“How could I forget it? You placed your sword at my feet, I placed mine at yours. Cart, what is all this?”
“Zeb, I’m caught between honor and duty! My sword is at your feet—now! But I must surrender my claim to the throne of Helium … and that takes time! There is not another male member of my family here; I can’t abdicate today … I must wait. Zeb, you must not leave tomorrow; I need time. Will you give me your word that you will not leave until someone senior to me comes home? Tardos Mors, or Mors Kajak, or—if the Gods smile on us—your cousin, my father?”
“No.”
“Oh, damn your stubbornness! I knew you would say ‘No.’ Excuse me a moment; I’ll be right back.” The prince left the grand chamber that was his “private office.” He was back within seconds. He sprawled out, sighed, and relaxed—looked not happy, but calm. “That solves it. Both duty and honor. Zeb, my beloved friend, when the time comes we will fight side by side. Back to back. They will kill us—but they will not take either of us alive. I have spoken. Some wine? To toast our deaths—together!” He smiled.
“Some wine, yes. But I won’t toast our deaths. As my cousin often said, ‘We still live!’ Cart, what is this?”
“Nothing, really. I will postpone your extradition until I can surrender all claim to power to one of my elders and seniors. Then if the ruling goes against you, I will be at your side. We will die together, honorably.”
“My extradition? Who wants to extradite me and why? What are the charges?”
“Does it matter? You will not be surrendered; I pledge you that. We will die together.”
“Damn it, Cart, quiet down. I’m not ready to die; I have duties I can’t abdicate, whether your elders show up or not. So that’s out. Now give me details. Who wants me and what excuses do they offer? Whatever they are, excuses are all they are. False charges—for I’m not guilty of any crime, anywhere. None. I have spoken.”
“Zeb, it warms my heart to know that. But believe me, I would fight with you and for you and die with you if you were guilty of the blackest crimes. I have spoken.”
“I believe you with all my heart, Cart. But, while you have spoken, you haven’t answered. Details, man! Extradition isn’t a simple request, filled automatically.” Zeb thought back to a course in international law he had taken. “One, the fugitive must be positively identified. Two, he must have fled from the country in which the alleged crime took place. Three, the alleged crime must be a crime both in the country of origin and in the county to which he has fled for sanctuary. Four, there must be an extradition treaty between the two nations, defining the conditions for extradition. I think that’s all the essentials. No, I left out the most important one. The nation asking extradition must present convincing evidence of the alleged crime and evidence that the fugitive committed it. I can’t see how any of that fits me. I didn’t commit any crimes back home and I haven’t been outside Helium here. So who’s snapping at my heels, and why?”
The prince reached for a scroll. “Here is the demand for extradition. It comes from the United Nations of Earth through their ambassador here. It demands that we deliver to their embassy for return to Earth one Zebadiah John Carter also known as Captain Zebadiah J. Carter, United States Aerospace Forces Reserve, also known as Professor Z. J. Carter, BA, Ph.D. ….”
“That’s me, no argument. Go on.”
“You are charged with murder, arson, abduction, criminal bombing, resisting a federal officer of the United States of America when he attempted to arrest you, fleeing the scenes of your crimes to evade justice—that’s the gist of it. What’s ‘arson’?”
“Setting fire to something illegally. ‘Not guilty,’ to all of them. What evidence do they offer? Whom am I supposed to have killed and where and when? And ‘abduction’—that baffles me. Who? When? Where?”
“Mrs. Hannah H. Corners.”
Zeb looked startled, then guffawed.
The prince said, “I don’t see anything to laugh about.”
“Cart, that’s the Princess Hilda!”
“I don’t understand.”
“ ‘Hannah Hilda Corners’ is Hilda’s unmarried name. She never liked her first name and very few know it … but ‘Hannah Hilda Corners’ is the way she signed her marriage license; I witnessed it. Jake has it in his papers in Gay Deceiver; he can show it to you. Where did I commit this arson?”
“In a place called ‘Logan, Utah ….’ ”
“Never been in Logan in my life.”
“… and that is connected with two of the murders.”
“Only two? I must be slipping.”
“Please, Zeb, this is serious. No, there was a third one—the federal officer you resisted.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. I stuck this sword right in his belly when he tried to shoot Deety—and Jake, and Hilda. Only he wasn’t an officer; he was a phony. The other two murders? I don’t recall killing anyone else lately. Just this phony, a deadly dangerous alien, not human. The same type of alien that we’ve been asking about—that extinct vermin on exhibit in the Palace of Memories.”
“Really? I had wondered at your interest in that exhibit.”
“Really truly, Cart. Now those other two murders?”
“Both in Logan, where you tell me you have never been. One described as Professor J. H. Burroughs—that couldn’t be Jake?”
“It could indeed be Jake, in the flesh. But he is alive and well and under your roof, not dead in Logan.”
“The other is also named Burroughs—Assistant Professor Dejah T. Burroughs. A relative of Jake?”
“A close relative. His daughter, my wife, the Princess Deety. Cart, you’ll have to decide whether or not to tell this to your mother—but my wife was named for her: Dejah Thoris Burroughs. Deety is a nickname, her initials: ‘D’ and ‘T.’ When we got there, we decided an extra ‘Dejah Thoris’ was one too many … so we went on calling her by her nickname. But, again, our wedding license will show it. So I killed Deety, did I? She’ll be surprised.”
“She can’t be half as surprised as I am. Or as confused. Since I know that you are a man of honor, this stuff”—the prince gestured angrily at the scroll—“is preposterous nonsense. Yet they ask for you by name and you agree that you are the one they seek to arrest. Along with this demand they supply sworn statements from various Earthling officials as to your alleged crimes—I suppose that is the substantiating evidence you spoke of. But ….”
“I said ‘convincing evidence.’ Do sworn statements by someone on Earth convince you that I killed Deety and Jake? Does Hilda behave as if I had kidnapped her?” I reached for the scroll, said, “May I?”—then took consent for granted. “Hey, they’ve even got my fingerprints! Or what they say are my fingerprints; I’m no expert.”
“They are your fingerprints, Zeb.”
“Huh?”
“The first goblet you touched this morning was fetched to me. Comparisons have been made; they matched.”
“Well, well! Cart, that’s the first sneaky thing I’ve known you to do. Which of our little darlings did this for you? I don’t want her around me any longer.”
The prince’s jaw muscles clenched. “Zeb, one does not explain to a slave and a slave does not question orders. You are not being fair to the girl.”
“Mmm, no, I’m not … since her first loyalty must be to you. The poor kid probably did not have the slightest idea what it was all about.”
“No, she didn’t. In fact she was led to believe that your prints were wanted in order to read your tastes for a surprise gift to you—as here the superstitious believe that a person’s tastes, personality, even his future, can be read from the lines on his hand and fingers.”
“A belief not limited to Barsoom. And you certainly did hand me a surprise gift. Why didn’t you ask me for my prints, to my face? You could have had them at once. Instead, you had an innocent slave girl get them behind my back. I thought better of you, Cart.”
“Zeb, Zeb, I didn’t expect the prints to match! I expected to ret
urn this scroll with a scornful rejection—one so sharp that a man of honor would ask the Regent to lay aside his immunity and cross swords. I took delight in drafting a rejection, loading it with vitriol. Then my experts reported that the prints were yours!—and I required them to show me, print by print, with a strong enlarging lens. I was forced to admit it … and I’ve been moping here ever since, hoping you would show up—and dreading it, too! Because I wouldn’t send a guard to fetch you, Zeb; I couldn’t do that to you. So I waited. And waited.”
“I see. I’m sorry I failed to guess your motives.”
“If the prints had not matched, this sorry mess would never have been brought to your attention … my brother. My senior cousin but brother in sword.”
“ ‘Blood brother,’ we sometimes call it. Yes, Cart, we are blood brothers just as Jake and I are blood brothers, even though he is my wife’s father. But I wonder how they—no, I don’t! Cart! See anything odd about those prints?”
“What should I see?”
“The thumb print. It’s from the side—not the ball of the thumb.”
“But when you place your hand down flat the thumb always prints on the side. Unless your hand is very different from mine.”
“It isn’t. I was wondering how they got my prints here so quickly. I knew their ships were fast, but from what I had heard they weren’t that fast. But now I know. These prints weren’t sent from Earth or any of this so-called evidence. All that came from Earth was a wireless message. The prints and the evidence were faked, in their embassy.”
“They do have better wireless than we have, much better. But how did you deduce the rest?”
“To obtain those tariff schedules I had Tira write letters for me. I signed them each with my sword-hand print.”
“Yes, of course.”
“On Earth it’s not ‘of course.’ Palm prints aren’t used. For some purposes—licenses, pocket identification—either the ball of the thumb or of the forefinger is enough. But for full identification, ten prints are used—both thumbs, all eight fingers, each taken separately, and the face-on ball of each thumb is recorded. Never the side of the thumb. My own ten prints are on record that way several places on Earth. So these are not my prints from Earth. All this junk was faked right here, using my right palm-and-fingerprint and a wireless message from Earth.”
“But why, Zeb? Surely not because your inquiry resulted in my confiscating those insulting brochures? I kept your name out of it.”
“But my letters started it and brought my name to their attention. Cart, we four—Hilda, Jake, Deety, and I—are indeed fugitives from Earth. But not criminals. We were fleeing for our lives.”
“Zeb, the more I hear about this, the less I understand it.”
I took a deep breath and decided that one of those rare times had come when nothing less than great chunks of raw truth would serve—preposterous as it would sound. “Cart, the sun is about to set. Can we step out on your western balcony? I want to show you something.”
“If you wish it, certainly.”
The two friends went outside into the dusk. “Cart, see that big, bright planet with the bluish-green cast to it?”
“Of course. Earth. ‘Jasoom’ we call it … but my father taught me to call it ‘Earth.’ Your home planet … and his.”
“Not my home planet, Cart—and I don’t think it is your father’s home planet.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“There is much about it that I don’t understand myself. But I’ve tried to teach you how Gay Deceiver works so that you can build spaceships—and Mobyas Toras has confirmed that Jake’s—Doctor Burroughs’—mathematics are indeed correct … even though the old gentleman still doesn’t seem convinced that we use it for practical engineering. But I did tell you about the many universes opened up by this mathematics, each only a quantum jump from its nearest neighbor—but still so far apart that they don’t touch at all.”
“You did. Agreed.”
“This is not our universe. Privately, we four—Hilda, Jake, Deety, and I—call that planet ‘Earth-Ten’ and we call our home planet ‘Earth-Zero.’ In our own universe there is a planet—Mars-Zero, I would have to call it, which would make Barsoom ‘Mars-Ten.’ Mars-Zero, or simply ‘Mars’ is a planet this size, in this position—but long dead. Her air is so thin as be unbreathable even if it were pure oxygen—which it is not. Her water is a merest trace, frozen at her poles. There is nothing alive on her surface. Bare rock, nothing more. There are signs that there were once mighty rivers, basins that could once have held oceans. Nothing now. If a race of Red men once lived on Mars-Zero, then they either never succeeded in building an oxygen plant—or it failed, cycles and cycles ago. I don’t know.
“This is not guesswork I’m telling. My race, on Earth-Zero, has visited Mars-Zero and photographed it from all sides.”
The prince regent stared at the bright evening star in the west. “Then you are not from Jasoom.”
“If you mean Earth-Ten up there, no, I’m not.”
“Then you are not my father’s senior cousin?”
“I’m not certain that I should be called ‘senior.’ He and I would have to compare family records. ‘Cousins,’ yes—but the Carter family is a large one, and it would take family records and the help of the genealogist of the Carter Family Association to establish the exact degree of relationship. My guess, without records at hand, is first cousin thrice removed. As may be, I am Captain Zebadiah John Carter of Virginia.”
“But Virginia is there.” The prince pointed.
“There may be a place called ‘Virginia’ on Jasoom, I do not know. But I don’t think your father was ever there. His letters and his own accounts of his life on Barsoom have so many, many details that match in all respects Earth-Zero that I feel certain that your father came from Earth-Zero—my planet—to Barsoom, ten universes away.”
“I’m confused again. How?”
“According to his own stories about his career, he never knew how he did it. One instant he was in the mountains of Arizona, the next instant he was on Barsoom, near the incubator of the Thark Horde. The next time, about twenty years later, he grounded in Thern country, near the south of the River Iss.”
“You do know his history!”
“Not as well as Doctor Burroughs knows it. I told you that he named his daughter, my wife, for your mother. However, the exploits of your father are widely known on Earth-Zero. He is a heroic character to many, many millions.”
The prince kept silent several moments, then said, “Let’s go inside. The sun has set, it’s growing chilly.”
“Okay. No, wait a half! They are about to change guard around Gay Deceiver; I like to watch it. No smarter soldiers anywhere, Cart.”
“Oh, come on in, Zeb!”
“You go in—I won’t get to see this after tomorrow.”
Cart looked grim, but waited. I watched the changing of the guard with delight—noted a variation with no surprise. “Smart troops,” I said as the two men went back inside. “I do love to watch troops who take pride in drill. Aerospace has so little of it that it’s always a treat to me. I see that you’ve tripled the guard.”
“Yes.”
“With a senior officer commanding where there was just a sergeant yesterday. I’m feeling telepathic, Cart. That officer and every man under him has orders from you not to let anyone touch Gay Deceiver. With special emphasis on me. All four of us by name, but with my name underlined. And you are feeling very, very bad about it. It hurts you inside.”
“Issus! You read minds as well as my father does. And I can’t read yours.”
“Stop hurting inside, Cart. You did what you had to do. What I forced you to do. When I refused to give my parole not to leave, you stepped outside and gave the orders, and I knew it. But believe me, it doesn’t matter. So quit hurting. I also prophesy. Shall I prophesy for you now?—so that you can quit feeling sick over an unpleasant duty?”
“Uh …. Damn it. I had to!”<
br />
“Of course you had to, Cart. You aren’t the boss; you’re the unhappy youngster who tends the shop while the boss is away … and you’ve suddenly found yourself with a nasty mess on your hands and no policy to guide you. But it doesn’t matter, Cart, truly it doesn’t! Shall I prophesy for you?”
“Zeb, if you can tell me anything that will let me stop hating myself, please speak!”
“Very well. A little background first. There is no extradition treaty between Helium and Earth. Earth-Ten, I mean, that embassy that sent you that scroll of lies.”
“I don’t know! That’s one thing that has my hands tied.”
“There is no such treaty—but I’m not asking you to remove that tripled guard. Had there been such a treaty, your father—or Tardos Mors—or both, more likely both—would never have left you unaware of its existence. So it’s a bluff, just as their evidence is fake. But it doesn’t matter, because you will make no objection to our leaving on schedule. Prophecy.”
“But I can’t let you leave yet. You know why.”
“ ‘Prophecy,’ I said. Authentic prophecy. You will have compelling reasons to change your mind. You’ll do it and Dejah Thoris—the jeddara, I mean; not my Dejah Thoris, Deety—the jeddara will back you up. But even without the authority of your mother, you would still change your mind. Because, no matter what I have done—and I have committed no crimes, here or on Earth-Zero, or on Earth-Ten where I have never been—and no matter what lies they tell about me—and no matter how helpless you feel in the absence of your father and your maternal grandfather and great-grandfather—you don’t have it in you to condemn Hilda and Deety to death.”
“What!”
“Define the English word ‘obstetrics.’ ”
“It’s not a word I know.”
“How about ‘eclampsia’? ‘Fallopian pregnancy’?”
“I don’t know any of those words. Should I?”
“You don’t know them for the same reason you didn’t know the word ‘extradition.’ Because your father never expected you to need to know such words. It’s possible that the jeddara or the Princess Thuvia knows one or more of them; babies are very interesting to women, and your father may have told your mother something about the differences between the way your women have babies and the way our women do.”
The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes Page 33