“And Tars Tarkas,” added Wilkinson. “Don’t forget Tars Tarkas.”
“Your obvious concern for the memorability of my name flatters me,” said a deep voice. The tent flap was thrown open and the huge Green Martian entered, carrying a little lamp with a naked, flickering flame. He was followed by Bill Carter, who had in one hand a jug and in the other, his fingers through their handles, four drinking vessels. “Sir and madam,” went on Tars Tarkas. “I trust that you will pardon our intrusion.”
“Stow it, Tusky!” said his companion. “Wot d’yer wanter talk well orf fer?”
“This is a mood of speech, William, with which our guests may be a little more familiar than with that of your tribe.” He turned to Wilkinson. “As you may have gathered, Captain, at one time I was a frequent visitor to the cities. I learned from the tame humans their version of the English language. As spoken by them it is, I consider, somewhat richer in vocabulary than as spoken by these nomadic hunters.”
“Cor lumme, Tusky — ’ave yer swallered the bleedin’ dictionary?”
The Green Martian and the human spread skins for themselves and sat down. Carter uncorked the jug and splashed liquor into each of the earthenware tumblers. He raised his in salutation. “‘Ere’s mud in yer eye!”
“And in yourn,” responded Wilkinson.
“So yer can talk like a civilized ‘ooman bein’ if yer feels like it!”
“I think,” said Tars Tarkas firmly, “that we shall continue to converse in English.” He sipped from his mug, the drinking vessel that, in his huge hand, against his ferociously smiling mouth, was no more than a liqueur glass. “And now, Captain Wilkinson, we shall be greatly obliged if you will tell us your story. I am of the opinion that you and Mrs. Wilkinson have already told us the truth — but was it the whole truth? We think not. But can the whole truth, in all its nudity, be revealed to the whole tribe? Once again, we think not. So, while most of the people are engaged in the shifting and the hiding of the Masters’ boat, my friend Bill and I, the co-leaders, request that you afford us some further measure of enlightenment.”
Wilkinson took a small mouthful of the fiery spirit, swallowing it with care. He said, “I’m afraid this is rather a hopeless task. Get this straight: I don’t think for one moment that you people are lacking in intelligence. It’s just that you haven’t the background to comprehend what I’ll try to tell you.”
“Don’t be so bleedin’ sure of that, me old cock,” Bill Carter told him. “I’ve ‘eard tell that when the Martians came in their bleedin’ rockets the only people ‘o believed in space travel was blokes like Jules Verne, ‘o writ adventure stories fer kids.”
“But what about time travel?” asked Wilkinson.
“Yer mean goin’ back inter the past, an’ all that? Yer should’a bin in the same trade as Jules Verne, mister.”
“But you’ve told us, Bill,” said Tars Tarkas, “that your people laughed at Jules Verne and his space travel stories until the Martians came — the Masters, that is, not ourselves. So — can we afford to laugh at time travel? I think not. And, in any case, it is pleasant to contemplate a future, a future from which Captain Wilkinson and his wife must have come, in which your people have been liberated, in which the Masters have been destroyed.” He addressed the Wilkinsons. “And tell me, how is it with my people, the true Martians?”
“But we don’t come from the future,” said Wilkinson. “Or, if we do, it’s from a future universe.”
• • •
It was not as hard to explain as Wilkinson had feared it would be. But, after all, Bill’s not-so-remote ancestors had seen and heard the Martian rockets screaming down from the peaceful sky of nineteenth century England, making their landing on a world in which Good Queen Victoria was still on the throne, in which the sun never set on the British Empire. They had seen laser beams brought to bear against horse-drawn artillery and coal-burning warships, had experienced the horrors of chemical warfare decades before the occasion — on another Coil of Time — of the first use of poison gas in a European war.
Bill’s people had had space travel thrust upon them before they, themselves, had succeeded in launching a successful airplane. And on Mars, Tars Tarkas’ people, primitive nomads, had watched in wonder and from afar the first test rocket firings, and in even greater wonder as the ships brought back the first loads of captives, the four-limbed beings who were destined to replace those indigenous humanoids wiped out by the Great Plague.
So the two Martians — the native and the descendant of unwilling colonists — were not altogether incredulous. And Tars Tarkas had said cautiously, “I think I believe you. I could tell that you and your wife were from … Outside. From a very long way Outside. Your appearance and your manner of speech make it obvious that you are alien to the Tribes. And yet your bearing is that of free men, not that of the Tame Humans.” He sighed gustily. “If your ship were not broken down, and if she were a warship, this would be a happy day for Barsoom. And for Earth. The Masters, these days, make little scientific progress, if at all. Your fighting men could dispose of them with ease.”
“When we get back,” promised Wilkinson, “we’ll try to organize military aid for you.”
If we get back, he thought.
Carter went out for more liquor, and after his return the talk carried on far into the night. Wilkinson and Vanessa learned that the Martians’ first landing had been in southern England, and that the majority of the prisoners — or livestock — shipped to Mars had been captured in London. Of these, it had been the rougher, more fiercely independent slum dwellers who had succeeded in escaping from the pens, and the respectable, middle-class families who had meekly accepted their servitude. Meanwhile, Earth itself was under Martian rule, and probably a similar state of affairs existed there.
They listened intently while Bill Carter and Tars Tarkas talked of their own lives and times, heard the story of Carter’s rise to power by means of his marriage to the daughter of the chief of the tribe, and heard of the expulsion of Tars Tarkas, who had been Jeddak of a far larger tribe, by his own people.
He said, “They are afraid of the Masters. When I proposed that we make an alliance with Bill’s people to fight against them, to drive the Masters from the face of Barsoom, my own tribe rose up against me.” His red eyes blazed. “But one day I shall unite the tribes — the tribes of both races. And then …”
Wilkinson took advantage of the short silence to ask a question. “Why did the Masters go to all the trouble of invading Earth?”
“To begin with, we do not make good slaves. Secondly — but perhaps most important — they don’t like the taste of us. Although they have come to prefer the flavor of the wild ones, Bill’s people, to that of their human cattle….”
“What about Boris and Paddy?” demanded Vanessa, unable to repress her renewed anxiety. “Have they … have they been eaten?”
“No.” The green man’s voice was reassuring — in a way. “No. I think they will be saved for the Masters’ Feast Day, the anniversary of their Invasion of Earth. That is just seven days from now. And they will not be eaten. Not by the Masters, that is. The Masters cannot take solid food.” His huge hand swooped down on the fur rug covering Vanessa and Wilkinson, came up with something very small caught between the long nails of his thumb and his forefinger. There was an unpleasant crack, a tiny spatter of blood — Vanessa’s, or Wilkinson’s? “The Masters feed like the vermin they are. The Tame Humans get the leavings.”
XVII
THE HUNTERS made an early start the following morning; the camp was astir as soon as the first, pale flush of dawn was in the sky. With the ease of long practice, tents were struck and bundled, with other gear, into the clumsy wagons. By small cooking fires men, women and children were wolfing strips of the dried meat and gulping some sort of hot drink from crude mugs. Wilkinson and Vanessa, who had been evicted from their tent by Delia Doris and another woman, were standing in the near-darkness, still sleepy, bewildered, trying to
keep out of the way. They were relieved when Bill Carter found them. He gave each of them a pair of boots of soft leather — they were not new, and they stank, but they were a boon to their bruised, cold feet — and a short fur jacket. He led them to one of the little fires. Mugs were thrust into their hands. This drink was not alcoholic; it seemed to be some sort of herb infusion. It tasted vile, but it was both warming and refreshing. And it had, they soon discovered, certain medicinal properties.
Wilkinson was more embarrassed than his wife — but she had lived rough in the Venusian Underground while he had always led, save for the brief interlude on Vanessa’s Venus, a comparatively sheltered existence. As he tried to find some privacy among the bushes he remembered, nostalgically, his aseptically clean bathroom aboard Discovery….
And then the tribe was on the march. Ahead were Tars Tarkas and his followers, mounted on ungainly six-legged brutes — thoats, they were called — that looked like oversized, reptilian camels. The long lances, each with its fluttering, ragged pennons, were in sharp silhouette against the paling sky, and the screaming of the beasts was like cavalry trumpets. Then there were the wagons, some drawn by teams of thoats, some by a single animal. They were loaded with tents and other gear, with spare weapons, with the younger children and with obviously pregnant women.
On each side of the column of vehicles marched the able-bodied tribespeople, men and women, boys and girls, some armed with spears, some with clumsy-looking swords, almost all of them with crossbows. And there was a rearguard, too, in command of which was Bill Carter, with Delia Doris at his side. He motioned to Wilkinson and Vanessa to join them, grunting, “‘Ope yer can keep it up. Me Ol’ Dutch’ll create ter beat the bleedin’ band if I lets yer ride wiv the toddlers an’ the expectant mums.”
“Yer can s’y that agyne, Bill Carter,” said Delia Doris.
“We can manage, Bill,” Wilkinson assured him.
And we should be able to manage, he thought. Vanessa and I are used to the relatively heavy gravities of Earth and Venus.
The sun came up on their right hand, and light and color returned to the world. There was the pink, spongy lichen over which they were marching, following a trail that must have been followed by this tribe, and by other tribes, for generations. There were frequent clumps of dark green, spiky bushes that, now and again, attained the height of true trees. There were weatherworn, lichen-covered boulders, some of which were roosts for bird-like (or were they bat-like?) things that flapped leathery wings and squawked discordantly as they passed. There were the insects (if they were insects), tiny, metallically scintillating, that shrilled around the occasional burst of purple blossoms that stood out in sharp relief against the all-pervading pinkness.
They marched, and they marched, and jackets were thrown open as the sun rode higher in the cloudless sky. They marched, and they marched, and Wilkinson became aware that he had the beginnings of a blister on his right heel. He caught a sidewise glimpse of the tough, vicious face of Delia Doris and knew how little sympathy he could expect if he asked Bill Carter to call a halt for his benefit.
They marched, and they marched.
Carter halted abruptly and looked up at the sky, slanting his eyes against the glare of the sun. He fumbled at his belt, drew from it a whistle, put it to his lips and blew a succession of piercing blasts. The column jolted to a stop. And then the marchers were crowding around the wagons, drinking from the skins of water that were handed out to them. The water was lukewarm and had a strong organic flavor.
Wilkinson gagged over the first nauseous mouthful. He suggested to Carter, “Wouldn’t it be better to keep to the line of the canal, instead of striking inland? There’s any amount of water there — clean water, cold water …”
“There is, mate — but our line of retreat’s cut off on one side. ‘Ere, out in the bush, we can run any way we bleedin’ well likes if we ‘as ter. ‘Sides …” He pointed. “One o’ their patrols. ‘E’s s’posed ter keep ter the line o’ the canal. But if ‘e could do a bit of ‘untin’ at the same time that’d be ‘is good luck.”
Wilkinson looked in the direction that Bill was indicating. He saw something flying very slowly. It was an airship of sorts, a non-rigid airship at that, a latticework fuselage suspended below a roughly cylindrical gasbag.
“Is that the best that they can do?” he asked scornfully.
“Rockets’d be no bleedin’ good fer that job. Too bleedin fast.” He looked around him. The last of the water bags was being handed back to a woman in one of the wagons. “We’ve ‘ad our blow. Let’s get crackin’.” He raised the whistle to his lips.
• • •
They marched, and they marched, while the sun slowly slid down the curvature of the western sky. They marched, and both Wilkinson and Vanessa were limping badly now. They marched, and Wilkinson and Vanessa were watching the sun, willing it to a faster descent. They knew, both of them, that they must get back to the ship as soon as possible — but the prospect of the night’s rest was more and more tempting in anticipation.
Abruptly Bill Carter halted, stiffened. “Listen!” he snapped.
There was a droning sound, the noise of distant smoothly running machinery. Automatically Wilkinson looked up to the sky.
“Not there, yer stupid clot!” snarled Carter.
“What is it?”
“I ‘opes yer don’t find aht. I ‘opes the bastard don’t find us. We ain’t the only ‘unters, mate. The Masters’ll be aht ‘untin’ fer their bleedin’ feast!”
Something was coming up from the south, something that was visible above the tops of the spiky trees, something that gleamed like burnished metal, that moved with an odd rolling motion.
“Scatter!” yelled Bill. He blew an irregular series of sharp blasts on his whistle. “Scatter!”
The column exploded, riders and wagons taking off in all directions, those on foot sprinting after them. Men were shouting, women and children screaming, the thoats bellowing. The panic was infectuous — and yet Wilkinson wanted to see what was causing it. He heard Bill Carter yell, “Run, yer fool!” and then realized that the man was gone.
There were three of the things now, metal globes careening along at just above tree-top height. And then they swept clear of the trees. They were like nothing that Wilkinson had ever seen. Tripods they were, each leg a latticework girder, each with that almost featureless globe mounted at the apex. They had neither wheels nor tracks, and their motion was neither a walking nor a running motion. They rolled, each of the three feet of the tripod hitting the lichenous ground in succession, throwing up a small explosion of pink fragments. And yet the eyelike transparency that was set into the surface of each globe maintained its orientation.
Wilkinson grabbed Vanessa’s arm and jerked her into motion. Running was far easier in this relatively slight gravitational field than walking had been. Soon he and the girl settled into the rhythm of it and were flying over the spongy surface in a series of great leaps, overtaking the stragglers of the scattering.
And then, catching her toe on a projecting stone, Vanessa fell heavily.
Wilkinson came down to a clumsy landing beside her, got his arms around her and jerked her to her feet. “My ankle!” she cried, her face twisted with pain. “I can’t go on!” She pushed at him with her fists. “Leave me, Chris. Leave me.”
“Like hell I will.” He stooped and slung her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. She didn’t weigh much.
And then he realized that the mechanical humming was louder — far too much louder. He turned, looking up to the source of the sound — and saw towering over him, many feet in the air, the blank, metallic face of one of the monsters. He thought that he saw a flicker of movement that was not mechanical behind the window in the sphere, had a fleeting impression of two cold eyes staring down at him. He tightened his grip on Vanessa and started to run again, between the great metal legs of the tripod. And then a long, metallic tentacle flickered out from the underside of the sphere, str
iking like a snake. It wrapped itself around Wilkinson and Vanessa, squeezing the breath from their lungs, lifting them from the ground. They were dropped, with surprising gentleness, into a metal-mesh basket slung beneath the globe, a basket that already contained two of the women of Bill Carter’s tribe.
The tribeswomen stared at the new captives in speechless misery, and Wilkinson remembered, with horror, what he had been told of the eating habits of the Masters.
XVIII
IT WAS almost sunset when they came within sight of the city, when they were approaching the graceless sprawl of low, black buildings on either side of the canal. It was with something approaching relief that they peered through the strands of the net that imprisoned them to what they all knew would be yet another, more solid, prison. They knew what awaited them — the two women from Carter’s tribe had taken a morose pleasure in acquainting them with all the details, and even though Wilkinson suspected that they had been drawing upon their imaginations, there must be a substantial substratum of truth. But, at the moment, anything was better than a continuation of this vilely uncomfortable journey. There had been the rolling motion with which the machine had sped over the lichenous plain, and the basket had swayed sickeningly, and every second it had seemed that one of the great, flailing legs must inevitably strike the fragile container, crushing its occupants to a pulp. But there had always been clearance — at times no more than the thickness of a coat of paint, but enough. Whatever else they might or might not be, the Masters were superb engineers. The metal strands had cut cruelly into the flesh of the captives, and the cold wind had whistled through the open mesh, chilling them to the bone.
Wilkinson had ceased to worry about their ultimate fate. All he knew and cared about, at the moment, was that any prison, any slave pen, would be infinitely more comfortable than this metal creel slung below the bulbous body of the monstrous machine.
The Alternate Martians Page 8
