Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs Page 8
“Istara,” I interrupted her, “how old is Bodog? How long has be been on Amtor? How old are you and Oggar? Where is your mother?”
She pulled away from me, drawing a shuddering breath. “I do not know, Carson. I have memories, unclear images of another life, another world. I have discussed them with my brother. He has similar memories. Were we born on Earth? Did our father bring us to Amtarra? I do not know how old I am.”
For a moment she preened. Yes, even on Venus, the eternal female will play her part in the grand drama of life. “How old do I look to you, Carson?”
I took her hand again, studied it and her face. I said, “Twenty.”
“Perhaps,” she assented. “Or twenty thousand? I do not know, myself.”
A silence descended upon us, then she rose and took my hand. She led me from the Potala. Soon we were strolling outside. There had been another of Amtor’s strange “snowfalls” while we slept, and the ground was covered with myriad granules that shone in every color imaginable when viewed from close, but gave off a white glare from afar.
“He is going back!” Istara blurted suddenly. “He has kept the space machine all these years, never knowing if Earth was inhabitable, never knowing if he could return. He is mad, you know.”
I said, “I have detected something disquieting about Bodog, but I knew not what.”
“Yes,” she repeated, “he is a genius, possibly the greatest genius who has ever lived, but he is quite insane. You saw his throne. Sometimes he sits there for days on end, commanding empires and armies to do his bidding. He fancies himself the rightful ruler of the universe. If he returns to Earth, his brilliance and his ruthlessness may well make him ruler of the world.”
“We must stop him,” I told her.
“Stop him, indeed. But how?”
“Have you tried to persuade him to give up his plan? He is comfortable here. Why not remain on Amtor?”
“It is no use. Oggar and I have both tried to convince him that his plans are futile at best, monstrously evil at worst. He only laughs, and if we persist he flies into a rage. Our mother tried to get him to abandon his plan, and he drove her mad with his cruelty and abuse. It was she whom you heard screaming last night, Carson. We all pretended to hear nothing. Oggar and I learned long ago what we must do. But we heard.”
“Can you not simply overpower him?” I persisted. “He is a feeble old man. Oggar could crush him with one hand. Or you could use the blue ray that you used on the grass creatures.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You felt the ray. It is harmless against humans. It was so designed to be. And as for attacking him with our bare hands, he uses his servants as bodyguards. They are not fully human, Carson. Surely you can tell that. They are—not exactly alive. They are some sort of half-living beings, utterly without will of their own, subject to the command of any human but to that of my father above all.”
I wracked my brain, trying to think of a way to defeat this self-styled rightful ruler of the universe.
“When does he plan to go?” I queried Istara at last.
“He has been delaying the trip because he does not know conditions on Earth. I do not know how long it has been since we traveled from—did you call it Lemuria?—to Amtarra.”
“Many thousands of years,” I told her. “Perhaps millions. On the present Earth, Lemuria is but a legend and Amtarra is known only as a mysterious, cloud-shrouded world.”
She nodded thoughtfully. Then she spoke again.
“So you see, Carson, you were a godsend to Bodog. You will be his guardian, his guide and adviser when he returns to Earth. He truly thinks that he is the rightful ruler of the universe, and he plans to start by conquering the planet of his birth. He will want to take you with him, Carson. And—what will you say when he asks you to join him?”
I fear that I bit my lip in distress. I was torn between my desire to return to Earth and my fear that Dr. Bodog would cause misery once he took up his campaign of conquest. He was but one wizened elf of a manikin, but I knew that his bulging cranium contained the most brilliant and dangerous mind in two planets.
If I could return to Earth, perhaps even bring the lovely Duare with me, I might risk it. But then a further thought came to bother my shaken tranquility. Duare had become increasingly uninterested in me of late. She seemed drawn to Istara’s brother, Oggar. And at the same time—I looked at Istara, drank in the beauty of her silken tresses, the grace of her tall, fit figure, the depths of her emerald-colored eyes in which I imagined I could see the nobility of her mind and her soul.
“I will talk to Bodog,” I announced at last.
Istara led me back into the Amtorian Potala.
I found Dr. Bodog working in his laboratory. He had trained several of his black-clad servitors as research assistants. Their blank eyes and expressionless faces produced a frisson in me whenever I had occasion to look into the face of one of these strange beings. I inferred that they were living creatures of some sort, for some of them seemed to be male and others female.
They obeyed Bodog with a kind of zombielike intelligence. Were they born without will or personality, and did they spend their entire existence as victims of this weird living death, or did they have some degree of awareness of their condition? I wondered if they might actually rebel against their circumstance.
As for Dr. Bodog, while what little scientific knowledge I possess was chiefly in the fields of anthropology and sociology, I was sufficiently familiar with the physical sciences to achieve a general understanding of what the wizened Bodog was working on.
He was developing ray projectors. Probably the azure ray that Istara had used on the grass creatures was of her father’s devising. But as I entered Bodog’s laboratory on this day, it became clear to me that he was working on a device that would have a far different effect from the blue ray.
I watched as he trained an experimental projector on one of his assistants. A brilliant ray, golden in hue, sprang from a polished lens onto the black-clad servitor, this one a female. At first there seemed to be no effect on the female. I do not know if I ought even to call her a woman. Bodog held a cube of a dull black nature. A small cylinder no larger than a common light switch protruded from the top of the cube, which was itself not much larger in any direction than the length of a man’s hand.
As Bodog moved the cylinder, the black-clad female moved like a marionette, raising and lowering a hand, standing on one foot then the other, twirling like a ballerina, lifting a piece of electrical equipment from one work bench, carrying it a few yards, then lowering it onto another. Finally she drew away from us and stood with her back to the wall, ready to respond to Bodog’s control should he summon her again.
The scientist turned toward me. The corners of his mouth rose in an expression that was more a malevolent grimace than a true smile. Then he laughed: a mirthless, unpleasant sound. “You see, Carson Napier, with my electrical brainwave amplifier I can transfer my commands to anyone I choose. As I think, ‘Raise your hand,’ the subject raises her hand. As I think, ‘Turn around,’ she turns around. So far I can control only the gross physical movements of my subjects, but when I establish my new laboratory on Earth I will build more advanced and more powerful brainwave amplifiers. I will be able to control not just my subjects’ physical movements but their very thoughts. Thus will I achieve my proper place as the rightful ruler of the universe.”
And he let forth that horrifying parody of laughter.
At this point I let him know what Istara had told me of his planned return to Earth. Since he had already mentioned his plan, there was no need to conceal my knowledge of it.
“Yes,” he grated, rubbing his hands and all but dancing a jig of glee. “Tonight I will leave this planet and begin my return to Earth. And you, Carson Napier, will be my right-hand henchman.”
“On one condition, Dr. Bodog,” I replied. “The Princess Duare must accompany us. Will your space machine accommodate three?”
“Come,” Bodo
g said. “I will show you.”
So saying, he led me to another chamber. Here stood a strange craft indeed. In no way did it resemble the bullet-shaped rocket in which I had traveled from Earth to Venus, the rocket which now lay hopelessly mired in a quicksand swamp, many miles from the Amtorian Potala.
Bodog’s craft was no larger than an ordinary automobile, like the Stutz Bearcat that I had driven during my halcyon college days. A door opened in its side, and Bodog led me inside the space machine. A strange arrangement of shafts and wires filled much of the cabin.
“What propels it?” I asked, for I had seen no rocket tubes or other means of propulsion on the outside of the craft, the overall shape of which was peculiar, an array of panels connected at odd and disquieting angles, seeming now to disappear out of the purview of ordinary three-dimensional space, yet again to reappear at unexpected places.
“Gravity, Carson Napier. My machine is powered by gravity.”
“But gravity is what holds us to the planet. How can it propel us hence?”
Again that horrid laugh, rising almost to a shriek of triumph. “It is simple, utterly simple for a genius of my dimensions. All I need do is bend the direction in which gravity pulls us. Do you see, it is as if a sailor were to run a line around a stanchion and attach the end of it to a heavy weight which lay beside him. The sailor pulls on the rope, the stanchion bends the direction of force, and even as the sailor pulls the rope toward him, the rope pulls the weight away from him!”
I shook my head in amazement. His concept was amazingly simple, almost obvious, and yet it was a principle that only a genius like Dr. Bodog could imagine. Too bad that this superb intellect was the possession of a man of such sinister if not absolutely insane intentions.
“Here,” he said, leading me to a rack from which hung a row of peculiar garments. “We will wear these during our flight. They are of a special material that will protect us from the effects of the gravity bender, for otherwise our internal organs would become fatally disorganized.”
He stared at me, then burst into his hideous, mocking laughter again. “Organs—disorganized. Do you see the joke, Carson Napier? Organs disorganized. No? Ah, well, never mind.”
The suits were of a thin and flexible substance which would cover the wearer totally. Gloves and footwear were attached, as was a flexible helmet or head-and-face covering, leaving only slits for vision, and even these were fitted with protective lenses.
“My special fabric permits air to pass to and from the wearer,” Bodog explained. “And the suits are of sufficient resilience that they do not need to be specially fitted for each wearer.”
He clapped me on the shoulder with one of his skeletal but surprisingly powerful hands. “Tonight,” he rasped, “we shall share a farewell dinner. I will leave Oggar and Istara in charge of my holdings on Amtor, and you and your Duare shall accompany me to Earth. Just think of the astonished expressions of Earthly scientists when they meet a woman who was born and raised on Venus!”
Dinner that night—or what passed for night on this cloud-shrouded world—lived up to Bodog’s prediction. A fire had again been laid on the great hearth, and powders of Bodog’s devising were added to create weird tinctures and forms that swayed and danced hypnotically. Istara and Oggar, Duare and I, sat on opposite sides of the table while Bodog, presided. Toasts were drunk in strong fíonbeior while black-attired zombielike servitors brought course after course of exotic and piquant delicacies.
At the end of our meal, Dr. Bodog suggested that we each retire to our respective quarters. The three travelers—Bodog, Duare, and I—would in due course assemble at the space machine, which, Bodog explained, would by then have been moved to the courtyard outside the Potala.
I had very little to do in preparation for the flight to Earth. I cleansed myself and changed to fresh garments, then made my way to the courtyard. I encountered Dr. Bodog as I crossed the open area to the machine. Inside we found our special protective costumes and proceeded to don them. Duare, I saw, had preceded us and awaited us inside the machine.
With hardly a moment’s hesitation, Bodog directed Duare and myself to seats where we were held by belts to prevent our being injured when the ship’s machinery bent the force of gravity. Bodog turned a knob, and the little craft was filled with a weirdly harmonic humming.
My head began to whirl, and I felt as if I were being turned upside down. Through the windows of the machine I could see the Potala fall away beneath us—or was it above us? I looked up—or was it down?—and saw the ceaselessly roiling clouds of Amtor.
One of the planet’s colorful vortices had formed and Bodog headed straight for it. We burst through and found ourselves between two layers of clouds. We sped horizontally until another vortex appeared above and ahead of us. Bodog directed our little craft to that swirling disk of light. We burst through it and suddenly there we were, in the blackness of space. I nearly wept at the beauty of the heavens that I had not seen for so long.
I will not detail the events of our trip Earthward. The little gravity-powered machine attained astonishing speed. Bodog called upon the ancient astronomical knowledge that he had acquired uncounted centuries before in the redoubts of Lemuria and ancient Tibet to navigate our course to Earth.
It had never occurred to me until now, how vast is the void between the planets and how easily travelers could become lost, to drift endlessly through space like the legendary Flying Dutchman.
I wondered where Bodog planned to land. Knowing his wild, almost insane ambitions, I expected him to make his return to the world of his origins in a dramatic fashion, and he did so in a manner that outdid even my wildest guesses.
It was January first, the first day of the new year. A championship football game was in progress in a great stadium in Los Angeles. It was halftime, and the players were resting in their locker rooms while bands played and cheerleaders pranced to entertain the gigantic crowd.
Bodog brought our little craft down precisely on the fifty-yard line, in this stadium packed with 100,000 cheering spectators. He opened the door and the three of us stepped out, still wearing our special protective suits.
Bodog removed his flexible helmet, revealing his naked pate and frightening countenance to the multitude. As the crowd became silent in its curiosity as to this strange display, I followed suit. And then Duare did the same. Duare, whom I had loved on Amtor—or thought I had loved. But in our days as Dr. Bodog’s guests, she had shown her deep interest in Oggar, while I had begun to feel a deeper rapport with Oggar’s tall and lovely sister, Istara.
And as she removed her helmet, revealing her face for the first time since our farewell dinner in her father’s redoubt, I beheld the lovely and beloved features of my one true love, Istara of Amtor!
This is the only reprint in the book. Due to a prior contractual arrangement, ERB, Inc. could not allow any new Mars stories to appear here . . . but we found a way around that.
In 1963, literally half a century ago, I wrote the following, a sequel to the tenth (and then final) Mars book, Llana of Gathol. It was published in 1965 and circulated free of charge with ERB-dom magazine, which may have been part of the reason that ERB-dom became the only Burroughs fanzine in history to win the Hugo Award, back in 1966. A thousand copies were printed, and during the past decade I have seen them going for as high as $300 in convention dealers’ rooms.
This bears no resemblance to what I write these days. It so meticulously emulated ERB’s style that it was my hope, when writing it, that if it were found in his safe (where so many posthumously published treasures were found), no one would doubt that he had written it himself.
—Mike
The Forgotten Sea of Mars
Mike Resnick
Prologue
The day breaks with surprising suddenness in Arizona, and as I stood on a bank overlooking the headwaters of the Little Colorado, I watched the starry heavens fade into the bright blue sky which marks the Southwestern day. I, like so many others befor
e me, had a few weeks ago unplugged the phone, packed my gear, locked my house, and taken a temporary leave from the rigors of that phenomenon we call society.
Arizona had seemed to me the ideal place for the solitude and beauty I craved, and so I had rented a cabin that was once owned by a famous writer and set up housekeeping.
This day was to remain in my memory for a long time, although it began innocently enough. As usual I was off at daybreak, wandering through the hills and canyons, sketching, photographing, and generally exploring in my amateur fashion. I had borrowed a horse but could see no reason for making him carry my weight during the heat of the day and spent most of the time during my excursions leading him by the rope that was attached to his halter.
Returning to my two-room cabin just before twilight, I watered the horse and went inside to prepare my dinner on the primitive stove. The sun had set and the skies had turned dark long before I finished my meal, and as I peered through the window I could almost see the long-gone warriors of Geronimo seated in council or donning their war paint. I have always been a daydreamer, and so I turned, supporting my chin on my hands, and gazed at the Apache warriors. They were dancing now, all except one who was facing my cabin, and I could imagine the horror their martial war-whoops must have inspired in the breasts of our early cowboys and settlers.
Then one warrior, the one who had not partaken in the dance, began approaching, which apparitions are not supposed to do. I closed my eyes and shook my head vigorously. When I looked again, the Apache village had returned to the inner recesses of my mind, but the warrior was still coming toward me, and as he did so I thought I could hear the clanking sound of metal upon metal.
Finally, when he was within a few feet of the cabin door, he stopped, and in a strong masculine voice called out a single word: “Nephew?”