When the egg cracks, it hurts, somewhere in the bones; the vibration is so awful and loud you think you will snap, that there was no strength after all, that you are not ready—oh, you are not ready! Being born is like dying and no one wants to die. When I think back on it now I imagine that the egg was my first opponent, that it, too, wanted to live, and so did I, and only one of us could go on. I was Jeddak of the egg before I was Jeddak of Hanar Su, and the light of my victory blinded me, the light of the sun glancing off the shards of the defeated egg like last weeping cries. Ropy remnants of yolk clung to my tusks and I tasted them, the last golden aching sweetness of my life, for nothing in this world tastes quite of that ashen, delicate purpose rushing through every limb. I blinked in the new light. All around me my brothers and sisters stretched their green bodies for the joy of it, the first expression of might and power and gods.
We were so strong. We were so beautiful.
Before us stood a long line of enormous gorgeous gods. Our mothers and fathers, their arms outstretched to us—and to remember this pains my chest—my whole life spooling out in a line and my people standing guard, standing sentinel on that line, willing me to survive and live and thrive, and all of them loving me equally, caring nothing for who laid my egg, only that I was theirs, profoundly and completely. I was their family and their future, all of us were. And we ran to them, to our lives, on legs muscled already and twitching to move, just to move over that red moss, into those green arms.
The human John Carter who came to Barsoom like a storm cloud passing back and forth over the sun, over our strength and our purpose, witnessed the generation after mine performing that first radiant dance. He was horrified. He said we had no good qualities because we could not know who our parents were. Because our families did not look like his. Because it seemed to him nothing but random chance who caught up which child into their arms.
I am an old man now. I have forgiven him, in the end. He could not help it. What did he look like to us? A bald, white ape, with his terrifying leaps, ready and able and happy to kill us all. And to him we looked like monsters.
But I have learned to write in the old way so you may understand me. It seems to me that writing in this fashion is a very slow and inefficient way to accomplish what the Green Men do with a glance and a thought: that glimmering net of shared experience and memory that is our collective heartspace. I write and you read and it is almost as though we stand on a broad red plain together while the moons set and the thoats warble at the stars.
That gauntlet is not merely a tangle of green arms. It is a mesh of thoughts and passions snapping like ropes of light cut in half, waiting for one of us to catch the frayed end and connect, knot ourselves together. They call to us, the mothers and fathers, they say: Be my child. Be my future. Battle me with your laughter and pinching and sneaking out to hunt the banth when you are not nearly ready, fight me with your every breath, your every kiss, while I struggle to make you grown and you struggle to die as quickly as possible, and then when I am grown old take my metal and my name and go on while I recede.
I admit it looks careless, as though children do not matter to us, much more than a sleeping fur. But the human John Carter could not truly enter the heartspace. He was certain he could, that he could read our thoughts with perfect correctness, but you cannot be part of a herd and yet stand outside it. We could not read his thoughts, and so in the shimmering crosshatch of our communal dreaming, he was a terrible blank space, a void, and in his eavesdropping he only ever heard a garbled fraction of what passed between the Green Men. Yet what he heard, miserably diminished, he repeated as though total truth, and in the end this was what drove me from Thark to find my own community, a place where the Earthman had not yet told us what we were with his tiny nose in the air.
I asked him once what he had been doing just before he came to Barsoom. He answered that he had killed a great number of Indians, which were like the Red Men, but of Earth.
Why? I asked him. What had they done to you? Did you take their places in their tribe, their metal and their name, their wives and their retinue, their responsibility to guide their people and help them survive the winter? You must be a great Jeddak of these Apache, if you killed so many.
No, the rules of battle are different on Earth. I simply left them, and came here. As to what they had done to me, they were my enemy, and had killed my friend.
Was not your friend their enemy, if you were theirs? Was not killing him their duty?
And John Carter did not answer me but went about his business with his wicked war-princess. But I was baffled—he called us barbaric and yet he left those people without their warriors and took up no position among them, did not replace their strength with strength, their valor with valor? What kind of a man was he?
What would he do to us, if we became his enemy?
I remember the day his war-princess Dejah Thoris spoke to us with her honeyed words, coaxing us to join her people in amity and fellowship, to unite Barsoom and be clasped to her bosom. I was but young and yet I recall the black boom of hate and anger that sizzled through the heartspace, and how when Tars Tarkas stood to join her we felt such betrayal. The Red Men killed our children! In war they sought out the incubators and smashed the eggs, they wiped out whole communities, reducing the Green Men inexorably toward extinction. Never once had a Red Man deigned to take the place of one he killed, they only moved on, to destroy more babies and mock us as animals. No wonder the human John Carter found such brotherhood with them.
Why should we have joined with her? Because she was beautiful? Because she had a sweet voice? I could not mate with her. I found her upsetting and confusing to look upon—worse to listen to. While reclining on our silks and furs she claimed we had no art or industry! I kept staring at the silk she lay on. Where did she think it came from? That my mother spun it out of her posterior? She was cruel and would not even try to learn to speak our language, to enter the heartspace—for that is to become vulnerable, to become raw, to join with us, in something deeper and more terrifying than fellowship or amity which may be broken. Even when we battle for supremacy—and why should we not? Barsoom is dying, and every drop of water or scrap of food is a battle, a battle we know we will one day lose. Only the very strongest can push us one year further, one measly decade or century on through this hard world. How we would like to love the weak as well as the strong. How we would like to mate whenever we wished or give preference to our own blood and work for its supremacy. We cannot afford to. We reign in our instincts so that the Green Men should live, not merely one Green Man. Such a thing is the luxury of men like the Earthman John Carter and his impossibly rich and hospitable world. I cannot imagine a place where only one species rules all. What ease he must have had. Why did he ever land upon us with both his feet?
I do not like him, I said to my mother Sikuva. He humiliated Tars Tarkas! He made him say he learned friendship from that skinny Earthman! The heartspace is bigger than what he calls friendship and has more teeth, too. Why does he think he is better than us? Without us he would have starved to death!
Hush, my little spear-head, my mother said. When you are grown, you may fight him if you dislike him. Bide your time.
I have felt sorry for Tars Tarkas and his child Sola in my time. I imagine their gentle and loving feelings are a comfort to them, for they could not engage fully with the heartspace. Something was broken in them, and we could see them in the crosshatch only as shadows, vague and hazy. They expressed in the outside world the precious love and adoration and communal feeling that we keep inside, for it would surely be used against us by the other folk of Barsoom, who think so little of us, who break our eggs and dance in the ruined yolk. Poor Sarkoja tried to keep Tars Tarkas and his woman from passing on their unfit blood to a child, but she could not, she was not vigilant enough. I felt sorry for him then, when he piled up the human John Carter with praise, and we burned with anger, for he preened with his war-princess and was made sure of his su
periority. We lost face, and could not get it back. We would be ruled by a crippled Tharkian, and even a decadent tyrant was better than one who could not see the world inside us except through a dark glass.
And so I grew to adulthood. I made myself strong, so that one day I could kill the Earthman John Carter and take his metal. I wanted things to be as they were, before he came. I wanted to dream in the heartspace and hunt game and ride the thoats without having to call them good and pretty for a half hour before I could feed myself—for I was always starving. There is never enough on Barsoom. You are never full, unless you are the Earthman John Carter. Unless you are a Red Man licking the yolk off your fingers.
My anger sustained me, it filled out my muscles where meat and bone could not. How dare he? How dare he drive off Sarkoja when she did little more than pinch and bite a woman who had felt no sorrow while her people destroyed us? How dare he kill our chieftains and take position among us? He had no respect, as he had none for the Apaches he spoke of. I roamed the high hills and wrestled both the great white ape and the banth, and bested them both, for I was becoming great in the fullness of my youth, and I feared nothing except the reedy voice of the Earthman John Carter telling us once more that we were brutes and should follow his lead. I walked alone, I took myself from the heartspace and it grieved me like a blow to the skull, but it was worth it, it was enough, to end the Earthman John Carter and bring my people home once more.
And yet the very day when I resolved that I had achieved my true self, and all my green limbs were hard and hot, when I was ready—oh, I was ready!—I went down into Thark with a blaze in my eyes and a blaze in my heartspace as Falm Rojut returned to the glittering crosshatching of thoughtlines like an inrushing of air and flame. The young ones shrank back from the brightness of Falm Rojut. But Sola herself told me with a haughty smile that the Earthman John Carter had gone, back into the heavens, and was beyond my reach. Sola could not see the blue fire in my heartspace, how I hated her: collaborator and traitor, who gave succor to murderers and would go unpunished. Though the Earthman John Carter had gone, he would never truly be gone. He had put his foot down upon Barsoom and everything around that footprint had begun to die. I could not stay in Thark, which was the center of his rot. I could not look Sola in the eye each day while she preened and smirked and giggled with Tars Tarkas about their friend and how glorious would be the day when he returned. I was a child of Thark—I wanted only to live and hunt and mate and see my people thrive. Instead I could not even take the metal of the interloper, could not even try.
Much later, my rage quieted to a banked ember floating like a red planet in the heartspace. I challenged the old Jeddak of Hanar Su far over the plains, and she was grateful to lay down the burden of her long life under my blade. I watched my wife lay her eggs. I guarded them from the Red Men and owned several thoats and calots who did their work well. I heard that the Earthman John Carter returned some ten years hence, but by that time I had a community to think of, and I led them deep into the mountains, to be safe from him, from his pride, from his ignorance.
But then, that lonely day when I was so ready to destroy him, when I was so strong, when the sun spilled over my green skin like yolk, I only turned my head to the sky where, somewhere, I knew he hid from me. And I laughed—a long, terrible, awful laugh.
Our laughter was never mirth. It is our greatest grief and mourning, our agony and regret for how things must be on this difficult, painful world, our wishing fate could have gone another way, our crying out for the cruelty and unfair asymmetry of the life that owns us.
It was always our weeping.
Barsoom is a highly martial place. Visitors would be well advised to get their hands on a sword and learn how to use it, not only because the environment is generally violent and lawless, but also because virtually all Barsoomian societies assign status based on battle prowess. In fact, among the Green Men you haven’t even earned the right to a last name until you’ve slain a local chieftain. Visitors to Barsoom are faced with a dizzying array of unfamiliar ranks and titles, the highest of which are the Jeddaks (emperors) and jeds (kings). You can also expect to see plenty of military officers—jedwars (warlords), odwars (generals), dwars (captains), and padwars (lieutenants). The stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs mainly focus on Jeddaks such as John Carter and Tars Tarkas or princesses such as Dejah Thoris and Tara, but of course we can’t forget that characters of a more humble station have adventures that are just as memorable, as our final tale amply demonstrates. This story shows us a distant future in which John Carter is poised to finally bring an end to the endless cycles of warfare that have rocked Barsoom. Don’t worry though . . . peace hasn’t come quite yet, and there’s more than enough action here to satisfy even the most hardened Barsoomian warrior.
THE DEATH SONG OF DWAR GUNTHA
BY JONATHAN MABERRY
1
My name is Jeks Toron, last padwar of the Free Riders, and personal aide to Dwar Guntha. When he dies, however he dies, I pray I will go with him into the realm of legends and that our song will be sung in Helium for a thousand thousand years.
That is not a heroic boast—I won’t fall upon my sword at the death of my captain; but I have been in a hundred battles with him, and we have grown old together . . . and war is not an old man’s game. For odwars and jedwars, perhaps, but not for fighting men.
Dwar Guntha? Ah, now there is a fighting man. Was he not with John Carter when the Warlord raided the fortress of Issus? Aye, he was there, leading the mutiny of loyal Heliumites against the madness of Zat Arras. He was a man at arms in the palace when Carter was named Jeddak of Jeddaks—Warlord of all Barsoom. And in the years that followed, how many times did Guntha ride out at the head of the Warlord’s Riders? Look closely at Dwar Guntha’s face and chest, and in the countless overlapping scars you’ll see a map of history, a full account of the wars and battles, rescues, and skirmishes.
Now, though . . . ?
John Carter himself is old. His children and grandchildren, and grandchildren of his grandchildren are old. We Red Men of Helium are long-lived, but that old witch time, as they say, catches up to everyone. Guntha’s right arm is not what it was, and I admit that I am slower on the draw, less sure on the cut, and less dexterous in the riposte than once I was. Even the heroes’ songs for which I and my family have been famous these many generations have become echoes of old tales retold. In these days of peace there are few opportunities for songmakers to tell of great and heroic deeds; just as there are few opportunities for warriors to pass into song in a moment of glorious battle.
It seems to me, and to Guntha, that we live in an age of city men. City men, or, perhaps “civilized” men, seek deaths in bed, just as our great grandfathers once sought that long, last journey down the River Iss.
We spoke of such things, did Dwar Guntha and I, as we sat before a fire, warming our hands on the blaze and our stomachs with red wine. The moons chased each other through the heavens, leaving in their wakes a billion swirling stars. Tomorrow might be our last day, and so many days lay behind us. It sat heavily upon Dwar Guntha that our last great song may already have been sung.
I caught him looking into the flames with a distance at odds with the hawk sharpness he usually displayed.
“What is it?” I asked, and he was a long time answering.
Instead of speaking, he straightened, set aside his cup, and drew his sword from its sheath of cured banth hide. Guntha regarded the blade for a moment, turning it this way and that, studying the play of reflected firelight on the oiled steel. Then with a sigh he handed it to me.
“Look at it, Jeks,” he said heavily. “This is my third sword. When I was a lad and wearing a fighting man’s rig for the first time I carried my father’s sword. A clunky chopper of Panarian make. My father was a palace guard, you know. Served fifty years and never drew his weapon in anger. First time I used the sword in a real battle I notched the blade on a Tharkian collar. Second time I used it, the blade snappe
d. When Zat Arras fitted out the fleet to pursue John Carter after he’d returned from Valley Dor, Kantos Kan himself gave him a better sword. Good man, that. He was everything Zat Arras was not, and the sword he gave was a Helium blade. Light and strong and already blooded. It had belonged to a padwar friend of his who died nobly but had no heirs. I used that blade for over twenty years, Jeks. It tasted the blood of Green Men and Black Men, of Plant Men and White Apes. And, aye, it drank the blood of Red Men, too.”
He sighed and reached for his cup.
“But I lost it when my scouting party was taken prisoner in that skirmish down south. Now, why do I tell you, Jeks? That’s where we met, wasn’t it? In the slave pits of An-Kar-Dool. Remember how we broke out? Clawing stones from the floor of our cell and tunneling inch by inch under the wall? Running naked into the forests, wasted by starvation, filthy and unarmed.”
I smiled and nodded. “We were armed when we returned.”
Guntha smiled too, and nodded at the blade. “That was the first time I used that sword. I took it from the ice pirate who sold us into slavery. I snuck into his tent and strangled him with a lute string, and for a time I thought I would throw this sword away as soon as its immediate work was done.”
“That would have been a shame,” I said as I hefted the sword, letting the weight of the blade guide the turn and fall and recovery of my fist on my wrist. The balance was superb, and the blade flashed fire as it cut circles in the air.
“And so it would,” he agreed, and his smile faded away by slow degrees. “Yet look at it, Jeks. See the nicks and notches that have cut so deep that no smith can sharpen them out? And along the bloodgutter, see the pits? Shake it, you can feel the softness of the tang, and if you listen close you can hear it cry out in weary protest. I heard it crack yesterday when we fell upon the garrison that was fleeing this fort. Hearing it crack was like hearing my own heart break.”
Under the Moons of Mars Page 26