Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (9 page)

“We have had enough for the evening,” Dr. Bodog announced. “It is time for all to retire to our chambers and rest.”

He stood, following which all the others followed suit, and wobbled determinedly from the room on his ancient, spindly limbs. As I strode after him, I could not help glancing at the windows high above. Amtor’s eternal gray skies loomed. Night had fallen, but on Amtor there is never full darkness, as the double cloud layer diffuses the Sun’s rays over all the planet.

I felt the presence of a woman at my side. Expecting Duare to be there, I extended my hand toward her and felt her take mine with a warm, surprisingly intimate grip. I turned and saw that it was not Duare but Istara who moved gracefully beside me. Casting a glance behind us, I saw that Duare and Oggar had also paired off.

What to make of this new arrangement I could not fathom, but that night, as I lay in my comfortable bed, I kept one eye peeled on the darkened passage that led from the outer hallway into my own chambers. Wearied by the day’s activities and mildly fuddled by the heavy meal I had consumed and the strong
fíonbeior
I had downed, I soon found myself in the cradle of Morpheus.

How long I slept I could not determine. How I wished that I had thought to wear my faithful Bulova watch when I left Earth so long ago! On Venus, with its indistinguishable transition from dim daylight to the glow of night, the whole concept of time had apparently not evolved as it had on Earth, with its clear differentiation of day and night.

I rose and made my ablutions, then donned a fresh set of Amtorian garments. Making my way through the passages of this Amtorian Potala, I soon found myself in the grand entry hall, surrounded by statues that loomed and leered eternally. I wondered if I ought to search for Duare. She had pointedly ignored me as we parted after our evening repast. We would need to make plans, at the very least, and I feared that our hosts, for all their seeming hospitality, had plans for us which did not bode well.

My meditation was interrupted surprisingly as I detected a slight, sudden perfume. Amtorian flowers, like those of Earth, attract insect pollinators with their scents . . . and, by one of the great ironies of Nature, those same scents are among the most beautiful in all creation to the human sensorium.

I turned to see the source of the delightful scent, a compound, it seemed to me, of the odor of mimosa, jasmine, and peach, utterly feminine and yet speaking (if an odor can be said to speak) of strength and individuality. There stood Istara, now garbed in what appeared a practical outfit of soft blouse and loose trousers similar to my own.

“Carson Napier,” she addressed me, “I sense that you are looking for something. What is it that you desire?”

“Breakfast,” I replied.

Istara laughed, and as she did so it seemed that I could hear holiday bells jingling merrily. “You are a practical man, I see. Well, we shall tend to that.”

By some means which utterly escaped my comprehension, she summoned one of the black-clad servants and directed him to prepare a meal for us. She led me to a room smaller and brighter than the chamber where we had dined the previous evening.

I indicated to her that I was concerned regarding the whereabouts and safety of Duare, and she assured me that Duare was well and unharmed, and at liberty to go where she would in the Amtorian Potala.

Over a delicious repast reminiscent of Belgian waffles with maple-walnut syrup, she plied me with questions about Earth. These I answered as best I could. When I described Earth’s gleaming ice caps, glaciers, and icebergs, and the wondrous creatures that populated them, polar bears at the north and emperor penguins and sea lions at the south, she shook her head in disbelief.

“I would love to see such things,” she exclaimed.

We dined in silence for a little while, our food accompanied by a hot Amtorian beverage that I tried unsuccessfully to pretend was coffee. As I swallowed the last of it I was overcome by a silly impulse, yet one to which I gave way without hesitation.

“There’s an old”—I realized that I did not know the Amtorian word for
song.
—“an old statement,” I continued lamely, “that goes like this.” And I sang, “Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”

Istara clasped her hands to her cheeks, a look of astonishment on her face. “Carson Napier, what was that?”

“What was what?” I echoed, frowning in puzzlement.

“That.” And she tried to mimic my singing, which is amateurish at best. Her own efforts, let us say, were not going to rival those of Connee Boswell, no less those of Amelita Galli-Curci.

“It’s called singing,” I told her, using the English word as there was no equivalent in Amtorian. “It’s a way of making—” and again I was stymied. I tried again. “It’s a way of making pleasant sounds with your voice, instead of with a piece of wood.”

She shook her head in amazement. “Oh, how wonderful. Glaciers and penguins and—and singing. Singing! Oh, what a place must this Earth of yours be! And, Carson, Carson—”

She leaned across the table and took my hand, drawing me forward so that our faces were very nearly touching. “Carson, I must tell you something.” She looked around. One of the black-clad servitors was still in the room with us. With a gesture she commanded him to clear the table.

As soon as he had exited the room, Istara leaned still closer. I could feel the softness of her tresses and smell the perfume of her hair. In a voice so low as to be almost inaudible she said, “My father, Bodog, has rebuilt the ancient space flier in which the ancient Lemurian settlers came from Earth to Amtarra. He—”

“Istara,” I interrupted her, “how old is Bodog? How long has be been on Amtor? How old are you and Oggar? Where is your mother?”

She pulled away from me, drawing a shuddering breath. “I do not know, Carson. I have memories, unclear images of another life, another world. I have discussed them with my brother. He has similar memories. Were we born on Earth? Did our father bring us to Amtarra? I do not know how old I am.”

For a moment she preened. Yes, even on Venus, the eternal female will play her part in the grand drama of life. “How old do I look to you, Carson?”

I took her hand again, studied it and her face. I said, “Twenty.”

“Perhaps,” she assented. “Or twenty thousand? I do not know, myself.”

A silence descended upon us, then she rose and took my hand. She led me from the Potala. Soon we were strolling outside. There had been another of Amtor’s strange “snowfalls” while we slept, and the ground was covered with myriad granules that shone in every color imaginable when viewed from close, but gave off a white glare from afar.

“He is going back!” Istara blurted suddenly. “He has kept the space machine all these years, never knowing if Earth was inhabitable, never knowing if he could return. He is mad, you know.”

I said, “I have detected something disquieting about Bodog, but I knew not what.”

“Yes,” she repeated, “he is a genius, possibly the greatest genius who has ever lived, but he is quite insane. You saw his throne. Sometimes he sits there for days on end, commanding empires and armies to do his bidding. He fancies himself the rightful ruler of the universe. If he returns to Earth, his brilliance and his ruthlessness may well make him ruler of the world.”

“We must stop him,” I told her.

“Stop him, indeed. But how?”

“Have you tried to persuade him to give up his plan? He is comfortable here. Why not remain on Amtor?”

“It is no use. Oggar and I have both tried to convince him that his plans are futile at best, monstrously evil at worst. He only laughs, and if we persist he flies into a rage. Our mother tried to get him to abandon his plan, and he drove her mad with his cruelty and abuse. It was she whom you heard screaming last night, Carson. We all pretended to hear nothing. Oggar and I learned long ago what we must do. But we heard.”

“Can you not simply overpower him?” I persisted. “He is a feeble old man. Oggar could crush him with one hand. Or you could use the blue ray that you used on the grass creatures.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You felt the ray. It is harmless against humans. It was so designed to be. And as for attacking him with our bare hands, he uses his servants as bodyguards. They are not fully human, Carson. Surely you can tell that. They are—not exactly alive. They are some sort of half-living beings, utterly without will of their own, subject to the command of any human but to that of my father above all.”

I wracked my brain, trying to think of a way to defeat this self-styled rightful ruler of the universe.

“When does he plan to go?” I queried Istara at last.

“He has been delaying the trip because he does not know conditions on Earth. I do not know how long it has been since we traveled from—did you call it Lemuria?—to Amtarra.”

“Many thousands of years,” I told her. “Perhaps millions. On the present Earth, Lemuria is but a legend and Amtarra is known only as a mysterious, cloud-shrouded world.”

She nodded thoughtfully. Then she spoke again.

“So you see, Carson, you were a godsend to Bodog. You will be his guardian, his guide and adviser when he returns to Earth. He truly thinks that he is the rightful ruler of the universe, and he plans to start by conquering the planet of his birth. He will want to take you with him, Carson. And—what will you say when he asks you to join him?”

I fear that I bit my lip in distress. I was torn between my desire to return to Earth and my fear that Dr. Bodog would cause misery once he took up his campaign of conquest. He was but one wizened elf of a manikin, but I knew that his bulging cranium contained the most brilliant and dangerous mind in two planets.

If I could return to Earth, perhaps even bring the lovely Duare with me, I might risk it. But then a further thought came to bother my shaken tranquility. Duare had become increasingly uninterested in me of late. She seemed drawn to Istara’s brother, Oggar. And at the same time—I looked at Istara, drank in the beauty of her silken tresses, the grace of her tall, fit figure, the depths of her emerald-colored eyes in which I imagined I could see the nobility of her mind and her soul.

“I will talk to Bodog,” I announced at last.

Istara led me back into the Amtorian Potala.

I found Dr. Bodog working in his laboratory. He had trained several of his black-clad servitors as research assistants. Their blank eyes and expressionless faces produced a
frisson
in me whenever I had occasion to look into the face of one of these strange beings. I inferred that they were living creatures of some sort, for some of them seemed to be male and others female.

They obeyed Bodog with a kind of zombielike intelligence. Were they born without will or personality, and did they spend their entire existence as victims of this weird living death, or did they have some degree of awareness of their condition? I wondered if they might actually rebel against their circumstance.

As for Dr. Bodog, while what little scientific knowledge I possess was chiefly in the fields of anthropology and sociology, I was sufficiently familiar with the physical sciences to achieve a general understanding of what the wizened Bodog was working on.

He was developing ray projectors. Probably the azure ray that Istara had used on the grass creatures was of her father’s devising. But as I entered Bodog’s laboratory on this day, it became clear to me that he was working on a device that would have a far different effect from the blue ray.

I watched as he trained an experimental projector on one of his assistants. A brilliant ray, golden in hue, sprang from a polished lens onto the black-clad servitor, this one a female. At first there seemed to be no effect on the female. I do not know if I ought even to call her a woman. Bodog held a cube of a dull black nature. A small cylinder no larger than a common light switch protruded from the top of the cube, which was itself not much larger in any direction than the length of a man’s hand.

As Bodog moved the cylinder, the black-clad female moved like a marionette, raising and lowering a hand, standing on one foot then the other, twirling like a ballerina, lifting a piece of electrical equipment from one work bench, carrying it a few yards, then lowering it onto another. Finally she drew away from us and stood with her back to the wall, ready to respond to Bodog’s control should he summon her again.

The scientist turned toward me. The corners of his mouth rose in an expression that was more a malevolent grimace than a true smile. Then he laughed: a mirthless, unpleasant sound. “You see, Carson Napier, with my electrical brainwave amplifier I can transfer my commands to anyone I choose. As I think, ‘Raise your hand,’ the subject raises her hand. As I think, ‘Turn around,’ she turns around. So far I can control only the gross physical movements of my subjects, but when I establish my new laboratory on Earth I will build more advanced and more powerful brainwave amplifiers. I will be able to control not just my subjects’ physical movements but their very thoughts. Thus will I achieve my proper place as the rightful ruler of the universe.”

And he let forth that horrifying parody of laughter.

At this point I let him know what Istara had told me of his planned return to Earth. Since he had already mentioned his plan, there was no need to conceal my knowledge of it.

“Yes,” he grated, rubbing his hands and all but dancing a jig of glee. “Tonight I will leave this planet and begin my return to Earth. And you, Carson Napier, will be my right-hand henchman.”

“On one condition, Dr. Bodog,” I replied. “The Princess Duare must accompany us. Will your space machine accommodate three?”

“Come,” Bodog said. “I will show you.”

So saying, he led me to another chamber. Here stood a strange craft indeed. In no way did it resemble the bullet-shaped rocket in which I had traveled from Earth to Venus, the rocket which now lay hopelessly mired in a quicksand swamp, many miles from the Amtorian Potala.

Bodog’s craft was no larger than an ordinary automobile, like the Stutz Bearcat that I had driven during my halcyon college days. A door opened in its side, and Bodog led me inside the space machine. A strange arrangement of shafts and wires filled much of the cabin.