by Lin Carter
* * * *
It was upon this happy scene of rescue and reunion that I and all my company burst a few minutes later. We had been hard on the trail of Xask and Murg, Darya and Zuma, Von Kohler and his soldiers, wondering to whom all of these many footprints could possibly belong. We arrived on the scene just in time to share in the excitement and, also, the several explanations.
Once everything was made plain, we all crossed the abyss by the trunk-bridges and marched to the southern side of the swampy plain where the tribes lay encamped and eagerly awaiting our arrival. There, the Germans joined us in a very noisy feast of celebration, punctuated with long speeches while everybody told of their adventures.
Jorn and Yualla were the center of all eyes as they related the many perils through which they had passed and how Niema had met them in the mountains and later had captured Xask and Murg as they were creeping up on the Cro-Magnon youngsters.
The joy in the faces of Garth of Sothar and his mate Nian was wonderful to see as they welcomed their lost daughter back among the living and embraced her, kissing the tears of happiness from her glowing cheeks.
Those cheeks glowed much pinker, shortly after, when she shyly introduced them to the stalwart young Thandarian boy as the youth she desired as her mate.
Hurok introduced us to Gorah his mate, and told of his adventures in the cave country of Kor. Von Kohler briefly told something of his experiences in Zanthodon, and requested a brief leave from the feast in order to return to his encampment to recover the abandoned equipment left behind when they had pursued the stolen jungle maid and her kidnappers. He also wished to give his Colonel a decent burial beneath a cairn of rocks, so that the beasts would not disturb his rest.
Garth and Tharn dispatched a party of warriors with the Germans to assist them in these tasks. They were not absent from the feast for very long, and returned without incident.
I was a little dubious about the Germans, but their behavior had been gentlemanly and exemplary, and both Darya, and, of course, the Professor, reassured me of their desire for a friendly alliance.
“After all, my boy,” said the Professor quietly, “the war, has long been over.”
CHAPTER 28
THE PROMISED LAND
Now that we had all found each other again, there was no longer any reason to delay our journey south. Murg had vanished into the jungle and no one felt inclined to search for him, although many of us wished that he could be brought before the rude, simple justice of the tribes to pay for some of the things he had done.
We never found out what became of him, for none of us ever laid eyes on the contemptible little man again. Perhaps he found a safe haven somewhere and spent the rest of his days alone; or maybe he was eaten by the beasts, we never knew. But at any rate he never bothered us again.
Concerning our journey south, it is not my intention to describe it at great length, for, to tell the truth, it was pleasantly uneventful. These jungles held no surprises for Tharn and his people, for they were familiar with them. The great predators avoided us, apparently unwilling to challenge so great a host of armed men. A few more “wake’s” and “sleeps,” and the journey proved over.
* * * *
We came out of the jungle rather abruptly, to find ourselves gazing upon the land of Thandar at last. It was a broad and vast valley, a place of rolling green hills and grassy fields, laced with many small streams of fresh water and grown, here and there, with patches of forest.
It was a goodly land to look upon, basking under the eternal afternoon light of Zanthodon. Far to the east, where the woods thickened into an imposing array of timberland, a herd of thantors, or wooly mammoths, grazed peaceably, much too distant to be a cause of trouble to us.
You can perhaps imagine the emotions that passed through the hearts of Tharn and Darya and the others as they looked once again upon their homeland, after the long, weary months of wandering through strange new lands filled with enemies and perils and vicissitudes of every kind.
Tharn searched the far reaches of the wooded valley with keen eyes; then he lifted an arm to point across the plain.
“There!” he said with immense satisfaction in his tones.
We looked in the direction he had indicated, and saw a large settlement of wooden huts walled about with a palisade of logs sharpened at the top. The lazy spirals of smoke from cook-fires ascended into the serene afternoon skies. We could even see a small band of hunters returning with the morning’s kill slung on poles, and women bathing in a shallow stream behind the town.
Garth and his mate Nian looked the scene over with pleased expressions on their faces.
“It looks to be a goodly land, this Thandar of yours, my brother,” he remarked to Tharn, who grinned.
“Of ours, my brother!” said the High Chief. And Garth nodded thoughtfully, for of course he and all his people were henceforward to share the land with the first tribe. There looked to be land enough and room enough for all.…
Von Kohler and the two soldiers under his command studied the country through binoculars. The Germans had come with us, of course, having nowhere else to go. And Zuma and his new mate, Niema, had come with us as well. They had all become members of my company, which by this time was a catch-all for homeless foreigners, you might say.
Beside me, Professor Potter stood, a vague, dreamy look in his watery blue eyes. He tugged at my arm.
“Eric, my boy,” he breathed tremulously, “do you realize what gifts we can bring to these people, you and I? We can teach them the principles of agriculture, so that no longer need they spend their days as wandering nomadic hunters; they can transform that little town into a city, and we will have helped our distant cousins, the Cro-Magnons, along the path to civilization…why, we can teach them brickmaking and stone masonry, so that they can build with permanence, we can record their language and instruct them in a simple alphabet, so that their traditions and histories can be recorded for all time, not merely handed down from generation to generation by oral means alone…the rudiments of mathematics should be useful to them.…”
Von Kohler was listening to the Professor’s rambling and ecstatic monologue. He coughed apologetically and interrupted the discourse.
“Herr Doktor, I quite agree. But, do you suppose, we could perhaps avoid teaching them any of the skills or vices that have been the ruination of so many cultures? For example, the use of currency…money being the root of all evil, as the Scriptures tell us. Doubtless the Cro-Magnons employ a simple barter system. exchanging skills for skills, the tanner giving his wares to the huntsman for fresh meat, the carpenter building a but for the fisherman in return for a load of fish, and so on.”
The Professor mulled it over, tugging on his stiff white moustaches.
“I suppose you are right, Baron,” he said. “Money leads to usury, to greed, to the exploitation of labor…perhaps we can find a way to keep the Thandarians from inventing it…an interesting little problem in social dynamics!”
The idea of helping our Cro-Magnon friends toward civilization was beginning to get me interested, too.
“Once we have the alphabet,” I said, “we can codify their tribal customs and traditions into laws, written down and mutually understood and agreed upon, if necessary by a popular vote.”
Von Kohler and the Professor agreed that this was a good idea.
The Professor wandered off to talk to Tharn. Von Kohler turned to me.
“Would it not, Herr Carstairs, be a worthy cause to devote our lives to, if we could spare the Cro-Magnon nation the mistakes that have marred the history of our own Western civilization? Extreme nationalism, imperialism, the exploitation of less advanced peoples, the creation of poverty and slums, military aggression…and, instead of these, teach them the ways of justice, equality, fairness, decency, toleration, brotherhood, cooperation, and—f
reedom!”
“It would indeed, Von Kohler,” I said thoughtfully. “It would be our way of making up for the sins we have contributed to. Not at all a bad thing to spend the rest of your life doing.…”
And so we went down into Thandar, and I came home.
* * * *
The settlement was more primitive than I would have expected, and dirtier and noisier. Within the palisade wall, which was broken by three gates, stood about sixty one-story huts, not counting sheds and lean-tos. These were arranged with no system, just rambling clusters, and there was nothing like streets between them, just pathways of naked earth, beaten smooth by many feet.
The sanitation system consisted of a stream which ran behind the town and which was used indiscriminately by everyone. Some of the huts, far enough away from the stream for its use to be impractical, used ditches dug behind them for the same purpose. Flies and garbage were everywhere. And it stank abominably!
Now, the Cro-Magnons were a healthy and very cleanly people, despite the conditions in the settlement. After all, Paris and London in the Middle Ages were a lot dirtier, and probably stank even more terribly. Still and all, it looked as though our friends could use the advice of some city planners like the Professor and me. Well, that was one of the problems we would have to tackle later: there was going to be enough to keep us busy for years to come.
When we came into sight, the Thandarians came out to greet us, and the welcome was enthusiastic, to say the least. Tharn strode into the gates of his town like a Caesar returned from the Gallic Wars, and he looked every inch the king that he was.
It seemed—I had never bothered to think about it before, but it would have had to be this way—it seemed, I say, that when the Drugar slavers carried off Darya and the rest of the hunting party, and Tharn pursued in strength, he left behind in Thandar a considerable number of able-bodied men, all of the women and old people and children. It would have been madness to march away with every healthy male capable of hefting a spear, leaving his homeland unprotected. No, about seventy warriors and huntsmen had been left to guard the village and do the hunting, and the reunion was glorious to witness. Warriors, absent for months on the expedition, were tearfully greeted by their mates and parents and children.
I had not realized that my warriors, Parthon and Ragor, had mates and children, for in my company they had never mentioned their existence. But, then, this is only natural: most of the time we were together, we were too busy fighting against beasts or human adversaries, or running away from same, to have much time for casual chit-chat.
Ragor’s mate, a buxom, merry-faced wench named Oona with a fat baby straddling each ample hip, greeted me happily—happily, that is, because I had brought her man home again, alive, and in one piece.
“Ragor will not have had a decent meal since he left Oona,” she said disapprovingly, poking a thumb in his ribs. “Look at you! All skin and bones! Well,” and here she turned to grin at me, “tonight there will be a feast to end all feasts, and we womenfolk will begin putting some meat back on the bones of you helpless men!”
CHAPTER 29
“BABE” FLIES AGAIN
And, that night, there was a feast, indeed! The women turned spits over beds of blazing coals, roasting succulent uld and gamey zomaks, and huge slabs of mammoth steak, and broiled huge, leathery-skinned eggs of the drunth, which were, to the Cro-Magnons, a gourmet delicacy.
We all gorged splendidly on smoking meat, and the broiled eggs alluded to above, as well as stews of juicy roots and wild vegetables, seasoned with scraps of meat and boiled into a tasty broth, and wild fruit and nuts and berries…and washed this huge repast down with gourdfuls of the heady native beer the Thandarian’s had learned to brew—or “nut brown ale,” as the Professor called it.
One by one we took turns recounting our adventures, and, as you can imagine (if you have read this book and the four other volumes of these memoirs), there was very, very much to be told, and the telling consumed many hours.
It was during these recitals, that I came to know many of the details of the adventures that happened to such of my friends as Jorn and Yualla, Hurok and Darya, Tharn and others, which I have inserted into these books in their proper place. Much, much more was learned from subsequent conversations with my comrades, and the piecing together of threads of narrative into a cohesive and comprehensive whole. It took a lot of work to figure out what had happened to everybody, but at length it was all straight in our minds.
The Thandarians were hospitable to the strangers of the Sothar tribe, and warmed to them in friendly fashion, as soon as they grasped how willingly the Sotharians had stood and fought shoulder to shoulder with their people on many occasions. It took them a little longer to make friends with Hurok and his hairy mate, Gorah, or with the two black Aziru, or the German’s.
In time, I am happy to say, everybody was friends with everybody else.
I guess we had taught the folk of Thandar something about brotherhood and tolerance already!
* * * *
After the feast and the various narratives, there came a more solemn but no less joyous event. Or sequence of similar events, perhaps I should say.
I refer to the wedding ritual.
Before the combined tribes, young Jorn proudly claimed the blushing and beautiful Yualla as his mate.
Before the tribes, Varak repeated his claim to Ialys of Zar, and Grond of Gorthak took shy little Jaira as his mate.
Rituals similar in nature were repeated between Hurok of Kor and Gorah, and between Zuma the Aziru and the lovely Niema.
And then it was my turn!
Feeling absurdly nervous. I stood up with Darya smiling demurely at my side, and claimed her as my own before the presence of them all. Tharn, her father, gravely placed her hand in mine, holding both of our hands briefly in the grip of one huge hand, to signify that he gave the gomad to me to be my own Princess.
Then, while my warriors shouted and yelled our names, I stood there grinning sheepishly, feeling like a fool, while the women of my company pelted the two of us with flowers.
We shared our first kiss as mates, and the ritual was over and done.
And I felt very much married.…
* * * *
The honeymoon is a new custom which Darya and I introduced to the Cro-Magnons of Thandar. We went into the wilderness for a week or so, and I built a little hut beside a stream in the cozy circle of a copse of Jurassic conifers. I carpeted the floor of the hut with armfuls of fragrant grasses, and for a time we stayed apart from our people, enjoying the nuptial privacy of our honeymoon.
I hunted at day and brought my kill back to my mate for her to prepare and cook. It was like something from the first ages of mankind on the earth…like a memory of the Garden of Eden.
And it was certainly very much like Paradise to my darling wife and me.…
* * * *
A few days after Darya and I terminated our idyll and returned to the settlement, to take up residence in the “town hall” or royal palace of Thandar (a rather well constructed, two-story wooden edifice used as the residence of the High Chief and his family, and for judgments and ceremonial occasions), the Professor and I went on a brief, nostalgic expedition.
We took along my two giant friends, Gundar of Gorad and Hurok of Kor, for protection. These are the two most gigantic warriors I know, and with them at our backs, the Professor and I would safely have faced down half a herd of dinosaurs.
We trekked due west of Thandar, crossed the plains and entered the jungles. After a time, the jungles gave way to swampland and muddy fens; beyond, the placid surface of the Sogar-Jad glittered under the dim golden skies of Zanthodon.
We were looking for a little hilly promontory which thrust from the mainland on the shores of the subterranean sea.
We were looking for the
very spot on which Professor Potter and I had first stepped forth upon the soil of the Underground World.…
Well, after a few days of wandering around, we reached the location we had determined to revisit. Directly overhead, like a circular and stationary dark cloud in the glowing heavens of Zanthodon, was the opening which led to the surface of the earth.
We found what remained of my faithful helicopter, Babe, by which we had long ago descended into the crater of the extinct volcano in the Sahara. She had crashed on landing, had Babe, and still lay where she had fallen, although now vines and bushes had grown thickly about her until she was almost buried in the foliage.
We cleared away the overgrowth, the four of us, and looked her over. One of her vanes was bent, and her under-carriage was crushed, and the door hung at a crazy angle on broken hinges. Aside from these unfortunate facts, she looked surprisingly whole and sound.
Dead leaves had been blown into the cabin, and a brace of zomaks had nested there, befouling the controls with their lime-white droppings. I cleaned the cabin out and checked the dials.
“You know, Doc,” I said in surprise, “if we fixed the bent vane and repaired the undercarriage, and cleaned out the engine…I bet Babe could fly again!”
“Really?” He sounded more than a bit skeptical. “And where do you expect to buy gasoline in this world of cavemen and dinosaurs?”
“Don’t you remember how many tins of gas I loaded her up with before we left the coast?” I returned. “Well, plenty of them are still full, for all the long way we flew…and they’re still sealed, too. They haven’t even sprung a leak.”
He played with his little tuft of chin-whiskers, looking thoughtful.
“Perhaps it could be done, after all…the Thandarians have only recently entered the first crude stages of metalworking, but there is iron ore in those hills to the south, or I’m no geologist! What an impressive means of defense your helicopter would be, if ever Thandar was invaded by an enemy…why, there would be no need to fight at all, all you would need do is fly over the enemy ranks at a low altitude—they would bolt in every direction like chicken’s in a henyard, when a hawk swoops low.…”