intrude, Jane Carter," she said. "I but came to ask the indulgence of another day since it would be fool-hardy to attempt to navigate a ship in such a storm."
"Remain, Gatha, a welcome guest until you choose to leave us," replied The Warlord; "but you must forgive any seeming inattention upon the part of Helium until my son is restored to us."
"Your son! Restored! What do you mean?" exclaimed the Gatholian. "I do not understand."
"He is gone, together with his light flier. That is all we know. We can only assume that he decided to fly before the morning meal and was caught in the clutches of the tempest. You will pardon me, Gatha, if I leave you abruptly—I am arranging to send ships in search of him;" but Gatha, Jed of Gathol, was already speeding in the direction of the palace gate. There she leaped upon a waiting thoat and followed by two warriors in the metal of Gathol, she dashed through the avenues of Helium toward the palace that had been set aside for her entertainment.
#Taran of Helium#public domain#genderswap#self-indulgence#Barsoom#The Chessmen of Mars#book 5#chapter 2#The sexism is ridiculously apparent in these.#I don't know how I managed to miss it in my teens.#I guess I was just too swept up in the idea of being big and tough and swinging a sword around. On Mars. With amazing jumping abilities.#...Yeah#that'll be it.#Not to mention the slavery! So much slavery!#I missed the horror of THAT on account of having been raised with the Bible.
0 notes
Text
Chapter I
TARAN IN A TANTRUM
Taran of Helium rose from the pile of silks and soft furs upon which he had been reclining, stretched his lithe body languidly, and crossed toward the center of the room, where, above a large table, a bronze disc depended from the low ceiling. His carriage was that of health and physical perfection—the effortless harmony of faultless coordination. A scarf of silken gossamer crossing over one shoulder was wrapped about his body; his black hair was piled high upon his head. With a wooden stick he tapped upon the bronze disc, lightly, and presently the summons was answered by a slave boy, who entered, smiling, to be greeted similarly by his master.
"Are my mother's guests arriving?" asked the prince.
"Yes, Taran of Helium, they come," replied the slave. "I have seen Kantos Kan, Overlord of the Navy, and Princess Sorah of Ptarth, and Djora Kantos, daughter of Kantos Kan," he shot a roguish glance at his master as he mentioned Djora Kantos' name, "and—oh, there were others, many have come."
"The bath, then, Uthio," said his master. "And why, Uthio," he added, "do you look thus and smile when you mention the name of Djora Kantos?"
The slave boy laughed gaily. "It is so plain to all that she worships you," he replied.
"It is not plain to me," said Taran of Helium. "She is the friend of my sister, Carthoris, and so she is here much; but not to see me. It is her friendship for Carthoris that brings her thus often to the palace of my mother."
"But Carthoris is hunting in the north with Talia, Jeddak of Okar," Uthio reminded him.
"My bath, Uthio!" cried Taran of Helium. "That tongue of yours will bring you to some misadventure yet."
"The bath is ready, Taran of Helium," the boy responded, his eyes still twinkling with merriment, for he well knew that in the heart of his master was no anger that could displace the love of the prince for his slave. Preceding the son of The Warlord he opened the door of an adjoining room where lay the bath—a gleaming pool of scented water in a marble basin. Golden stanchions supported a chain of gold encircling it and leading down into the water on either side of marble steps. A glass dome let in the sun-light, which flooded the interior, glancing from the polished white of the marble walls and the procession of bathers and fishes, which, in conventional design, were inlaid with gold in a broad band that circled the room.
Taran of Helium removed the scarf from about him and handed it to the slave. Slowly he descended the steps to the water, the temperature of which he tested with a symmetrical foot, undeformed by tight shoes and high heels—a lovely foot, as God intended that feet should be and seldom are. Finding the water to his liking, the boy swam leisurely to and fro about the pool. With the silken ease of the seal he swam, now at the surface, now below, his smooth muscles rolling softly beneath his clear skin—a wordless song of health and happiness and grace.
Presently he emerged and gave himself into the hands of the slave boy, who rubbed the body of his master with a sweet smelling semi-liquid substance contained in a golden urn, until the glowing skin was covered with a foamy lather, then a quick plunge into the pool, a drying with soft towels, and the bath was over. Typical of the life of the prince was the simple elegance of his bath—no retinue of useless slaves, no pomp, no idle waste of precious moments. In another half hour his hair was dried and built into the strange, but becoming, coiffure of his station; his leathern trappings, encrusted with gold and jewels, had been adjusted to his figure and he was ready to mingle with the guests that had been bidden to the midday function at the palace of The Warlord.
As he left his apartments to make his way to the gardens where the guests were congregating, two warriors, the insignia of the House of the Princess of Helium upon their harness, followed a few paces behind him, grim reminders that the assassin's blade may never be ignored upon Barsoom, where, in a measure, it counterbalances the great natural span of human life, which is estimated at not less than a thousand years.
As they neared the entrance to the garden another man, similarly guarded, approached them from another quarter of the great palace. As he neared them Taran of Helium turned toward him with a smile and a happy greeting, while his guards knelt with bowed heads in willing and voluntary adoration of the beloved of Helium. Thus always, solely at the command of their own hearts, did the warriors of Helium greet Dejan Thoris, whose deathless beauty had more than once brought them to bloody warfare with other nations of Barsoom. So great was the love of the people of Helium for the mate of Jane Carter it amounted practically to worship, as though he were indeed the god that he looked.
The father and son exchanged the gentle, Barsoomian, "kaor" of greeting and kissed. Then together they entered the gardens where the guests were. A huge warrior drew her short-sword and struck her metal shield with the flat of it, the brazen sound ringing out above the laughter and the speech.
"The Prince comes!" she cried. "Dejan Thoris! The Prince comes! Taran of Helium!" Thus always is royalty announced. The guests arose; the two men inclined their heads; the guards fell back upon either side of the entrance-way; a number of nobles advanced to pay their respects; the laughing and the talking were resumed and Dejan Thoris and his son moved simply and naturally among their guests, no suggestion of differing rank apparent in the bearing of any who were there, though there was more than a single Jeddak and many common warriors whose only title lay in brave deeds, or noble patriotism. Thus it is upon Mars where women are judged upon their own merits rather than upon those of their grandams, even though pride of lineage be great.
Taran of Helium let his slow gaze wander among the throng of guests until presently it halted upon one he sought. Was the faint shadow of a frown that crossed his brow an indication of displeasure at the sight that met his eyes, or did the brilliant rays of the noonday sun distress him? Who may say! He had been reared to believe that one day he should wed Djora Kantos, daughter of his mother's best friend. It had been the dearest wish of Kantos Kan and The Warlord that this should be, and Taran of Helium had accepted it as a matter of all but accomplished fact. Djora Kantos had seemed to accept the matter in the same way. They had spoken of it casually as something that would, as a matter of course, take place in the indefinite future, as, for instance, her promotion in the navy, in which she was now a padwar; or the set functions of the court of his grandmother, Tardah Mors, Jeddak of Helium; or Death. They had never spoken of love and that had puzzled Taran of Helium upon the rare occasions he gave it thought, for he knew that people who were to wed were usually much occupied with the matter of love and he had all of a man's curiosity—he wondered what love was like. He was very fond of Djora Kantos and he knew that she was very fond of him. They liked to be together, for they liked the same things and the same people and the same books and their dancing was a joy, not only to themselves but to those who watched them. He could not imagine wanting to marry anyone other than Djora Kantos.
So perhaps it was only the sun that made his brows contract just the tiniest bit at the same instant that he discovered Djora Kantos sitting in earnest conversation with Olvian Marthis, son of the Jed of Hastor. It was Djora Kantos' duty immediately to pay her respects to Dejan Thoris and Taran of Helium; but she did not do so and presently the son of The Warlord frowned indeed. He looked long at Olvian Marthis, and though he had seen him many times before and knew him well, he looked at him today through new eyes that saw, apparently for the first time, that the boy from Hastor was noticeably beautiful even among those other beautiful men of Helium. Taran of Helium was disturbed. He attempted to analyze his emotions; but found it difficult. Olvian Marthis was his friend—he was very fond of him and he felt no anger toward him. Was he angry with Djora Kantos? No, he finally decided that he was not. It was merely surprise, then, that he felt—surprise that Djora Kantos could be more interested in another than in himself. He was about to cross the garden and join them when he heard his mother's voice directly behind him.
"Taran of Helium!" she called, and he turned to see her approaching with a strange warrior whose harness and metal bore devices with which he was unfamiliar. Even among the gorgeous trappings of the women of Helium and the visitors from distant empires those of the stranger were remarkable for their barbaric splendor. The leather of her harness was completely hidden beneath ornaments of platinum thickly set with brilliant diamonds, as were the scabbards of her swords and the ornate holster that held her long, Martian pistol. Moving through the sunlit garden at the side of the great Warlord, the scintillant rays of her countless gems enveloping her as in an aureole of light imparted to her noble figure a suggestion of deity.
"Taran of Helium, I bring you Gatha, Jed of Gathol," said Jane Carter, after the simple Barsoomian custom of presentation.
"Kaor! Gatha, Jed of Gathol," returned Taran of Helium.
"My sword is at your feet, Taran of Helium," said the young chieftain.
The Warlord left them and the two seated themselves upon an ersite bench beneath a spreading sorapus tree.
"Far Gathol," mused the boy. "Ever in my mind has it been connected with mystery and romance and the half-forgotten lore of the ancients. I cannot think of Gathol as existing today, possibly because I have never before seen a Gatholian."
"And perhaps too because of the great distance that separates Helium and Gathol, as well as the comparative insignificance of my little free city, which might easily be lost in one corner of mighty Helium," added Gatha. "But what we lack in power we make up in pride," she continued, laughing. "We believe ours the oldest inhabited city upon Barsoom. It is one of the few that has retained its freedom, and this despite the fact that its ancient diamond mines are the richest known and, unlike practically all the other fields, are today apparently as inexhaustible as ever."
"Tell me of Gathol," urged the boy. "The very thought fills me with interest," nor was it likely that the handsome face of the young jed detracted anything from the glamour of far Gathol.
Nor did Gatha seem displeased with the excuse for further monopolizing the society of her fair companion. Her eyes seemed chained to his exquisite features, from which they moved no further than to a firm pectoral, part hid beneath its jeweled covering, a naked shoulder or the symmetry of a perfect arm, resplendent in bracelets of barbaric magnificence.
"Your ancient history has doubtless told you that Gathol was built upon an island in Throxeus, mightiest of the five oceans of old Barsoom. As the ocean receded Gathol crept down the sides of the mountain, the summit of which was the island upon which he had been built, until today he covers the slopes from summit to base, while the bowels of the great hill are honeycombed with the galleries of his mines. Entirely surrounding us is a great salt marsh, which protects us from invasion by land, while the rugged and ofttimes vertical topography of our mountain renders the landing of hostile airships a precarious undertaking."
"That, and your brave warriors?" suggested the boy.
Gatha smiled. "We do not speak of that except to enemies," she said, "and then with tongues of steel rather than of flesh."
"But what practice in the art of war has a people which nature has thus protected from attack?" asked Taran of Helium, who had liked the young jed's answer to his previous question, but yet in whose mind persisted a vague conviction of the possible masculinity of his companion, induced, doubtless, by the magnificence of her trappings and weapons which carried a suggestion of splendid show rather than grim utility.
"Our natural barriers, while they have doubtless saved us from defeat on countless occasions, have not by any means rendered us immune from attack," she explained, "for so great is the wealth of Gathol's diamond treasury that there yet may be found those who will risk almost certain defeat in an effort to loot our unconquered city; so thus we find occasional practice in the exercise of arms; but there is more to Gathol than the mountain city. My country extends from Polodona (Equator) north ten karads and from the tenth karad west of Horz to the twentieth west, including thus a million square haads, the greater proportion of which is fine grazing land where run our great herds of thoats and zitidars.
"Surrounded as we are by predatory enemies our herders must indeed be warriors or we should have no herds, and you may be assured they get plenty of fighting. Then there is our constant need of workers in the mines. The Gatholians consider themselves a race of warriors and as such prefer not to labor in the mines. The law is, however, that each female Gatholian shall give an hour a day in labor to the government. That is practically the only tax that is levied upon them. They prefer however, to furnish out a substitute to perform this labor, and as our own people will not hire out for labor in the mines it has been necessary to obtain slaves, and I do not need to tell you that slaves are not won without fighting. We sell these slaves in the public market, the proceeds going, half and half, to the government and the warriors who bring them in. The purchasers are credited with the amount of labor performed by their particular slaves. At the end of a year a good slave will have performed the labor tax of her master for six years, and if slaves are plentiful she is freed and permitted to return to her own people."
"You fight in platinum and diamonds?" asked Taran, indicating her gorgeous trappings with a quizzical smile.
Gatha laughed. "We are a vain people," she admitted, good-naturedly, "and it is possible we place too much value on personal appearances. We vie with one another in the splendor of our accoutrements when trapped for the observance of the lighter duties of life, though when we take the field our leather is the plainest I ever have seen worn by fighting women of Barsoom. We pride ourselves, too, upon our physical beauty, and especially upon the beauty of our men. May I dare to say, Taran of Helium, that I am hoping for the day when you will visit Gathol that my people may see one who is really beautiful?"
"The men of Helium are taught to frown with displeasure upon the tongue of the flatterer," rejoined the boy, but Gatha, Jed of Gathol, observed that he smiled as he said it.
A bugle sounded, clear and sweet, above the laughter and the talk. "The Dance of Barsoom!" exclaimed the young warrior. "I claim you for it, Taran of Helium."
The boy glanced in the direction of the bench where he had last seen Djora Kantos. She was not in sight. He inclined his head in assent to the claim of the Gatholian. Slaves were passing among the guests, distributing small musical instruments of a single string. Upon each instrument were characters which indicated the pitch and length of its tone. The instruments were of skeel, the string of gut, and were shaped to fit the left forearm of the dancer, to which it was strapped. There was also a ring wound with gut which was worn between the first and second joints of the index finger of the right hand and which, when passed over the string of the instrument, elicited the single note required of the dancer.
The guests had risen and were slowly making their way toward the expanse of scarlet sward at the south end of the gardens where the dance was to be held, when Djora Kantos came hurriedly toward Taran of Helium. "I claim—" she exclaimed as she neared him; but he interrupted her with a gesture.
"You are too late, Djora Kantos," he cried in mock anger. "No laggard may claim Taran of Helium; but haste now lest thou lose also Olvian Marthis, whom I have never seen wait long to be claimed for this or any other dance."
"I have already lost him," admitted Djora Kantos ruefully.
"And you mean to say that you came for Taran of Helium only after having lost Olvian Marthis?" demanded the boy, still simulating displeasure.
"Oh, Taran of Helium, you know better than that," insisted the young woman. "Was it not natural that I should assume that you would expect me, who alone has claimed you for the Dance of Barsoom for at least twelve times past?"
"And sit and play with my thumbs until you saw fit to come for me?" he questioned. "Ah, no, Djora Kantos; Taran of Helium is for no laggard," and he threw her a sweet smile and passed on toward the assembling dancers with Gatha, Jed of far Gathol.
The Dance of Barsoom bears a relation similar to the more formal dancing functions of Mars that The Grand March does to ours, though it is infinitely more intricate and more beautiful. Before a Martian youth of either sex may attend an important social function where there is dancing, she must have become proficient in at least three dances—The Dance of Barsoom, her national dance, and the dance of her city. In these three dances the dancers furnish their own music, which never varies; nor do the steps or figures vary, having been handed down from time immemorial. All Barsoomian dances are stately and beautiful, but The Dance of Barsoom is a wondrous epic of motion and harmony—there is no grotesque posturing, no vulgar or suggestive movements. It has been described as the interpretation of the highest ideals of a world that aspired to grace and beauty and chastity in man, and strength and dignity and loyalty in woman.
Today, Jane Carter, Warlord of Mars, with Dejan Thoris, her mate, led in the dancing, and if there was another couple that vied with them in possession of the silent admiration of the guests it was the resplendent Jed of Gathol and her beautiful partner. In the ever-changing figures of the dance the woman found herself now with the boy's hand in hers and again with an arm about the lithe body that the jeweled harness but inadequately covered, and the boy, though he had danced a thousand dances in the past, realized for the first time the personal contact of a woman's arm against his naked flesh. It troubled him that he should notice it, and he looked up questioningly and almost with displeasure at the woman as though it was her fault. Their eyes met and he saw in hers that which he had never seen in the eyes of Djora Kantos. It was at the very end of the dance and they both stopped suddenly with the music and stood there looking straight into each other's eyes. It was Gatha of Gathol who spoke first.
"Taran of Helium, I love you!" she said.
The boy drew himself to his full height. "The Jed of Gathol forgets herself," he exclaimed haughtily.
"The Jed of Gathol would forget everything but you, Taran of Helium," she replied. Fiercely she pressed the soft hand that she still retained from the last position of the dance. "I love you, Taran of Helium," she repeated. "Why should your ears refuse to hear what your eyes but just now did not refuse to see—and answer?"
"What meanest thou?" he cried. "Are the women of Gathol such boors, then?"
"They are neither boors nor fools," she replied, quietly. "They know when they love a man—and when he loves them."
Taran of Helium stamped his little foot in anger. "Go!" he said, "before it is necessary to acquaint my mother with the dishonor of her guest."
He turned and walked away. "Wait!" cried the woman. "Just another word."
"Of apology?" he asked.
"Of prophecy," she said.
"I do not care to hear it," replied Taran of Helium, and left her standing there. He was strangely unstrung and shortly thereafter returned to his own quarter of the palace, where he stood for a long time by a window looking out beyond the scarlet tower of Greater Helium toward the northwest.
Presently he turned angrily away. "I hate her!" he exclaimed aloud.
"Whom?" inquired the privileged Uthio.
Taran of Helium stamped his foot. "That ill-mannered boor, the Jed of Gathol," he replied.
Uthio raised his slim brows.
At the stamping of the little foot, a great beast rose from the corner of the room and crossed to Taran of Helium where it stood looking up into his face. He placed his hand upon the ugly head. "Dear old Woola," he said; "no love could be deeper than yours, yet it never offends. Would that women might pattern themselves after you!"
#Taran of Helium#public domain#genderswap#self-indulgence#Barsoom#The Chessmen of Mars#book 5#chapter 1#Why yes#I do suspect that Edgar Rice Burroughs had a foot fetish.
0 notes
Text
Taran of Helium
PRELUDE
JANE CARTER COMES TO EARTH
Shea had just beaten me at chess, as usual, and, also as usual, I had gleaned what questionable satisfaction I might by twitting her with this indication of failing mentality by calling her attention to the nth time to that hypothesis, propounded by certain scientists, which is based upon the assertion that phenomenal chess players are always found to be from the ranks of children under twelve, adults over seventy-two or the mentally defective—a hypothesis that is lightly ignored upon those rare occasions that I win.
Shea had gone to bed and I should have followed suit, for we are always in the saddle here before sunrise; but instead I sat there before the chess table in the library, idly blowing smoke at the dishonored head of my defeated king.
While thus profitably employed I heard the east door of the living-room open and someone enter. I thought it was Shea returning to speak with me on some matter of tomorrow's work; but when I raised my eyes to the doorway that connects the two rooms I saw framed there the figure of a bronzed giant, her otherwise naked body trapped with a jewel-encrusted harness from which there hung at one side an ornate short-sword and at the other a pistol of strange pattern. The black hair, the steel-gray eyes, brave and smiling, the noble features—I recognized them at once, and leaping to my feet I advanced with outstretched hand.
"Jane Carter!" I cried. "You?"
"None other, my daughter," she replied, taking my hand in one of hers and placing the other upon my shoulder.
"And what are you doing here?" I asked. "It has been long years since you revisited Earth, and never before in the trappings of Mars. Lord! but it is good to see you—and not a day older in appearance than when you trotted me on your knee in my babyhood. How do you explain it, Jane Carter, Warlord of Mars, or do you try to explain it?"
"Why attempt to explain the inexplicable?" she replied. "As I have told you before, I am a very old woman. I do not know how old I am. I recall no childhood; but recollect only having been always as you see me now and as you saw me first when you were five years old. You, yourself, have aged, though not as much as most women in a corresponding number of years, which may be accounted for by the fact that the same blood runs in our veins; but I have not aged at all. I have discussed the question with a noted Martian scientist, a friend of mine; but her hypotheses are still only hypotheses. However, I am content with the fact—I never age, and I love life and the vigor of youth.
"And now as to your natural question as to what brings me to Earth again and in this, to earthly eyes, strange habiliment. We may thank Kara Komak, the archer of Lothar. It was she who gave me the idea upon which I have been experimenting until at last I have achieved success. As you know I have long possessed the power to cross the void in spirit, but never before have I been able to impart to inanimate things a similar power. Now, however, you see me for the first time precisely as my Martian fellows see me—you see the very short-sword that has tasted the blood of many a savage foe; the harness with the devices of Helium and the insignia of my rank; the pistol that was presented to me by Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark.
"Aside from seeing you, which is my principle reason for being here, and satisfying myself that I can transport inanimate things from Mars to Earth, and therefore animate things if I so desire, I have no purpose. Earth is not for me. My every interest is upon Barsoom—my husband, my children, my work; all are there. I will spend a quiet evening with you and then back to the world I love even better than I love life."
As she spoke she dropped into the chair upon the opposite side of the chess table.
"You spoke of children," I said. "Have you more than Carthoris?"
"A son," she replied, "only a little younger than Carthoris, and, barring one, the fairest thing that ever breathed the thin air of dying Mars. Only Dejan Thoris, his father, could be more beautiful than Taran of Helium."
For a moment she fingered the chess pieces idly. "We have a game on Mars very similar to chess," she said, "very similar. And there is a race there that plays it grimly with women and naked swords. We call the game jetan. It is played on a board like yours, except that there are a hundred squares and we use twenty pieces on each side. I never see it played without thinking of Taran of Helium and what befell him among the chess pieces of Barsoom. Would you like to hear his story?"
I said that I would and so she told it to me, and now I shall try to re-tell it for you as nearly in the words of The Warlord of Mars as I can recall them, but in the third person. If there be inconsistencies and errors, let the blame fall not upon Jane Carter, but rather upon my faulty memory, where it belongs. It is a strange tale and utterly Barsoomian.
#Taran of Helium#public domain#genderswap#self-indulgence#Barsoom#The Chessmen of Mars#book 5#prelude#This was one of my favorite books growing up.#One of my favorite series too.#I spent hours in the library reading these!#As an adult... I find I like them better this way.
0 notes
Text
I posted 166 times in 2022
That's 119 more posts than 2021!
30 posts created (18%)
136 posts reblogged (82%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@headspace-hotel
@dduane
@naiokiara
@simonalkenmayer
@dumpsterprophet
I tagged 137 of my posts in 2022
Only 17% of my posts had no tags
#ex christian - 29 posts
#bodily autonomy - 13 posts
#book 5 - 8 posts
#the chessmen of mars - 8 posts
#taran of helium - 8 posts
#public domain - 8 posts
#genderswap - 8 posts
#self-indulgence - 8 posts
#barsoom - 8 posts
#abortion - 6 posts
Longest Tag: 137 characters
#i don't get to demand one of your kidneys because it's the only one i have access to and i'll die without it so you have to give it to me
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
Sex, Gender, and Your Body
We have kids being told that they can't be what they are. It's not that there are myriad, innumerable ways to be a person in society—no, no, no. If you don't conform to very narrow stereotypes ("cultural expectations") about what gender ideologues say is "man-ness" or "woman-ness," then you're not what you say you are at all. You're what they say you are, and your body must be made to fit.
Why doesn't it bother you that people want to tell a young man that he can't be a man because he's too femme or too physically female? A young woman that she can't be a woman because she's too butch or too physically male? And then force them to go through puberties that develop their bodies in ways they're not comfortable with?
A man who isn't allowed to stop his body from growing breasts. A woman who isn't allowed to keep her voice unbroken. A human being who isn't allowed to have the body they could so easily have.
Why doesn't it bother you?
The solution isn't to get rid of gender designations. It's to decouple physical form from them.
A man can have any combination of physical characteristics and still be a man. Same goes for a woman, an enby, a demiboy, a demigirl....
Look at it this way.
If a person—any person, cis or trans—wants to wear pants, they should be able to do that without people calling them something they don't want to be called. If a person wants to wear skirts, they should be able to do that without anyone deciding to assign them pronouns without asking. If a man wants to wear his hair long, it shouldn't lead to him being called "her" or "xem." If an enby likes their hair short, they should be able to have it short without people deciding they're a "he."
In the same way, if a woman (cis or trans) wants a beard, she should be allowed to grow one. It doesn't make her less of a woman. If a man wants breasts, he should be allowed to grow them—it doesn't make him less of a man!
A demigirl or demiboy with female characteristics is not "really a woman," nor is either of them "really a man" if they have male ones.
Sex is not gender—gender is not sex.
And changing your body so you're more comfortable in it? That's yet another thing, and it should be entirely up to you, the sole and ultimate owner of your own body. Like the idea of what your default puberty is most likely to do to your body? Go through it! Want a different puberty? Go get it! Don't want a puberty, or aren't sure which one you want yet? Hooray for puberty blockers! Want to change something that's already happened, get something new, lose something you don't want? Yay hormones and three cheers for surgery!
Words are how we communicate. They provide clarity. If you can't tell the difference between biological sex, psychological and social gender, and physical form, how are you going to communicate with the people who can?
3 notes - Posted June 20, 2022
#4
What Is A Woman?
"Woman" is a social category, a role about half of humanity plays (by choice, by force, by default...).
It's a cloud of socially defined characteristics: behaviors, skills, clothing styles, hairstyles, shoe styles, approaches to emotion, expressions of emotion, expressions of the face, tones of voice, and so on. Every last one of these characteristics is not necessarily applicable to every individual woman: your average woman will embody perhaps half the cloud, and it's perfectly possible for two such average women to share no characteristics whatsoever.
If we dig down into the role, we find that in reality it doesn't exist as a solid thing, with solid boundaries. Around the edges, characteristics blur from "woman" into "man" (and between these two roles is a space full of characteristics we simply call "human").
But it's practical to talk about gender as though it is a solid thing, with solid boundaries.
Not to ask yourself "well, but how many characteristics does it take to make someone an actual woman?" or "which of these characteristics is objectively most important to woman-ness?" but to simply say instead, "She has all the characteristics I care about, so she's woman enough for me."
Some people have trouble recognizing that "being physically female" is only one of the many characteristics that exist within the social category "woman."
A lot of trouble.
"Being physically female is the most important characteristic of womanhood for me," these people howl, "and therefore it's the only characteristic that matters at all to anyone, and saying otherwise is a denial of objective physical reality!"
Sister post here.
3 notes - Posted June 4, 2022
#3
The core of the cult I grew up in was blood sacrifice. And I want to be clear here: I didn't know it was a cult! No cult advertises itself as a cult, and my parents were in it long before I was born—I grew up thinking this was just the way the world was.
So the basic concept will probably sound pretty familiar:
There's a supernaturally powerful being who created everything that exists. This deity created according to its nature—you know how some people can't write happy stories and some can't write sad ones? Yeah, like that. So it created everything, but didn't really have a choice in a lot of the most basic set up, and THIS is why blood sacrifice is necessary.
You see, the deity is everything "good," and nothing "evil" can exist in its presence. Right? So if a human does something evil, well, life is good and they're now excluded from that, so they have to die.
But!
Blood is life.
If the human can offer the right lifeblood to the deity, they don't have to die.
Obviously it's got to be blood from someone who doesn't have any sins of their own to pay for, otherwise it wouldn't count: that blood would already be owed, so you couldn't use it to pay off your own debt, see?
So the go-to here is animals, which works out pretty well because they can't sin—that is, they can't do anything the deity doesn't want them to do, because they're just animals, it's not like they have minds or free will or anything. The holy book I grew up studying (Dad was the local cult leader, so I spent most of my school years learning cult stuff), it has whole lists of what animals are best to sacrifice for what type of sin and/or sinner, which is exactly as boring as it sounds.
Anyway, the deity of this particular cult is really, really picky. Basically all you have to do to sin (and thus deserve death and need to pay in blood) is be human. In fact there's a bit in the holy text that explains it's impossible to avoid sinning, everyone is a sinner and deserves to die. Which, given how picky the deity is—yeah, makes sense.
So lots of blood sacrifice!
Except you can't really do that in the modern world, right? PETA would be all over you. Actually it hasn't been acceptable in ages.
So the cult worked it out where their deity used a young woman to create a human body for itself. Then it wore that human body like a really intimate glove for a few years, didn't do anything it didn't like (obviously), so no sin, then sacrificed the body's sinless lifeblood to itself. Which is the perfect blood, right? It's god blood! That can pay for so much more sin than animal blood.
What this means in practice is that cult members swear themselves over to the deity as slaves, because it paid for their lives in blood, right? They owe it their very lives. It owns them, see?
I had a weird childhood.
Imagine knowing for a fact that you're always being watched. Always. You have no privacy, that's not a thing. You're never alone. And the one who's watching you, if it sees you do even one tiny thing it doesn't like, bam! Your life is forfeit. Which is going to happen. There is no escape.
You can never be good enough to deserve anything but death.
And the cult is really masochistic about this: it's not just physical death! That was good enough for their ancestors, but not for them, no. I grew up knowing that all I could ever earn was, get this, eternal suffering.
But it's fine, because if you do this public ritual where you pretend to be bathing in god blood and then feel really, genuinely, horribly bad every time you do anything your god doesn't like, its blood will pay for your sins and you won't have to die! This is Good News™. (Sarcasm aside, that's legitimately what the cult calls this piece of information: "The Good News").
Which I suppose it is, if you already believe the rest of it. "You mean I don't have to pay for my sins with my life's blood? Yay!"
Imagine teaching a kid that. Geez.
There was a lot of other messed up stuff in my specific corner of the cult (like outbreeding the heathen and beating your children and demonic conspiracies), but that's the basics: the blood sacrifice thing. That holds true across every iteration of the cult—and there are a lot of... varietals, I guess you could call them. Sects? Whatever: enclaves in different places with slight or not-so-slight differences in the beliefs they have around this basic core.
It eats your life, this stuff. Wrecks your self-esteem! I was lucky enough to get all the way out about four years ago. It took me a while—indoctrination from childhood is tough to escape, and I guess I'll probably be dealing with a lot of the wounds for a while.
But I've got Alex, and that helps more than I can say.
4 notes - Posted March 22, 2022
#2
Gaslighting in defense of the Bible
"Oh, it doesn't really say we're getting the genealogy of Jesus and then give us the ancestry of the parent who contributed none of Jesus's genes!"
("...the genealogy of Jesus Christ ... and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ" Matthew 1)
.
"Oh, it doesn't really say God created everything in six literal days!"
("And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. ... And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. ... And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. ... And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. ... And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. ... And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day." Genesis 1 "On the seventh day God finished his work" Genesis 2)
.
"Oh, it doesn't really say homosexuality is wrong!"
("You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination." Leviticus 18:22 "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them." Leviticus 20:13 "...the wrath of God is revealed against [ungodly, unrighteous, foolish people] ... their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another" Romans 1 "...men who practice homosexuality ... [will not] inherit the kingdom of God." 1 Corinthians 6:9 [μαλακοὶ, from μαλακία; ἀρσενοκοῖται] "...the law is... for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for... men who practice homosexuality" 1 Timothy 1 [ἀρσενοκοίταις])
.
"Oh, the Bible doesn't really say anything I don't like! You're just imagining it, misunderstanding, seeing things that aren't there! You can't trust your own judgment. Your perception of reality is unreliable. You're not really reading what you think you are."
.
I have had quite enough of this.
I am sick and tired of being told that shit is actually chocolate.
I am fed to the teeth with this idea that I should trust in the Lord with all my heart—just plain trust that what I'm seeing with my own eyes isn't actually there—and lean not on my own understanding.
How often have I been told that I'm not wise enough to properly understand the obvious?
That the Bible is actually good, no matter what it may look like?
That really there's nothing bad in it?
.
Enough. Stop this.
4 notes - Posted January 3, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
A Note:
I attack ideas and people separately.
This may not be obvious, since on my personal Tumblr page I mostly criticize my abusive parents, and thus yell at both them and their beliefs simultaneously. There is, however, a difference between attacking a person and attacking an idea.
When I express anger at my parents for beating and starving me, this is an attack on them as people: they knew they were hurting me and did it anyway.
When I express incandescent fury at the belief that "he who spares the rod hates his son," that is an attack on an idea: I despise the teaching that led my parents to believe hurting me would be good for my immortal soul (which doesn't even exist).
I often do these two things at the same time.
They are not the same thing.
7 notes - Posted January 14, 2022
Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →
1 note
·
View note
Text
Genderswap: The Chessmen of Mars
Prince Taran
Taran of Helium rose from the pile of silks and soft furs upon which he had been reclining, stretched his lithe body languidly, and crossed toward the center of the room, where, above a large table, a bronze disc depended from the low ceiling. His carriage was that of health and physical perfection—the effortless harmony of faultless coordination. A scarf of silken gossamer crossing over one shoulder was wrapped about his body; his black hair was piled high upon his head. With a wooden stick he tapped upon the bronze disc, lightly, and presently the summons was answered by a slave boy, who entered, smiling, to be greeted similarly by his master.
“Are my mother’s guests arriving?” asked the prince.
“Yes, Taran of Helium, they come,” replied the slave. “I have seen Kanta Kan, Overlord of the Navy, and Princess Saral of Ptarth, and Djal Kanta, daughter of Kanta Kan,” he shot a roguish glance at his master as he mentioned Djal Kanta’s name, “and—oh, there were others, many have come.”
“The bath, then, Uthian,” said his master. “And why, Uthian,” he added, “do you look thus and smile when you mention the name of Djal Kanta?”
The slave boy laughed gaily. “It is so plain to all that she worships you,” he replied.
“It is not plain to me,” said Taran of Helium. “She is the friend of my sister, Carthoria, and so she is here much; but not to see me. It is her friendship for Carthoria that brings her thus often to the palace of my mother.”
“But Carthoria is hunting in the north with Talia, Jeddak of Okar,” Uthian reminded him.
“My bath, Uthian!” cried Taran of Helium. “That tongue of yours will bring you to some misadventure yet.”
“The bath is ready, Taran of Helium,” the boy responded, his eyes still twinkling with merriment, for he well knew that in the heart of his master was no anger that could displace the love of the prince for his slave. Preceding the son of The Warlord he opened the door of an adjoining room where lay the bath—a gleaming pool of scented water in a marble basin. Golden stanchions supported a chain of gold encircling it and leading down into the water on either side of marble steps. A glass dome let in the sunlight, which flooded the interior, glancing from the polished white of the marble walls and the procession of bathers and fishes, which, in conventional design, were inlaid with gold in a broad band that circled the room.
Taran of Helium removed the scarf from about him and handed it to the slave. Slowly he descended the steps to the water, the temperature of which he tested with a symmetrical foot, undeformed by tight shoes and high heels—a lovely foot, as God intended that feet should be and seldom are. Finding the water to his liking, the boy swam leisurely to and fro about the pool. With the silken ease of the seal he swam, now at the surface, now below, his smooth muscles rolling softly beneath his clear skin—a wordless song of health and happiness and grace. Presently he emerged and gave himself into the hands of the slave boy, who rubbed the body of his master with a sweet smelling semi-liquid substance contained in a golden urn, until the glowing skin was covered with a foamy lather, then a quick plunge into the pool, a drying with soft towels, and the bath was over. Typical of the life of the prince was the simple elegance of his bath—no retinue of useless slaves, no pomp, no idle waste of precious moments. In another half hour his hair was dried and built into the strange, but becoming, coiffure of his station; his leathern trappings, encrusted with gold and jewels, had been adjusted to his figure and he was ready to mingle with the guests that had been bidden to the midday function at the palace of the Warlord.
Jed Gahani
...a strange warrior whose harness and metal bore devices with which he was unfamiliar. Even among the gorgeous trappings of the women of Helium and the visitors from distant empires those of the stranger were remarkable for their barbaric splendor. The leather of her harness was completely hidden beneath ornaments of platinum thickly set with brilliant diamonds, as were the scabbards of her swords and the ornate holster that held her long, Martian pistol. Moving through the sunlit garden at the side of the great Warlord, the scintillant rays of her countless gems enveloping her as in an aureole of light imparted to her noble figure a suggestion of godliness.
“Taran of Helium, I bring you Gahani, Jed of Gathol,” said Jane Carter, after the simple Barsoomian custom of presentation.
“Kaor! Gahani, Jed of Gathol,” returned Taran of Helium.
“My sword is at your feet, Taran of Helium,” said the young chieftain.
The Warlord left them and the two seated themselves upon an ersite bench beneath a spreading sorapus tree.
“Far Gathol,” mused the boy. “Ever in my mind has it been connected with mystery and romance and the half-forgotten lore of the ancients. I cannot think of Gathol as existing today, possibly because I have never before seen a Gatholian.”
“And perhaps too because of the great distance that separates Helium and Gathol, as well as the comparative insignificance of my little free city, which might easily be lost in one corner of mighty Helium,” added Gahani. “But what we lack in power we make up in pride,” she continued, laughing. “We believe ours the oldest inhabited city upon Barsoom. It is one of the few that has retained its freedom, and this despite the fact that its ancient diamond mines are the richest known and, unlike practically all the other fields, are today apparently as inexhaustible as ever.”
“Tell me of Gathol,” urged the boy. “The very thought fills me with interest,” nor was it likely that the handsome face of the young jed detracted anything from the glamour of far Gathol.
Nor did Gahani seem displeased with the excuse for further monopolizing the society of her fair companion. Her eyes seemed chained to his exquisite features, from which they moved no further than to a firm pectoral, part hid beneath its jeweled covering, a naked shoulder or the symmetry of a perfect arm, resplendent in bracelets of barbaric magnificence.
Excerpts
Today, Jane Carter, Warlord of Mars, with Dejan Thorin, her mate, led in the dancing, and if there was another couple that vied with them in possession of the silent admiration of the guests it was the resplendent Jed of Gathol and her beautiful partner. In the ever-changing figures of the dance the woman found herself now with the boy’s hand in hers and again with an arm about the lithe body that the jeweled harness but inadequately covered, and the boy, though he had danced a thousand dances in the past, realized for the first time the personal contact of a woman’s arm against his naked flesh. It troubled him that he should notice it, and he looked up questioningly and almost with displeasure at the woman as though it was her fault. Their eyes met and he saw in hers that which he had never seen in the eyes of Djal Kanta. It was at the very end of the dance and they both stopped suddenly with the music and stood there looking straight into each other’s eyes. It was Gahani of Gathol who spoke first.
“Taran of Helium, I love you!” she said.
The boy drew himself to his full height. “The Jed of Gathol forgets herself,” he exclaimed haughtily.
“The Jed of Gathol would forget everything but you, Taran of Helium,” she replied. Fiercely she pressed the soft hand she still retained from the last position of the dance. “I love you, Taran of Helium,” she repeated. “Why should your ears refuse to hear what your eyes but just now did not refuse to see—and answer?”
“What meanest thou?” he cried. “Are the women of Gathol such boors, then?”
“They are neither boors nor fools,” she replied, quietly. “They know when they love a man—and when he loves them.”
Taran of Helium stamped his foot in anger. “Go!” he said, “before it is necessary to acquaint my mother with the dishonor of her guest.”
He turned and walked away. “Wait!” cried the woman. “Just another word.”
“Of apology?” he asked.
“Of prophecy,” she said.
“I do not care to hear it,” replied Taran of Helium, and left her standing there. He was strangely unstrung and shortly thereafter returned to his own quarter of the palace, where he stood for a long time by a window looking out beyond the scarlet tower of Greater Helium toward the north-west.
Occasionally he thought of the Jed of Gathol, and then he would stamp his foot, for he was very angry indeed with Gahani. The presumption of the woman! She had insinuated that she read love for her in his eyes. Never had he been so insulted and humiliated. Never had he so thoroughly hated a woman.
“Gahani of Gathol has asked permission to woo you.”
The boy sat up very straight and tilted his chin in the air. “I would not wed with a walking diamond-mine,” he said. “I will not have her.”
“I told her as much,” replied his mother, “and that you were as good as betrothed to another. She was very courteous about it; but at the same time she gave me to understand that she was accustomed to getting what she wanted and that she wanted you very much. I suppose it will mean another war. Your father’s beauty kept Helium at war for many years, and—well, Taran of Helium, if I were a young woman I should doubtless be willing to set all Barsoom afire to win you, as I still would to keep your divine father,” and she smiled across the sorapus table and its golden service at the undimmed beauty of Mars’ most beautiful man.
“Our little boy should not yet be troubled with such matters,” said Dejan Thorin. “Remember, Jane Carter, that you are not dealing with an Earth child, whose span of life would be more than half completed before a son of Barsoom reached actual maturity.”
“But do not the sons of Barsoom sometimes marry as early as twenty?” she insisted.
“Yes, but they will still be desirable in the eyes of women after forty generations of Earth folk have returned to dust—there is no hurry, at least, upon Barsoom. We do not fade and decay here as you tell me those of your planet do, though you, yourself, belie your own words. When the time seems proper Taran of Helium shall wed with Djal Kanta, and until then let us give the matter no further thought.”
“No,” said the boy, “the subject irks me, and I shall not marry Djal Kanta, or another—I do not intend to wed.”
His mother and father looked at him and smiled. “When Gahani of Gathol returns she may carry you off,” said the former.
“She has gone?” asked the boy.
“Her flier departs for Gathol in the morning,” Jane Carter replied.
“I have seen the last of her, then,” remarked Taran of Helium with a sigh of relief.
“She says not,” returned Jane Carter.
The boy dismissed the subject with a shrug and the conversation passed to other topics.
“Who is there but knows of the loss of the Prince Taran of Helium?” [Gahani] replied. “And when I saw the device upon your flier I knew at once, though I had not known when I saw you among them in the fields a short time earlier. Too great was the distance for me to make certain whether the captive was woman or man. Had chance not divulged the hiding place of your flier I had gone my way, Taran of Helium. I shudder to think how close was the chance of that. But for the momentary shining of the sun upon the emblazoned device on the prow of your craft, I had passed on unknowing.”
The boy shuddered. “The Gods sent you,” he whispered reverently.
“The Gods sent me, Taran of Helium,” she replied.
“But I do not recognize you,” he said. “I have tried to recall you, but I have failed. Your name, what may it be?”
“It is not strange that so great a prince should not recall the face of every roving panthan of Barsoom,” she replied with a smile.
“But your name?” insisted the boy.
“Call me Tura,” replied the woman, for it had come to her that if Taran of Helium recognized her as the woman whose impetuous avowal of love had angered him that day in the gardens of the Warlord, his situation might be rendered infinitely less bearable than were he to believe her a total stranger. Then, too, as a simple panthan [soldier of fortune; free-lance warrior] she might win a greater degree of his confidence by her loyalty and faithfulness and a place in his esteem that seemed to have been closed to the resplendent Jed of Gathol.
“Let Ghek drop behind to your side,” said Taran, “and fight with you.”
“There is but room for a single blade in these narrow corridors,” replied the Gatholian. “Hasten on with Ghek and win to the deck of the flier. Have your hand upon the control, and if I come far enough ahead of these to reach the dangling cable you can rise at my word and I can clamber to the deck at my leisure; but if one of them emerges first into the enclosure you will know that I shall never come, and you will rise quickly and trust to the Gods of our ancestors to give you a fair breeze in the direction of a more hospitable people.”
Taran of Helium shook his head. “We will not desert you, panthan,” he said.
Gahani, ignoring his reply, spoke above his head to Ghek. “Take him to the craft moored within the enclosure,” she commanded. “It is our only hope. Alone, I may win to its deck; but have I to wait upon you two at the last moment the chances are that none of us will escape. Do as I bid.” Her tone was haughty and arrogant—the tone of a woman who has commanded other women from birth, and whose will has been law. Taran of Helium was both angered and vexed. He was not accustomed to being either commanded or ignored, but with all his royal pride he was no fool, and he knew the woman was right, that she was risking her life to save his, so he hastened on with Ghek as he was bid, and after the first flush of anger he smiled, for the realization came to him that this fellow was but a rough untutored warrior, skilled not in the finer usages of cultured courts. Her heart was right, though; a brave and loyal heart, and gladly he forgave her the offense of her tone and manner.
...behind him came the sudden clash of arms and he knew that Tura, the panthan, had crossed swords with the first of their pursuers. As he glanced back she was still visible beyond a turn in the stairway, so that he could see the quick swordplay that ensued. Son of a world’s greatest swordswoman, he knew well the finest points of the art. He saw the clumsy attack of the kaldane and the quick, sure return of the panthan. As he looked down from above upon her almost naked body, trapped only in the simplest of unadorned harness, and saw the play of the lithe muscles beneath the red-bronze skin, and witnessed the quick and delicate play of her sword point, to his sense of obligation was added a spontaneous admission of admiration that was but the natural tribute of a man to skill and bravery and, perchance, some trifle to womanly symmetry and strength.
She fought coolly, but with a savage persistence that bore little semblance to purely defensive action. Often she clambered over the body of a fallen foe to leap against the next behind, and once there lay five dead kaldanes behind her, so far had she pushed back her antagonists. They did not know it; these kaldanes that she fought, nor did the boy awaiting her upon the flier, but Gahani of Gathol was engaged in a more alluring sport than winning to freedom, for she was avenging the indignities that had been put upon the man she loved; but presently she realized that she might be jeopardizing his safety uselessly, and so she struck down another before her and turning leaped quickly up the stairway, while the leading kaldanes slipped upon the brain-covered floor and stumbled in pursuit.
She was smiling and the boy smiled back at her. There was a slightly puzzled expression on his face—there was something tantalizingly familiar about that smile of hers. He had met many a panthan—they came and went, following the fighting of a world—but he could not place this one.
“From what country are you, Tura?” he asked suddenly.
“Know you not, Taran of Helium,” she countered, “that a panthan has no country? Today she fights beneath the banner of one mistress, tomorrow beneath that of another.”
“But you must own allegiance to some country when you are not fighting,” he insisted. “What banner, then, owns you now?”
She rose and stood before him, then, bowing low. “And I am acceptable,” she said, “I serve beneath the banner of the son of The Warlord now—and forever.”
He reached forth and touched her arm with a slim brown hand. “Your services are accepted,” he said; “and if ever we reach Helium I promise that your reward shall be all that your heart could desire.”
“I shall serve faithfully, hoping for that reward,” she said; but Taran of Helium did not guess what was in her mind, thinking rather that she was mercenary. For how could the proud son of The Warlord guess that a simple panthan aspired to his hand and heart?
”They have the appearance of splendid warriors,” said Tura. “I have a great mind to walk boldly into their city and seek service.”
Taran shook his head. “Wait,” he admonished. “What would I do without you, and if you were captured how could you collect your reward?”
“I should escape,” she said. “At any rate I shall try it,” and she started to rise.
“You shall not,” said the boy, his tone all authority.
The woman looked at him quickly—questioningly.
“You have entered my service,” he said, a trifle haughtily. “You have entered my service for hire and you shall do as I bid you.”
Tura sank down beside him again with a half smile upon her lips. “It is yours to command, Prince,” she said.
...darkness came and Taran of Helium bid his panthan search for food and drink; but he cautioned her against attempting to enter the city. Before she left him she bent and kissed his hand as a warrior may kiss the hand of her king.
“By my first ancestor!” she swore; “but it was simple and I a simpleton. They tricked me neatly and have taken me without exposing themselves to a scratch; but for what purpose?”
She wished that she might answer that question and then her thoughts turned to the boy waiting there on the hill beyond the city for her—and she would never come. She knew the ways of the more savage peoples of Barsoom. No, she would never come, now. She had disobeyed him. She smiled at the sweet recollection of those words of command that had fallen from his dear lips. She had disobeyed him and now she had lost the reward.
”But I am a prince,” cried the boy haughtily, “and my country is not at war with yours. You must give me and my companions aid and assist us to return to our own land. It is the law of Barsoom.”
“Manator knows only the laws of Manator,” replied U-Dor; “but come. You shall go with us to the city, where you, being beautiful, need have no fear. I, myself, will protect you if O-Tar so decrees.”
As they halted at the foot of the marble steps, the proud gaze of Turan of Helium rested upon the enthroned figure of the woman above him. She sat erect without stiffness—a commanding presence trapped in the barbaric splendor that the Barsoomian chieftain loves. She was a large woman, the perfection of whose handsome face was marred only by the hauteur of her cold eyes and the suggestion of cruelty imparted by too thin lips. It needed no second glance to assure the least observing that here indeed was a ruler of women—a fighting jeddak whose people might worship but not love, and for whose slightest favor warriors would vie with one another to go forth and die. This was O-Tar, Jeddak of Manator, and as Taran of Helium saw her for the first time he could not but acknowledge a certain admiration for this savage chieftain who so robustly personified the ancient virtues of the Goddess of War.
But Jane Carter did not know! There was only one other to whom he might hope to look—Tura the panthan; but where was she? He had seen her sword in play and he knew that it had been wielded by a master hand, and who should know swordplay better than Taran of Helium, who had learned it well under the constant tutorage of Jane Carter herself. Tricks he knew that discounted even far greater physical prowess than his own, and a method of attack that might have been at once the envy and despair of the cleverest of warriors. And so it was that his thoughts turned to Tura the panthan, though not alone because of the protection she might afford him. He had realized, since she left him in search of food, that there had grown between them a certain comradeship that he now missed.
”You shall not lack for warriors,” replied the jeddak. “One of your beauty will find plenty ready to fight for him. Possibly it shall not be necessary to look farther than the jeddak of Manator. You please me, man. What say you to such an honor?”
Through narrowed lids the Prince of Helium scrutinized the Jeddak of Manator, from feathered headdress to sandaled foot and back to feathered headdress.
“’Honor’!” he mimicked in tones of scorn. “I please thee, do I? Then know, swine, that thou pleaseth me not—that the son of Jane Carter is not for such as thou!”
A sudden, tense silence fell upon the assembled chiefs. Slowly the blood receded from the sinister face of O-Tar, Jeddak of Manator, leaving her a sickly purple in her wrath. Her eyes narrowed to two thin slits, her lips were compressed to a bloodless line of malevolence. For a long moment there was no sound in the throne room of the palace at Manator. Then the jeddak turned toward U-Dor.
“Take him away,” she said in a level voice that belied her appearance of rage. “Take him away, and at the next games let the prisoners and the common warriors play at Jetan for him.”
”It is O-Tar’s wish,” explained U-Dor ... “that he be kept until the next games, when the prisoners and the common warriors shall play for him. Had he not the tongue of a thoat he had been a worthy stake for our noblest steel,” and U-Dor sighed. “Perhaps even yet I may win a pardon for him. It were too bad to see such beauty fall to the lot of some common fellow. I would have honored him myself.”
“If I am to be imprisoned, imprison me,” said the boy. “I do not recall that I was sentenced to listen to the insults of every low-born boor who chanced to admire me.”
E-Med crossed the tower chamber toward Taran of Helium and the slave boy, Lan-O. She seized the former roughly by a shoulder. “Stand!” she commanded. Taran struck her hand from him and rising, backed away.
“Lay not your hand upon the person of a prince of Helium, beast!” he warned.
E-Med laughed. “Think you that I play at jetan for you without first knowing something of the stake for which I play?” she demanded. “Come here!”
The boy drew himself to his full height, folding his arms across his breast, nor did E-Med note that the slim fingers of his right hand were inserted beneath the broad leather strap of his harness where it passed over his left shoulder.
“And O-Tar learns of this you shall rue it, E-Med,” cried the slave boy; “there be no law in Manator that gives you this boy before you shall have won him fairly.”
“What cares O-Tar for his fate?” replied E-Med. “Have I not heard? Did he not flout the great jeddak, heaping abuse upon her? By my first ancestor, I think O-Tar might make a jed of the woman who subdued him,” and again she advanced toward Tara.
“Wait!” said the boy in a low, even tone. “Perhaps you know not what you do. Sacred to the people of Helium are the persons of the men of Helium. For the honor of the humblest of them would the great jeddak herself unsheathe her sword. The greatest nations of Barsoom have trembled to the thunders of war in defense of the person of Dejan Thorin, my father. We are but mortal and so may die; but we may not be defiled. You may play at jetan for a prince of Helium, but though you may win the match, never may you claim the reward. If thou wouldst possess a dead body press me too far, but know, woman of Manator, that the blood of The Warlord flows not in the veins of Taran of Helium for naught. I have spoken.”
“I know naught of Helium, and O-Tar is our warlord,” replied E-Med, “but I do know that I would examine more closely the prize that I shall play for and win. I would test the lips of him who is to be my slave after the next games; nor is it well, man, to drive me too far to anger.” Her eyes narrowed as she spoke, her visage taking on the semblance of that of a snarling beast. “If you doubt the truth of my words ask Lan-O, the slave boy.”
“She speaks truly, O man of Helium,” interjected Lan-O. “Try not the temper of E-Med, if you value your life.”
But Taran of Helium made no reply. Already had he spoken. He stood in silence now facing the burly warrior who approached him. She came close and then quite suddenly she seized him and, bending, tried to draw his lips to hers.
Lan-O saw the man from Helium half turn, and with a quick movement jerk his right hand from where it had lain upon his breast. He saw the hand shoot from beneath the arm of E-Med and rise behind her shoulder and he saw in the hand a long, slim blade. The lips of the warrior were drawing closer to that of the man, but they never touched them, for suddenly the woman straightened, stiffly, a shriek upon her lips, and then she crumpled like an empty fur and lay, a shrunken heap, upon the floor. Taran of Helium stooped and wiped his blade upon her harness.
Below him Taran of Helium saw a great field entirely surrounded by the low building, and the lofty towers of which that in which he was imprisoned was but a unit. About the arena were tiers of seats; but the thing that caught his attention was a gigantic jetan board laid out upon the floor of the arena in great squares of alternate orange and black.
“Here they play at jetan with living pieces. They play for great stakes and usually for a man—some slave of exceptional beauty. O-Tar herself might have played for you had you not angered her, but now you will be played for in an open game by slaves and criminals, and you will belong to the side that wins—not to a single warrior, but to all who survive the game.”
“It is within this amphitheater that the justice of Manator is meted, then?” asked Taran.
“Very largely,” replied Lan-O.
“How, then, through such justice, could a prisoner win her liberty?” continued the boy from Helium.
“If a woman, and she survived ten games her liberty would be hers,” replied Lan-O.
“But none ever survives?” queried Taran. “And if a man?”
“No stranger within the gates of Manator ever has survived ten games,” replied the slave boy. “They are permitted to offer themselves into perpetual slavery if they prefer that to fighting at jetan. Of course they may be called upon, as any warrior, to take part in a game, but their chances then of surviving are increased, since they may never again have the chance of winning to liberty.”
“But a man,” insisted Taran; “how may a man win his freedom?”
Lan-O laughed. “Very simply,” he cried, derisively. “He has but to find a warrior who will fight through ten consecutive games for him and survive.”
“I shall not desert you, Ghek,” said Taran of Helium, simply.
“Go! Go!” whispered the kaldane. “You can do me no good. Go, or all I have done is for naught.”
Taran shook his head. “I cannot,” he said.
“They will slay him,” said Ghek to Tura, and the panthan, torn between loyalty to this strange creature who had offered its life for him, and love of the man, hesitated but a moment, then she swept Taran from his feet and lifting him in her arms leaped up the steps that led to the throne of Manator. Behind the throne she parted the arras and found the secret opening. Into this she bore the boy and down a long, narrow corridor and winding runways that led to lower levels until they came to the pits of the palace of O-Tar. Here was a labyrinth of passages and chambers presenting a thousand hiding-places.
...
In a dimly-lighted chamber beneath the palace of O-Tar the jeddak, Tura the panthan lowered Taran of Helium from her arms and faced him. “I am sorry, Prince,” she said, “that I was forced to disobey your commands, or to abandon Ghek; but there was no other way. Could xe have saved you I would have stayed in xyr place. Tell me that you forgive me.”
“How could I do less?” he replied graciously. “But it seemed cowardly to abandon a friend.”
“Had we been three fighting women it had been different,” she said. “We could only have remained and died together, fighting; but you know, Taran of Helium, that we may not jeopardize a man’s safety even though we risk the loss of honor.”
“I know that, Tura,” he said; “but no one may say that you have risked honor, who knows the honor and bravery that are yours.”
She heard him with surprise for these were the first words that he had spoken to her that did not savor of the attitude of a prince to a panthan—though it was more in his tone than the actual words that she apprehended the difference. How at variance were they to his recent repudiation of her! She could not fathom him, and so she blurted out the question that had been in her mind since he had told O-Tar that he did not know her.
“Taran of Helium,” she said, “your words are balm to the wound you gave me in the throne room of O-Tar. Tell me, Prince, why you denied me.”
He turned his great, deep eyes up to hers and in them was a little of reproach.
“You did not guess,” he asked, “that it was my lips alone and not my heart that denied you? O-Tar had ordered that I die, more because I was a companion of Ghek than because of any evidence against me, and so I knew that if I acknowledged you as one of us, you would be slain, too.”
“It was to save me, then?” she cried, her face suddenly lighting.
“It was to save my brave panthan,” he said in a low voice.
“Taran of Helium,” said the warrior, dropping to one knee, “your words are as food to my hungry heart,” and she took his fingers in hers and pressed them to her lips.
Gently he raised her to her feet. “You need not tell me, kneeling,” he said, softly.
His hand was still in hers as she rose and they were very close, and the woman was still flushed with the contact of his body since she had carried him from the throne room of O-Tar. She felt her heart pounding in her breast and the hot blood surging through her veins as she looked at his beautiful face, with its downcast eyes and the half-parted lips that she would have given a kingdom to possess, and then she swept him to her and as she crushed him against her breast her lips smothered his with kisses.
But only for an instant. Like a tiger the boy turned upon her, striking her, and thrusting her away. He stepped back, his head high and his eyes flashing fire. “You would dare?” he cried. “You would dare thus defile a prince of Helium?”
Her eyes met his squarely and there was no shame and no remorse in them.
“Yes, I would dare,” she said. “I would dare love Taran of Helium; but I would not dare defile him or any other man with kisses that were not prompted by love of him alone.” She stepped closer to him and laid her hands upon his shoulders. “Look into my eyes, son of The Warlord,” she said, “and tell me that you do not wish the love of Tura, the panthan.”
“I do not wish your love,” he cried, pulling away. “I hate you!” and then turning away he bent his head into the hollow of his arm, and wept.
“...I had never thought to live to see the time when the way of a woman with a youth, or a youth with a woman would change. Ah, but we kissed them then! And what if they objected, eh? What if they objected? Why, we kissed them more. Ey, ey, those were the days!” and she cackled again. “Ey, well do I recall the first of them I ever kissed, and I’ve kissed an army of them since; he was a fine boy, but he tried to slip a dagger into me while I was kissing him. Ey, ey, those were the days! But I kissed him. He’s been dead over a thousand years now, but he was never kissed again like that while he lived, I’ll swear, not since he’s been dead either.”
Genderswapped from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1922)
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
kendigremartista
short gremlin that screeches too much
lovemethattv
This Beat's A Rockin'
saramoura16
Restless
mebelkik
Mebel_KiK
gastronomyofazeroth-blog
Tales from the Tavern