Under the Moons of Mars (7 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Harkan Thul!” he shouted. “Sutarat!”

Silence.

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

Then he knew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Earthman appeared in the doorway.

A woman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sutarat laughed.

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

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

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

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

Ghar Han smiled. What came next felt almost inevitable.

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

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

Panting, Ghar Han glanced back over his shoulder.

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

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

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

He was silent.

“Who are you?” she said.

His voice was soft. “I don’t know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you know John Carter? Of Virginia?”

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

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

They were silent for a time.

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

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

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

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

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

“Two nobodies,” she said.

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

He raised his head and looked at her.

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

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

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

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

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

“Where shall we go?” she said.

“Wherever we want,” he replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

T
he ape-man was restless. Even on a night as warmly tranquil as this, here in the West African jungle that was far more his heart’s home than the House of Lords—where, as John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke, he was entitled to sit among its members anytime he wanted to—he could find no sleep in any of his favorite tree crotches or hollows. Nor did the pleasure of exhuming a week-buried haunch of antelope or lesser kudu provide anything more than a satisfactory belch and a good scratch. For the very first time in a life constantly adventurous from his birth, Tarzan was bored.

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

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