The Chessmen of Mars (9 page)

"Why does he keep more than one?" queried the girl.

"Sometimes accidents occur," replied Ghek, "and all the kings
that a swarm has saved are killed. When this happens the swarm
comes and obtains another king from a neighboring swarm."

"Are all of you the children of Luud?" she asked.

"All but a few, who are from the eggs of the preceding king, 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?" Tara asked.

"A very long time."

"And the rykors, too; they live a long time?"

"No; the rykors live for ten years, perhaps," he 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!" she exclaimed.

"Horrible?" he 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 he proudly exhibited the noble figure that
he surmounted, palpitant with life and energy and feeling.

"How do you do it?" asked Tara of Helium. "I do not understand it
at all."

"I will show you," he said, and lay down upon the floor. Then he
detached himself from the body, which lay as a thing dead. On his
spider legs he walked toward the girl. "Now look," he admonished
her. "Do you see this thing?" and he extended what appeared to be
a bundle of tentacles from the posterior part of his head. "There
is an aperture just back of the rykor's mouth and directly over
the upper end of his 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 he had a head and brain. If he is hurt, I
would suffer if I remained connected with him; 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
girl.

"You do not understand," he 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 Tara of
Helium.

"Just that!" he exclaimed. "Could aught be more wonderful?"

"Yes," replied the girl, "I can think of a number of things that
would be infinitely more wonderful."

What the creature had told her gave Tara of Helium food for
thought. She had been taught that every created thing fulfilled
some useful purpose, and she tried conscientiously to discover
just what was the rightful place of the kaldane in the universal
scheme of things. She knew that it must have its place but what
that place was it was beyond her to conceive. She 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. She smiled at recollection of a remark
her father had once made concerning them, to the effect that if
one of them ever dropped his egotism and broke it it would take a
week to fumigate Helium. Her father liked normal people—people
who knew too little and people who knew too much were equally a
bore. Tara of Helium was like her father in this respect and like
him, too, she was both sane and normal.

Outside of her personal danger there was much in this strange
world that interested her. The rykors aroused her keenest pity,
and vast conjecture. How and from what form had they evolved? She
asked Ghek.

"Sing to me again and I will tell you," he said. "If Luud would
let me have you, you should never die. I should keep you always
to sing to me."

The girl marvelled at the effect her 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 herself and the
brain when detached from the rykor. When it dominated the rykor
it might have other human instincts; but these she dreaded even
to think of. After she had sung she waited for Ghek to speak. For
a long time he was silent, just looking at her through those
awful eyes.

"I wonder," he said presently, "if it might not be pleasant to be
of your race. Do you all sing?"

"Nearly all, a little," she 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 girl shrank from him. "You promised to tell me the origin of
the rykor," she reminded him.

"Ages ago," he 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 his master to
guide him to food. The brain of the rykor grew smaller as time
went on. His ears went and his eyes, for he no longer had use for
them—the kaldane saw and heard for him. 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. He is really solely the product
of the super-intelligence of the kaldane—he is our body, 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 her in the subterranean chamber Tara of
Helium did not know. It seemed a very long time. She ate and
slept and watched the interminable lines of creatures that passed
the entrance to her prison. There was a laden line passing from
above carrying food, food, food. In the other line they returned
empty handed. When she saw them she knew that it was daylight
above. When they did not pass she knew it was night, and that the
banths were about devouring the rykors that had been abandoned in
the fields the previous day. She commenced to grow pale and thin.
She did not like the food they gave her—it was not suited to her
kind—nor would she 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 she was growing thin and white. He spoke to her
about it and she told him that she could not thrive thus beneath
the ground—that she must have fresh air and sunshine, or she
would wither and die. Evidently he carried her words to Luud,
since it was not long after that he told her that the king had
ordered that she be confined in the tower and to the tower she
was taken. She had hoped against hope that this very thing might
result from her conversation with Ghek. Even to see the sun again
was something, but now there sprang to her breast a hope that she
had not dared to nurse before, while she lay in the terrible
labyrinth from which she knew she could never have found her way
to the outer world; but now there was some slight reason to hope.
At least she could see the hills and if she could see them might
there not come also the opportunity to reach them? If she could
have but ten minutes—just ten little minutes! The flier was
still there—she knew that it must be. Just ten minutes and she
would be free—free forever from this frightful place; but the
days wore on and she was never alone, not even for half of ten
minutes. Many times she planned her escape. Had it not been for
the banths it had been easy of accomplishment by night. Ghek
always detached his body then and sank into what seemed a
semi-comatose condition. It could not be said that he slept, or
at least it did not appear like sleep, since his lidless eyes
were unchanged; but he lay quietly in a corner. Tara of Helium
enacted a thousand times in her mind the scene of her escape. She
would rush to the side of the rykor and seize the sword that hung
in its harness. Before Ghek knew what she purposed, she would
have this and then before he could give an alarm she would drive
the blade through his hideous head. It would take but a moment to
reach the enclosure. The rykors could not stop her, for they had
no brains to tell them that she was escaping. She had watched
from her window the opening and closing of the gate that led from
the enclosure out into the fields and she knew how the great
latch operated. She would pass through and make a quick dash for
the hill. It was so near that they could not overtake her. 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
girl failed to show the improvement that her captors desired.
Ghek questioned her in an effort to learn why it was that she did
not grow round and plump; that she did not even look as well as
when they had captured her. His concern was prompted by repeated
inquiries on the part of Luud and finally resulted in suggesting
to Tara of Helium a plan whereby she might find a new opportunity
of escape.

"I am accustomed to walking in the fresh air and the sunlight,"
she 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," he said.

"But how could I if you were always with me?" she 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 he told her that Luud had said that she was to
be taken into the fields. He would try that for a time and see if
she improved.

"If you do not grow fatter he will send for you anyway," said
Ghek; "but he will not use you for food."

Tara of Helium shuddered.