Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs

Usually when you think of Tarzan you think of a bronzed, godlike figure in a loincloth, swinging through the trees or engaged in mortal combat with Numa the Lion. But Edgar Rice Burroughs gave him no such limitations, and neither does Hugo-winning writer and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Burroughs pitted Tarzan against the Germans in World War I, and against the Japanese in World War II. Ms. Rusch takes us back to that earlier conflict in this story.

—Mike

Tarzan and the
Great War

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The little man who carried the telegram had no teeth, yet he looked familiar. It had been years since Tarzan had been to Algiers, and then he had not spent a lot of time with the locals. Yet this man seemed to know him.

“Excuse. Tarzan?” the man said in bad English. It was clear he did not know if Tarzan was the person he sought.

“I am Tarzan,” he said. “And I speak French.”

He wondered how the little man had missed that. Tarzan had been speaking French at a nearby table in an outdoor café, under a large canopy against the exceptionally bright sun.

The canopy had not been for him—Tarzan did not need or crave the shade the way that Europeans did—but it had been for his companion, a French expatriate who claimed he knew where Tarzan’s missing wife, Jane, was. For several weeks, Tarzan had thought her dead, but later learned that she had been spared.

He had spent a long time searching for her and had come no closer to her. But he knew he would eventually find her, and the men who took her would pay.

Unfortunately, the Frenchman he had spoken to hadn’t known anything. That became clear after a moment’s conversation, when the Frenchman had not used Jane’s name at all. The Frenchman had tried a gambit:
I may know where your missing wife is
, apparently something many men in the middle of this Great War needed to know.

The Frenchman had expected payment first, and Tarzan had set a gold piece on the table. The crowd of people, constantly moving through the narrow streets of the Kasbah, didn’t seem to notice the gold piece’s shine, which relieved Tarzan. Still, he kept his forefinger on the gold piece, figuring anyone who would try to steal it would suffer a broken wrist before he knew what happened.

The Frenchman had eyed the gold piece as if he wanted to steal it himself as Tarzan pressed the Frenchman for more details about Jane. Since he had none to give, Tarzan pocketed the gold piece and sent the Frenchman on his way.

Now a native Algerian stood before him, clutching a ratty piece of paper.

“I have for you a telegram,” the Algerian said, his French soft and accented. “You are Jean C. Tarzan, no?”

Tarzan started. He hadn’t used that name for years. He had taken it as his name during his first travels outside of Africa. Then he had known he was Lord Greystoke, but he could not admit it without ruining Jane’s marriage with his cousin, William Cecil Clayton, who had taken on the role of Lord Greystoke when the family believed that Tarzan’s father had left no heirs.

(It was, of course, more complicated than that, but, Tarzan had learned, all things concerning his family were complicated.)

Tarzan hoped his surprise at the old name did not show. “I am Jean C. Tarzan,” he said.

“Ah,
monsieur
,” the little man said with great relief. “I have been holding this telegram for you for months. I have searched for you all over the city, and could only hope you had already received the news.”

For a moment, worry ran through Tarzan. Could this be bad news of Jane?

Then he realized no news of Jane would come to him through that name. If someone were sending him bad news about her, it would come through proper channels, addressed to John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.

“You read the telegram?” Tarzan asked, knowing that operators prided themselves on translating the dots and dashes, but did their best to forget the messages.

“I did,
monsieur
, I am sorry,” the little man said. “I memorized it in case something happened to the paper.”

Now Tarzan could not ignore the message. His curiosity was piqued. Who would try to reach Jean C. Tarzan with an important message? Jean C. Tarzan had existed only for a short time in the years before the war, and had vanished after only a few months.

He took the gold piece he had planned to give to the Frenchman and handed it to the little man. The little man looked at it as if it could bite him.

“
Monsieur
, I am well paid at my work. I am doing this for you and for the Allies!”

Then he handed Tarzan the paper, nodded his head, and made his way through the crowd. Quickly he disappeared down a hill leading to the sea and the French section of the city, the blazing sun on the white buildings making it impossible to see anything other than movement.

Not for the first time, Tarzan silently cursed the civilized world. White buildings might remain cool inside, but a man could not see anything in this sea of people and brightness. He wished he could return to the jungle, where everything was clear.

But he needed word of Jane, and that word would come from men, who congregated in cities.

Until then, he would follow whatever leads he could, and find them where he may.

He opened the crumpled paper and read the smeared French. The telegram came from the War Ministry to Jean C. Tarzan.

We are reactivating your status. Contact Aiden Mireau regarding assignment. Do not trust local French officials. Urgent
.

He stared at the words, then read them again. He had worked for the War Ministry well before the war, and he had operated out of Algiers, solving many a case and stopping many a problem. But he had disappeared after the Gernois incident.

The date on the telegram was curious: he had not been part of the ministry for so long that he had no idea why they thought he would help them.

Still, he could not ignore this. Contact with Europeans, particularly those who had a stake in the secret underbelly of foreign affairs, might lead him to Jane.

He would find this Aiden Mireau and discover what it was the War Ministry wanted him to do.

It was a ridiculous job, or so Arthur Beaton had thought before he arrived in Africa all those months ago. Since then he had tracked this so-called Lord Greystoke all over the continent, hearing rumors that the man had killed Germans with his bare hands.

Beaton, a loyal Englishman to the core, was quite happy with the German deaths. The war had become ugly and, many believed, unwinnable. He had been unable to serve due to age, but that hadn’t stopped the British government from sending him on this mission—to find the faux Lord Greystoke, strip him of his title, and confiscate the money from the Greystoke estate for England herself.

This last Beaton had learned only because he was a good investigator. The British government had thought it no concern of his what would happen to the funds. But Beaton had thought the timing odd, so he had looked into the rationales behind the orders before taking the case. Had it been peacetime, he might have been more trusting. Or even if the orders had come several years ago, when this faux Lord Greystoke had appeared on the scene.

Then the longtime heir, William Cecil Clayton, would have lodged a complaint. But now the estate would go to some sixteenth cousin twice removed, and Beaton had no idea why the government would interest itself in such matters during wartime. Not until he learned about the vast wealth of the estate did he understand.

Things had become quite desperate after years of war. The government needed men and materiel, but more than that, it needed funds to pay for the men and materiel, funds from defunct estates and potential nonloyalists like this faux Lord Greystoke.

Even after Beaton discovered what the job entailed, he believed in it. He certainly thought that some sixteenth cousin, twice removed, a sixteenth cousin from the merchant classes, speaking with an accent bred in public schools, would be preferable to the faux Lord Greystoke, who had once told friends he had grown up in Africa “among the apes.” Tales of his uncouth behavior had disgusted Beaton, and made him even more willing to take the assignment.

But all of these months tracking down the man who had lost his home and his wife to German soldiers, and who had thwarted some German attacks, seemed a bit much.

By the time Beaton had arrived in Algiers on the heels of faux Greystoke, he felt a begrudging admiration for the man. In Beaton’s personal opinion, England needed such a man on her side.

Still, Beaton had a job to do, and he was not one to give up when success was so close at hand.

He could see the faux Lord Greystoke on the other side of the road. Beaton had taken a spot underneath an archway in one of the old buildings of the Kasbah. His white straw hat never gave him much protection from the harsh sunlight, even if the temperatures here in Algiers weren’t as brutal as they had been deeper inside the continent.

The Mediterranean Sea had a moderating effect, although its salty scent could not penetrate the odors of tobacco, incense, and roasting meat that seemed part of the Kasbah itself.

Beaton had been watching the faux Lord Greystoke all morning, and the man seemed a lot more civilized than Beaton had been prepared for. He clearly spoke several languages, seemed at ease in the crowded streets, and sipped tea while he awaited his companion, a rather shady Frenchman whom Greystoke had dismissed almost as soon as the man arrived.

But it wasn’t the Frenchman who caught Beaton’s eye. It was the rumpled little man who wore the robes of an Algerian, but who had come from the colonial part of the city, who had gotten his attention. That little man had watched Greystoke for nearly an hour before approaching him, and then had spoken to him only briefly, handing him a piece of paper that seemed to have perplexed Greystoke greatly.

Greystoke had read the paper several times before stuffing it into his pocket. Then he had stood near his table as if trying to make a decision.

He was an excessively tall man, with olive-colored skin darkened by the sun, and black hair in need of a trim. If the women around him were any judge, he was stunningly handsome. Certainly not the kind of man who could easily blend in, especially here, where most men were not as tall and not as muscular. Greystoke was, if anything, the epitome of British manhood, and Beacon felt increasingly strange about having to challenge the man’s heritage.

Still, as Greystoke stepped purposefully away from the outdoor café, Beaton followed—at a discreet distance, of course. Following such a man through the streets of the Kasbah should have been difficult, but was not, because the man towered over everyone.

Beaton did have to hurry to keep up. Even here, in the tight confines of the city, Greystoke traveled swiftly, as if the crowds parted before him just because they saw him coming.

Aiden Mireau was easy enough to find. He had an office in the Grand Post Office, one of the last buildings built in Algiers before the war. Tarzan remembered when it was new and controversial, at least among the Algerians. The French thought it lovely and perfect, the white sides and the Moorish arches a tribute to the African peoples. The people of Algiers just saw it as another reminder of the Europeans who had captured and held their country for so long.

Tarzan had learned the hard way that these small battles among peoples that, to him, had more in common than not, were extremely important. They could rupture into worldwide war, sucking in every corner of the globe and leading to the destruction of families like his own.

Before, when he had acted as Jean C. Tarzan, he had thought such things minor blips in a lifetime. Now he knew they could destroy a way of life. He kept telling himself that once he had Jane back, he would rebuild the plantation and retreat to his mountainside, never to leave her alone again.

He told himself this, but part of him thought it would not come true.

Tarzan stepped inside the large building. Despite the number of people inside, the central hall was cool. Arches created both a sense of division and of openness. The windows, with the arch pattern in their shape and in the glass, let in just enough of the bright sunlight to add to the illumination provided by the gigantic chandelier that hung from the very high ceiling.

He slipped around the crowd, going to the directory near the grand staircase. Aiden Mireau’s office was listed alphabetically, like all the office holders here. But unlike most of them, nothing identified Mireau as a representative of the French government.

Tarzan found that curious in and of itself.

He took the steps two at a time as he headed to Mireau’s office, not realizing that three different men watched him from the floor below.

The first man always watched the stairs. He kept track of the Europeans who were coming and going. He had never seen the tall broad-shouldered athletic man before. That man looked formidable.

The first man hoped his compatriots on the upper levels kept track of where the athletic man was going.

The second man had tailed the athletic man from the Kasbah, careful to keep his distance. No one looked out of place in the Grand Post Office, but it was more common to see men in European dress than Algerian garb. And the second man wore robes. He blended in, but he didn’t believe he would if he went to the official floors.