To Hold the Bridge

by Garth Nix

  Later on I learned that John Carter himself had swung the hook, which was all to the good. Any normal fellow would probably have taken my head off. When it came to wielding a sword, gun, or even a hook, Carter really was the best. I often wondered how he might fare against Bill Hickok, who was a wonder with a pistol. I met Hickok much later in what you might call my career, not on Mars, you understand. But even against Hickok, I reckon Carter might have had the edge.

  So there I was, splayed and bleeding on the floor of this flying machine which was accelerating mightily toward the rim of the canyon, while an ordinary-looking fellow with a regular Earth-size number of arms and legs fired a long-barreled rifle of unfamiliar design over the stern and someone I at first took to be an Indian on account of him having the red skin that Indians was supposed to have (but didn’t in actual fact) was directing the craft from a half cockpit forr’ard.

  Sharp explosions sounded behind us in rapid succession, sending up clouds of dust where they struck the ground, obscuring our rapid retreat. The Earthman fired a few more rounds, then lowered his strange rifle and turned about. He jabbered something at the red man, who laughed, before he turned his attention to me, removing the hook from my belt without paying much attention to the blood that was flowing readily down my leg. Then he jabbered some more, at me this time, in a language I could not even begin to recognize.

  ‘I fear I do not—’ I started to reply.

  This obviously surprised him greatly. Carter – for of course it was he – was never one to show much emotion in his face, but in this case both his eyebrows lifted for an instant, and a spark flashed across his steel-gray eyes.

  ‘You speak English?’ he interrupted. ‘Or have you learned it this moment from my mind?’

  ‘I cain’t read minds,’ I replied. ‘I’ve always spoken English, and a little Dutch and German, on account of being raised in Berks County, Pennsylvania.’

  ‘You’re an Earthman!’ exclaimed Carter. ‘I took you for some kind of White Dwarf Martian, emerged from the subterranean fastness back there.’

  ‘I ain’t a dwarf, Martian or otherwise,’ I replied stiffly. ‘And I don’t let no man call me one, neither. The name is Lam Jones, Arizonee miner, late quartermaster in the headquarters of General Sheridan.’

  ‘A Union man,’ said Carter, his manner immediately less friendly. ‘Allow me to introduce myself, Mr. Jones. I am Captain John Carter of Virginia, and a Prince of Helium, here on Barsoom.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Captain … that is to say … Prince,’ I said weakly. I didn’t want to look, but I could feel the blood trickling down my leg, and it felt like there was a lot of it. ‘The War being over and all. Uh, where might Barsoom be, your honor?’

  ‘It is the fourth planet of this solar system,’ said Carter. ‘You would call it Mars.’

  ‘Mars?’ I asked. ‘I’m on Mars?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carter. There was still a mighty chill in his voice. ‘You are only the second Earthman to come here, as far as it is known.’

  I kind of got the message then that he liked it better when there was only the one Earthman on Mars.

  ‘Mars,’ I repeated, looked down, saw my own blood spreading across the deck, and fainted.

  When I awoke, I found myself on a kind of padded shelf of silk, with my ass bandaged up and a fur robe loosely tied around me, the kind of fur robe that would have cost more than a hundred dollars from one of the finest stores in Philadelphia, like I was going to buy with my gold. The whole store, I mean, not the fur robe.

  Apart from my buttock wound, I felt refreshed, so with only a little difficulty in the sitting-up department, I swung myself off that shelf and took stock of my surroundings. I could see from the tall arched window opposite that I was in some kind of tower room, a room straight out of the color plates in the book of Araby that Captain O’Hoolihan of the New York Zouaves had lent me once, in return for three more hogs over his company’s allowance. It was all silk curtains and suchlike, that room, and more cushions than a madam’s fancy-house.

  No sooner had I got down than a woman rose up out of those cushions, a mighty fine-looking woman, with that real red skin like the fellow who’d been driving the flying boat. She bent her head and then looked straight at me, her eyes seeming to bore into my head, and I felt something twitch and give inside my brain, right behind my eyes.

  Suddenly I knew her name: Kala. It was just there, as if I’d a-knowed it all along. Prancing along behind, straight into my head, came some other words, and before I really caught on what was happening I was answering back to her, without either of us uttering a word.

  That’s how I got started with that Martian mindtalkin’ business, though I never got as good as Carter. I could talk with folks, but I couldn’t read their minds. He could, right enough, except for mine. I used to think up some pretty insulting thoughts sometimes, about Johnny Reb and all, but he never caught on.

  I was stuck in that tower for nigh on a week before Carter showed up to see how I was going. I guess he’d been off slaughtering some of the Warhoon greens or similar activities of which he was right fond.

  Straight away he wanted to know how I’d got to Barsoom, though he never told me nothing about his own journey. I read it years later, like everyone else, and wondered why he’d kept it secret. He wanted to know if I was an immortal too, or couldn’t remember my childhood. I reckon he was pleased to find out I was no one special in that regard.

  ’Course, I’d met quite a few folk along the way who couldn’t remember their childhoods, like old Noah for one, but I never suggested to Carter that it might be whiskey that done in his memory. I knew right early he wasn’t a man to trifle with. He killed too easily, and had it all sorted within himself. Just like my ma and pa. They would have whipped me to death over the smallest thing and said it was all for the best, just the way God intended.

  Only Carter had his honor instead of God, and that honor only had room for Virginian gentlemen and Martian princesses. Everyone else was pretty much window-dressing, providing a pretty frame for him and his lady to stand in the sunlight.

  I asked him as soon as I might how I could get back to Earth and my gold (only I never mentioned that, and I never knew he was a miner too, neither), as polite as anything, well larded with ‘Sirs’ and ‘Highnesses’ and ‘Your Grace’ and all. But either he didn’t know – which he didn’t, as it turned out – or he wouldn’t tell me. Besides, since he didn’t want to go back himself, he found it sort of peculiar that I wanted to. By this stage he’d sort of adopted me, not exactly as the First Earthman to the Second Earthman, but more like he might pick up a pet. I reckon I ranked somewhat lower than his foul dog-thing Woola.

  He also put me to work. Though expressing the opinion that a Union quartermaster was only worth the merest part of a good Virginian quartermaster, or, at a pinch, an Alabaman, he still considered that a cut above the Martian variety. I was given a Martian assistant and, with Kala to help translate, was assigned the task of putting in order the stores and armories of Helium, the city of which Carter’s old-man-in-law was the mayor or the governor or whatever Jeddak signified.

  I didn’t mind the work, for to tell the truth, those Martians already had things pretty well sorted. It was just Carter wanted things done the way he was used to, and him being such a hero to all of them Heliumites, they was happy to oblige.

  I didn’t mind the living either, once I worked out that Kala wasn’t just provided to teach me the lingo but was happy to warm me up on that silk shelf as well. She wasn’t a princess, but a princess wouldn’t have suited me anyhow. If it wasn’t for my gold waiting for me I s’pose I could have got used to the quiet life as a quartermaster in Helium.

  So the weeks went past, and then months. I might be there still if John Carter hadn’t got it into his head that a fellow Earthman like himself must be pining for the excitements he got into every day, speeding about in flyers, shooting up green folks from miles away with a radium rifle, engaging in
desperate hand-to-hand combat with a critter eight times his size, and all them larks.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that subterranean lair you found where we picked you up, Lam,’ he says to me one day, suddenly turning up as I was quietly counting bandoliers in a nice little corner armory where hardly no one ever visited. ‘You said you noticed a round trapdoor or some such, I think?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied enthusiastically, before I let my face fall. ‘Only I’d never find it now, all that red dust and moss looks the same to me.’

  ‘Not to me,’ says Carter. ‘I have a complete recollection of the area. We’ll pick up Kantos Kan and go and take a look. I’ve been wondering what’s under there, and there’s nothing much else on at the moment.’

  Kantos Kan, I should have said, was the fellow who’d been driving the air boat when I was rescued. He was Carter’s best friend and as mad a cavalry type as he was. Kind of an equivalent to General Custer, inasmuch as he’d do something crazy as heck just because he could, everyone would follow, and he’d come out the other side smiling even if most of the followers didn’t. Only that don’t always work, as Custer found out on the Greasy Grass. Kan had better luck than Custer all round, but I reckon he probably got ten times as many Heliumite soldiers killed in his time than Custer managed with the Seventh Cavalry.

  ‘You and Kantos have fun then, sir,’ I said, turning back to my bandoliers. Intentionally misunderstanding him, you see. Only Carter could play that game one better, for he really didn’t understand why anyone would not want to go out on some crazy expedition with him.

  ‘You have to come!’ he laughed, clapping me on the back hard enough to kill a Thark. ‘Satisfy your curiosity, man!’

  I muttered something about not having any damned curiosity, but not too loud. Like I said, I never wanted to push Carter too far.

  We left that night in a three-man flyer, Kantos Kan naturally leapin’ at the opportunity to stick his nose in somewhere dangerous. He laughed at me as I found it difficult to sit on what passed for a seat in them Martian flyers, but it wasn’t because of the buttock wound. That had healed up right nicely. I just was a little awkward what with my three radium pistols, sword, knife, water bottle, and haversack, all of it worn over a fur robe ’cause I felt the cold. Carter and Kan, as per usual, were wearing outfits that would have got them arrested just about anywhere civilized, just a few leather straps, a pouch over the unmentionables, and some bits of metal stuck on here and there that Carter told me in his case meant much the same as Grant’s three stars.

  The valley where they’d found me was quite some distance away. I forget how far in Martian haads or karads, but it was nine hundred miles, give or take, about six hours’ flight. Shame we ain’t got those flyers here on Earth, ’cause they beat the railroad hollow for speed, and you don’t get covered in soot, neither.

  We arrived soon after the Martian dawn, and sure enough, Carter knew almost exactly where to go. Kantos Kan dropped the flyer down where Carter pointed, and then the three of us took no more than ten minutes looking about before we found that circular hatch.

  As before, there weren’t no way of opening the thing, but this didn’t put Carter off. He knelt down by it, and just thought at it for a while, while I fidgeted about nearby and Kantos Kan went back and leaned on his flier.

  Even knowin’ what I did about Carter being able to read Martian minds and all, I was still taken aback more than a bit when that trapdoor started to turn about, making a noise like a railroad engine straining for grip on a greasy rail. Then the whole dang thing rose up out of the ground, turning as it came, till there was a cylinder some ten foot high and six feet in diameter sticking up out of the dust.

  Carter rapped on the side of it with his knuckle, and a door slid open. There was a Martian standing there, dressed up in the kind of driving outfit folks wear here nowadays, with the long leather coat and the goggles and all. I guess I was staring like a fool, while Carter had stepped a little to the side – he always was in the right place – so when the Martian suddenly raised up this bellows thing and blew a cloud of green gas it went straight at me, and afore I knew it, I’d sucked it into my chest.

  I don’t know what was in that gas, but as soon as I breathed it down, I was stuck fast where I was, unable to move a muscle. I watched Carter lean in and stick the goggle-wearing Martian with his sword, then haul him out by his coat and throw him a good dozen yards away to die in the dust. Then he came back to me, and I saw his mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear any words, and my eyes were already closing, being as I was unexpectedly come over weary.

  I think he was saying summat along the lines of ‘Why did you stand there, idiot?’ which fair sums up our usual dialogue, then and later. I reckon he thought I was willfully stupid, which was why he was always having to push me out of the way, or rescue me and all. Not that he ever complained when it was Dejah Thoris who needed rescuin’, which happened a damn sight more to her than anyone might expect. I guess I was never much of a hero, but at least I weren’t kidnapping-prone like Miss Dejah Thoris.

  She never liked me, neither. Maybe because of the time I was checking over Carter’s accounts and couldn’t make them balance, though I never said a thing about it being kind of peculiar that her new jeweled doo-dah cost the same as the missing money.

  That was much later, anyhow. After I sucked that gas and was knocked out or put to sleep, the next time I opened my eyes I was no longer on Mars! I was back in my own body, sitting in the canyon mouth, with my back against the wall. There was a kind of lean-to built over my head, and dry-stone walls up to near my waist, and sitting alongside of me in a rocking chair was my partner, Nine-Tenths Noah.

  ‘You awake, then?’ he said, pausing in his rockin’ to take a gulp of what had to be water, on account of I couldn’t smell it.

  ‘Reckon I am,’ I said wonderingly. ‘How long has it been?’

  ‘Five months and a week,’ replied Noah.

  I slowly stood up, marveling that all my muscles and faculties worked as they should. I flexed my fingers, and right then noticed that I was no longer holding the Indian painting or whatever it was.

  Noah saw me looking at my empty hand.

  ‘Real bad medicine,’ he said. ‘I throwed it back in that there cave it come from, where it should have stayed.’

  I looked at him properly, taking in his unusually bright eyes and pink skin. Forcible laying off the whiskey had done him good service, it seemed, but I was kind of puzzled how come he was still alive.

  ‘What you been eatin’ while I was out of my head, Noah?’

  ‘Mules,’ he replied. ‘You up to walkin’?’

  ‘Yep,’ I replied. I felt fine, and mighty relieved to be back where I belonged. For good, or so I thought at the time, little knowing that I’d be back on Mars within the year, once again running along behind John Carter, and wishing I wasn’t.

  ‘We gotta go spend some gold,’ said Noah. ‘Where you been, anyhow? I seed you was spirit-walking.’

  ‘Mars,’ I said. ‘It ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.’

  ‘Mars,’ mused Noah, an odd, far-away expression passing across his face. ‘They got any gold up there?’

  Anyhows, that’s how I first met up with the all high-and-mighty John Carter of Mars, even if he don’t care to recollect it himself, what with him being Warlord and Jeddak of Jeddaks and all that stuff. Or maybe he was still cantankerous about the South losing the War and all. He always did get all maudlin when he was back on Earth, whining about missing Dejah Thoris, and reminiscin’ something horrid about what went wrong at Chancellorsville and suchlike.

  I tried to tell my old general, Phil Sheridan, that the folks in Washington out to keep an eye on Mars, because there was a Johnny Reb up there itching to start over if he could figure a ways of getting his army alongside of Earth. But then I disappeared back to Barsoom myself, and by the time I returned, Phil was dead.

  I guess if J.C. does decide to attack the United States, I�
�ll probably be there with him, dang it. I don’t know how it’s worked out like this, but I just can’t get rid of the fellow, at least not permanent-like.

  Or maybe it’s that he can’t get rid of me?

  Under Other Skies

  You Won’t Feel a Thing

  IT STARTED WITH A TOOTHACHE.

  The Arkle had it, in one of the great hollow fangs at the front of his mouth, which would have been simple canines before the Overlords changed him, in the process of turning him into a Ferret. Not that the Arkle was entirely a Ferret. He’d escaped from the Dorms when he was eleven, so he still looked mostly human. A very thin, elongated human, with his face and jaw pushed out so that it wasn’t quite a snout but you could tell it would have been one if he hadn’t gotten away.

  The Arkle also had a taste for blood. Not the full-on bloodlust the Ferrets had, because he could control it. But when the Family killed a chicken to roast, he would cut its throat over a bowl and drink the blood down like a kind of predinner cocktail. Sometimes he put parsley in the cup, as a garnish. Or, as he said, for those extra vitamins. The Arkle didn’t eat a lot of greens.

  He was one of the younger members of the Family. He’d come out of the city four years before, more dead than alive, his body covered with sores and his gums receding from malnutrition. He’d lasted almost six months on his own after escaping from the Dorms, which was no mean feat, but he wouldn’t have lasted much longer if he hadn’t been lucky enough to have been found by Gwyn, on one of the latter’s last foraging expeditions into the city fringe.

  Gwyn was the first to notice the Arkle behaving strangely. They were working together, moving one of the portable henhouses to its new location, when the Arkle stopped pushing and pressed his fingers into his jaw, using the middle knuckle so he didn’t slice himself with his talons.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Gwyn, annoyed. As always he was providing most of the muscle, and though the Arkle’s participation was mainly for show, the henhouse wheels were stuck in the mud, and even a slight amount of assistance would make it easier for Gwyn to free them.