Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs

by Mike Resnick

  Yet I could never blame him. He was far too much like his father. I swore I could see the changes in his muscled body with every passing day. Within that first year of our journeying across the southern border of Canada, I watched him mature until he was within an inch or so of his father’s growth. The following year he continued to grow and kept doing so. By the time he reached sixteen years of age, he had reached his full height of six and a half feet tall: taller and broader than his father by a good few inches.

  Look at him, the ghost of Julian would remark to me. As each year continued to pass and Julian 6th grew stronger and more powerful, filling out his body, his father, Julian 5th would remark to me about it. Look how strong and powerful he is. His time is going to be ready before you know it.

  And I would do the same thing I always did. I would sit there and shake my head and respond with determination, “No. He will not be you, Julian. The battle is done and the fight lost. He will live out his life and that will be that.”

  You know it will never be that, replied Julian’s ghost, who seemed to have an inordinate amount of interest in him.

  We had taken up residence in the small cabin after the first year of our journey on foot. The first couple of times the Kalkar reavers had pursued us, but by the third month of our drive, they seemed to have given up on us. Their concerns were with weightier matters, like keeping an eye on the world around them. Still, when we found the empty house up in the Canadian forest, some distance away from Niagara, we were initially unsettled by it. Who knew to whom it belonged?

  As it turned out, it belonged to us. The day we found it, or more accurately the evening we found it, we tapped gently on the door and awaited a response. When none was forthcoming, we entered the room slowly, glancing around to see what we could see. The place was well stocked and there were gun bits and such that would enable continued hunting for food as needed. We glanced at each other and wondered aloud where the owner of the shack might be.

  Turns out we found him easily enough when we wandered into the bedroom. There was Mister Whomever-Had-Been-There, and now would not be anymore. The good lord had called him home, and we had no idea what the reason for it might have been. All we knew was that it hadn’t been all that long ago, and that was to our advantage. We removed him from his previous place of residence and buried him not all that far away, but with enough depth to hide any perceptions of him.

  And that had been that. No one had come around for another six months after that, and when they did, all they found was some harmless older woman and her son, who was, at the time, growing like a weed.

  We presented a united front. We gave food where we could. We sent people on their way.

  If they refused to go, we would kill them. Chop them to bits and bury them a distance from the cabin.

  That was our lives.

  Year passed into year and we were content with that, or at least I was. The voice of Julian 5th would continue to seek me out on occasion, but I would turn away from it. I had no desire to leap into battle. Julian 6th, he certainly did, but he would not take the step unless I approved it. Which is not to say that we did not discuss it. “Mother!” he would say to me in mounting exasperation, “how can we do this? How can we simply sit by and allow the bastards to take over our world?” And we would talk about it back and forth, but every time it came down to the exact same observation from me: “It’s already done. Now we simply ride it out.”

  And it was true. No one, not even Julian 6th, could deny it. The hundreds upon thousands of aggressive Moon Men had seen to it. Had we been up and running at the beginning, we might have been able to thwart it. As it was now, all we could do was ride matters out and wait for . . .

  For what?

  I had no clue.

  And then one day . . .

  . . . things changed.

  A number of years had passed. Julian was well into his twenties, and he was as big and strong as I had ever seen him. He continued to work with his sword, every single day, two solid hours. He could whip the blade around so quickly that I almost never saw it. He kept a gun at his hip and would occasionally practice his marksmanship with it, although that wasn’t quite as necessary, since his aim was so redoubtable. By this point in time he almost never spoke of taking up the banner against the Kalkars, because he knew I would never approve of it. Several times over the years he had spoken of simply leaving me to my own devices while he went off to do what had to be done. In those instances, I would simply shrug and tell him to follow his instincts. Yet every time he would reconsider his options and remain with me.

  I was grateful for having that elevated position in his opinion.

  The day when things changed, however, happened when I was sitting in our cabin, making brownies. An utterly routine thing to be undertaking, I know. But who could have been aware of the changes that were about to befall us?

  There was a sharp knock at the door. Immediately I took a gun in my hand, something small but accurate. I then went to the door and stood to one side, casting my voice so that if someone shot through, they’d have nothing but emptiness to greet them and a .45 to spit back into their faces. “Who is it?” I called, my voice wavering falsely.

  “Help me,” came the whispered response. “Help me . . . please . . .” and that was followed by a most audible thud.

  I knew I was taking a chance, but I didn’t see as to how I had any choice. Sliding the gun into my back pocket, I hauled open the door and looked down. There was a young man there, roughly Julian’s age, and he seemed badly injured. He was clutching at his shoulder and grimacing. “I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry,” he managed to say, and then his eyes rolled up and he sank quickly into unconsciousness.

  By the time Julian 6th came home from hunting, he was astounded to see the young man seated upon the living room couch. The young man’s eyes widened when he saw Julian studying him. I had helped him to sit up, and he was dabbing at some blood that had dried upon his forehead. His shoulder was already bandaged up. “Are you . . . ?” he began to ask, but then couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

  “Am I who?” said Julian.

  “Are you . . .” He took a deep breath and then let it out. “Are you Julian 6th?” Quickly he added, before Julian could respond, “Please don’t consider me forward for asking such an obvious question. I know that it couldn’t be you. There is no way that—”

  God bless my son for his inability to lie. A wise young man would have known enough to say, “Get out before I throw you out.” But not my Julian, no. Instead, with a look of deepest surprise, he said, “Yes! Why, yes, I am Julian 6th.”

  The young man who had come to us out of nowhere grasped at his heart as if the fondest stroke of luck had been granted. “I don’t believe it. Is it true—?”

  “Yes, it’s true, and this is my mother, Nah-ee-lah. Which leaves us the question of—?”

  “Oh, of course!” The new arrival appeared mortified. “I am Stubs.”

  “You don’t look like a Stubs.”

  Stubs merely shrugged. “We are what we are. I was given the name over twenty years ago. I suppose my parents believed it fit me back then. But now . . . Gods, I still cannot believe it.”

  “Believe it and speak quickly, Stubs, because there are none who know that my mother and I reside here.” There was an edge of severity to his voice. “We live in peace . . .”

  “Then you live in a fool’s paradise!” said Stubs urgently. “I tell you right now that there are people who continue to search for you. They remember who you are and what you are capable of. And more to the point, they will be more than happy to dispose of you once and for all. This you cannot allow.”

  “What are you saying?” Justin seemed utterly bewildered at what Stubs was telling him.

  “Do you see these?” He pointed to the injuries on his body. “These are from people who attempted to avail themselves upon me. These are from people who tried to injure me once they found out about my mission! The world
needs you, Julian! And you as well, ma’am,” he added in quick acknowledgment of my presence.

  “Kind of you to say,” I told him cautiously. I rose up then, studying Stubs carefully. “And you found out all about my boy and came here . . . out of coincidence?”

  “Not coincidence,” said Stubs proudly. “Destiny.”

  “I see,” I said to him.

  There were so many other things I could have said as well, but instead I restrained them. I rose to my feet and said with studied indifference, “Son, I believe these are matters better left to you. I leave you to discuss them.”

  “Mother?” Julian was surprised to hear me speak so. In the past, others had attempted to intercede themselves in our affairs. This time, however, this day, I was inclined to let matters run their course.

  So instead I simply reached out, took one of his hands in the two of mine, and squeezed it tight. “Do what you must,” I said and then headed out of the house.

  Once I had emerged, I immediately sought hiding under the darkening shadows. Even if someone had been watching me upon my first exit from the building, they would not have been able to maintain their sight of me. I circled around, keeping low and tight.

  I was moving so quietly that none could have heard me. Minutes later, though, I heard them. A single, gentle snapping of a twig in the still of the night was all that was required.

  I froze exactly where I was and waited.

  A long pause and then another movement.

  There she was: Kel-ee-kni. Older than when I’d last seen her, certainly, and better armed. She had a blaster tucked beneath her arm and she was trying as best she could to see the cabin. She was attempting to target the young man who had arrived at our house.

  Except I knew that was not the case.

  I had my gun up and leveled at her before she knew what was happening. “Don’t move,” came my soft voice purring in the darkness.

  She moved, swinging her blaster toward me.

  I only had to fire once to shoot the gun out of her hand. She cried out as it went flying, and she clutched at her hand, shoving it under her arm to help assuage her pain. A fairly steady stream of profanity emerged from her lips until I ordered her to be silent. She did so immediately. From nearby I could hear the river continuing to run steadily. Anyone falling into it would be pulled toward a fairly large waterfall that would provide a one-way exit from the area.

  Slowly I advanced upon her. She saw me emerging from the darkness for the first time and instead of moaning actually grinned. “So it comes to this,” she said.

  I nodded ever so slightly. “It certainly took you enough years. That,” and I gestured with my head toward the cabin, “is young Orthis, I take it?”

  “You knew?”

  “I suspected. Now I know.”

  She sneered at me. “My Orthis is going to kill your Julian.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “Or else it may well be the other way around. Or perhaps the both of them will get loose this time and the final resolution will occur at some point in the future, when neither of us is there.”

  “That will not happen,” said Kel-ee-kni. “We did not spend so many years tracking you down so that matters conclude on an uncertain note. One way or the other, it ends tonight.”

  “Then you’d best hope it ends well for your man,” and I leveled the gun at her. “Because for you, this is the last ni—”

  An explosion hit my shoulder. I never even saw it coming. One moment I was there, on my feet, my gun leveled, and then the next something had exploded against me.

  The gun went flying out of my hand as I stumbled backwards, slamming into a tree. Even as I tried to pull myself together, Kel-ee-kni advanced upon me. She had pulled a second gun out of nowhere, and she was drawing closer, firing again and again. Desperate, I threw myself behind a tree that provided me minimal blocking. Pieces of bark were blown away, and the tree remained solid, but not for long.

  “Never again!” shouted Kel-ee-kni as she advanced upon my position.

  The door of the small cabin banged open and I heard my son’s voice call out to me, demanding to know what the hell had just happened. Suddenly he seemed to realize that all was not as he was supposed to believe, and he threw himself to one side just as a blast erupted past his head.

  Kel-ee-kni spun and saw him and shouted an angry imprecation at her son. “Can you not do anything right!” she bellowed and swung her gun around to take aim at Julian.

  Grabbing the only opportunity I could, I scooped up a rock and flung it at her.

  The small missile sailed straight and true and ricocheted off her head. Down she went and immediately I sprinted across the divide between us. The water was continuing to rush past us as I came at her, trying to dodge right and left in order to make myself harder to hit.

  Not hard enough.

  Two feet away from her, and that was when she turned and shot me.

  No screech. No screech for her. I provided her nothing save for a gasp as the blast ripped through my upper chest. By all means, I should have been dead right then. As it was, I staggered and then fell straight forward onto her. She was half standing when I struck her, and she laughed as my body crashed into her. It was all I could do not to lapse into unconsciousness that would take me to my final rest.

  She tried to angle the gun around to get another shot off, looking surprised that I was still alive. Her surprise grew when she realized that she couldn’t aim the gun at me. As if my mind had mentally disconnected, I kept the gun faced away from me. My legs went out from under me as I fell backwards, and still my hands kept locked around her wrists as if in a death grip.

  She went down under me and we rolled along the sloped hill, banging, jostling against each other. Not once did Kel-ee-kni give up trying to shoot me. Instead she wrestled desperately, her frustration growing as she proved unable to dislodge the gun from my iron grasp.

  “You can’t win this!” she shrieked.

  “I don’t care about winning,” and it was only then that I realized how little energy I had left. “I just have to make sure you lose.”

  At that moment she ripped the gun from my hand as we tumbled down the hill, and for half a moment there was a look of triumph on her face. But the joyous expression instantly morphed into horror as abruptly the ground went out from under her and we hit the water.

  And I landed on top of her.

  With the last amount of strength I had within me, I kept her under the water. As we plowed down the river, moving faster and faster, I felt her struggling. Her hands were trying to pummel me aside, to shove me off to one side or other of the bank so that she could manage to keep herself in the fray.

  “No chance,” I whispered. “No chance.”

  She fought and fought and came that close, so very, very close, to pushing me aside. She might very well have made it if she hadn’t run out of water.

  We sailed over the edge, and there was nothing but a vast drop beneath us. For half a second she emerged and then looked down and screamed.

  I found that satisfying.

  And then I fell . . .

  And a hand touches my shoulder.

  I look around and find myself in the Blue Room again. It is much as I remembered it before.

  Why am I here?

  Then there is a gentle touch upon my shoulder. I turn around and there is Julian 5th. He is smiling down at me, and he touches my chin, causing my head to look up at him.

  “Do you remember now?” he asks.

  I do. Suddenly I do. It all flashes back to me: the things I did do, haven’t done, am going to do yet. “We haven’t met yet,” I say to him. “You’re Julian 3rd.”

  “I am. And you are someone else, and we will be together and separate and lose each other and find each other. And so it will go.”

  I let out a breath. “It sounds exhausting. What of Julian 6th?”

  “Our son? He will have his own adventures, find another you . . . it will all be okay, because it always is.”


  “Are you sure?”

  “I am always sure.”

  He puts out his hands to me, and I slide into his arms. I have never felt so free. “Am I always going to remember this?”

  “Who knows about ‘always?’ Be happy for what it is.”

  In the back of my mind, I see Kel-ee-kni is floating away, facedown, no sign of life within her. From somewhere above, I can see myself drifted up against the edges of the water. There is a faint smile upon my face.

  “Yes,” I say. “I will always be happy for what it is.” I embrace him tightly, and we dance away into our eternal night.

  Everyone knows that Edgar Rice Burroughs invented Barsoom (Mars), just as he invented Tarzan. He never put the two together, and though there was an attempt by a second-rate science fiction magazine to publish Tarzan on Mars by an anonymous writer back in the early 1950s, nothing ever came of it.

  But bestseller Kevin J. Anderson and prolific author and anthologist Sarah J. Hoyt have taken a totally different tack here. Yes, Tarzan meets Martians—but they are not from ERB’s Barsoom, but from a Mars of Anderson’s and Hoyt’s devising. Vive la difference!

  —Mike

  Tarzan and the

  Martian Invaders

  By Kevin J. Anderson and Sarah A. Hoyt

  John Clayton, viscount of Greystoke, sat in a red leather chair in the study that had belonged to his ancestor. The setting would have seemed perfect to any civilized man, yet Lord Greystoke was uneasy.

  In informal attire of shirt, trousers, and waistcoat, he was more deeply tanned than one might expect, and his powerful shoulders seemed ill-confined by stylish garments. As he turned the page of the book resting casually on his knee, his movements gave an impression of grace and power not normally seen in his class. The Greystokes had always been exceptionally well built and powerful, however; the portrait gallery above gave ample evidence of a long line of strong-featured, muscular, gray-eyed men.