3 - Barbarians of Mars (11 page)

 
          
 
This sounded like a particularly horrific form
of vivisection to me. I interpreted the cat-girl's story in more scientific
terms. The First Masters had learned science from an even older race. They had
applied it, perhaps by some form of sophisticated surgery, to creating man-like
creatures from cats and dogs. Then they had used their creations both as slaves
and subjects for their experiments.

 
          
 
"And what happened then?" I asked.
"How did the three peoples become
separated.
"

 
          
 
She frowned. "It is hard to
understand," she said. "But the minds of the First Masters turned
more and more in upon themselves. The magic they had discovered by sacrificing
us was applied to their own brains and bodies. They became ... like animals.
A madness
overcame them. They left their city and flew to
their caverns in the mountains far from here. But every five hundred shatis
they return to the Crystal Pit - a creation either of their own or of the old
ones they served -to feed."

 
          
 
"What is their usual food?" I asked,

 
          
 
"Us," she said bleakly.

 
          
 
I was disgusted. I could partly understand a
psychology that allowed the dog-men of Hahg to sacrifice strangers to their
strange masters, but I could only loathe the mentaUty that let them hurl their
cousins, the cat-folk, into the Crystal Pit.

 
          
 
"They eat the people of Purha!" I
shuddered.

 
          
 
"Not just the folk of Purha." She
shook her head.
"Only when the men of Hahg capture us.
When they have no prisoners they select the weakest among themselves to provide
the food of the First Masters."

 
          
 
"But what inspires them to commit such
dreadful crimes!" I gasped.

 
          
 
Again the girl's answer was simple and, it
seemed to me, quite profound.

 
          
 
"Fear," she said.

 
          
 
I nodded, wondering if that deep emotion was
not the essential cause of most ills. Were not all political systems, all arts,
all human actions channelled towards creating that one valuable sense of
security we all, in our own ways, sought - an absence of fear? It was fear that
produced madness, fear that produced war. Fear, indeed, that often produced the
things we feared most. Was this why the fearless man was lauded - because he
did not represent a threat to others? Perhaps, though there were many kinds of
fearless people, and a total fearlessness produced a whole man, a man who had
no need to display his fearlessness.
The true hero, in fact -
the often unsung hero.

 
          
 
"But there are more of you in one of your
tribes than exist among the First Masters," I said. "Why do you not
band together to defeat them?"

 
          
 
"The fear the First Masters exert is not
on account of their numbers," she replied. "Nor on account of their
physical strangeness, though that may have something to do with it. The fear
goes deeper. I cannot explain it."

 
          
 
I thought perhaps I knew what she meant. We
call it by a simple term on Earth. We call it fear of the unknown. Sometimes it
is a man's fear of a woman whom he feels he cannot understand; sometimes it is
a man's fear of strangers - of people of a different racial type, or even from
a different part of his own land. Sometimes it is fear of the machines that he
manipulates. Whether the lack of understanding is on a personal plane or a more
general one, it creates suspicion and fear. It was their fear, I thought, not
their antecedents that made the dog-men of Hahg something less than human.

 
          
 
I said some of this to the cat-girl and she
nodded intelligently. "I think you are right," she said.
"Perhaps that is why we survive and grow and the dog-men revert more and
more to becoming like their ancestors."

 
          
 
I was struck by her quick brain. Though I
hesitate to make such judgments about animals, it seemed to me that the
essential cowardice of the dog and the essential courage of the cat might be
reflected in the types which had developed from them. Thus I could not blame
the dog-men for their brutality quite so much, though this did not alter my
deep loathing for what they had become. For, I thought, just as there could be
courageous dogs - on Earth there were many stories about them - so could these
people have once found courage.

 
          
 
I am an optimist, and it occurred to me that
just as I might eventually find a means of curing the plague infecting
Cend-Amrid, I might also help the dog-men by destroying the cause of their fear
- for there was certainly no hope for the First Masters. They were evil. Evil
is only another word for what we fear. Go to your Bible if you wish to see the
fear of women that inspired the old prophets to call them evil -and evil
creates evil. Destroy the first source and there is hope for the rest.

 
          
 
Again I mentioned some of this to the
cat-girl. She frowned and nodded. "It is hard to sympathize at all with
the men of Hahg," she said. "For what they have done to us in the
past has been terrible. But I will try to understand you, Michael Kane."

 
          
 
She got up from where she had been sitting
cross-legged beside me.

 
          
 
"My name is Fasa," she said.
"Come, see where we live."

 
          
 
She led me from the building in which I had
been lying in semi-darkness and had been unable to observe clearly, out into a
miniature city built among the trees. Not a tree had been cut in the building
of the cat-folk's city. It merged with the forest, thus offering a much subtler
kind of protection than the more commonplace clearing and fence used by
most
jungle-dwelling tribes.

 
          
 
The dwellings were only of one or two stories,
fashioned from mud, but mud fashioned into beauty. Here were tiny spires and
minarets, painted decorations in pale, lovely colours, a blending of pleasing
shapes and colours amongst nature's rich creations.

 
          
 
Some of the darkness in my mind was cleared by
the vision and Fasa looked up at me, delighted to see how fascinated I was by
the beauty of her settlement.

 
          
 
"You like it?"

 
          
 
"I love it," I said
enthusiastically. In its own simple way it reminded me of Vamal of the Green
Mists more than anything else I had seen on Mars. It had the same air of
tranquillity - a vital tranquillity, if you like - which made me feel so much
at home and at ease in Vamal.

 
          
 
"You are an artistic people," I
said, fingering the sword which I still wore. "I saw that at once when you
first brought us these blades."

 
          
 
"We try," she said. "I
sometimes think that if the surroundings can be made pleasing they help the
soul."

 
          
 
Again I was struck by the simple profundities
- common sense, if you prefer - coming from this beautiful girl. But what is
the deepest wisdom but the soundest kind of common sense, true common sense?
Living in isolated conditions, beset by enemies of two kinds, these cat-people
seemed to have something more valuable than most nations, even on Mars and
certainly on Earth.

 
          
 
"Come," she said, taking my arm.
"You must meet my old uncle.
Slurra.
He will like
you, I think, Michael Kane. He already admires you - but admiration does not
always produce liking, wouldn't you say?"

 
          
 
"I agree," I said feelingly, and let
her lead me towards one of the beautiful buildings.

 
          
 
I had to dude my head to enter and there I saw
an old cat-man, sitting relaxed and at ease in a delicately carved chair. He
did not rise as I entered, but his expression and his inclination of the head
seemed more to respect me than any empty gesture of politeness I might have
received on Earth.

 
          
 
"We were not aware of the benefits we
would bring to the people of Purha when we sent Fasa to you with the
swords," he said.

 
          
 
"Benefits?"
I enquired.

 
          
 
"Immeasurable ones," he said,
gesturing for me to sit in a chair close to him. "To see the First Masters
defeated - and they y/ere defeated in a deeper sense than you may realize -to
be shown that they could be killed, was the thing my folk needed most."

 
          
 
"Perhaps," I said, nodding agreement
to show that I knew what he meant, "this will help the Hahg, also."

 
          
 
He debated this for a moment before replying.
"Yes, it might, if they have not gone too far down the road. It will make
them sceptical of the First Masters’ power, just as we became sceptical long
years ago, well before my great-grandfather's time, in the age of Mispash the
Founder."

 
          
 
"A wise man of your
folk?"
I enquired.

 
          
 
"The founder of our folk," replied
the old cat-man. "He taught us one great truth - he was the wisest of
prophets."

 
          
 
"What was that?"

 
          
 
"Never to seek prophets," Slurra
smiled. "One should be enough - and he a wise one."

 
          
 
I reflected how true this was and how well
Slurra's words applied to the situation on Earth where, because prophets had
been found, whole nations now sought new prophets rather than study the
teachings of the few whose universal message had always been, know thyself. Not
knowing
themselves
, perhaps even fearing to, these
nations allowed artificial prophets - Adolf Hitler was an example who came to
mind at once -to cure their ills. All such prophets did was to plunge those who
listened to them into a worse situation than any they had been in before.

 
          
 
I talked at some length with the old cat-man
and found the conversation rewarding.

 
          
 
Then he said: "But all this is fine
enough. We must do something to help you.”

 
          
 
“Thank you,” I said.

 
          
 
"What can we do?"

 
          
 
I remembered the machines left behind in the
beached ship. That would be my first objective, I decided. If the
cat-people-could help me it would make things much easier. I told the old
cat-man, Slurra, of the reasons for my being here.

 
          
 
He listened gravely and when I had finished he
said: "You have a noble mission, Michael Kane. We should be proud to help
you carry it out. As soon as you are ready, there will be a party of my people
to come with you to this ship and the machines^can be brought back here."

 
          
 
"Are you sure you want these fated
machines among you?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Machines are only dangerous, I believe,
in the hands of dangerous men. It is such men we must be wary of, not their
tools," said Slurra. I had already explained the power and implications of
the ancient machines.

 
          
 
And so it was agreed. In a short time an
expedition, led by me, would set off for the coast.