A Princess of Mars Rethroned (12 page)

In theory it may
sound well, as is often the case with theories, but the results of
ages of this unnatural practice, coupled with the community
interest in the offspring being held paramount to that of the
mother, is shown in the cold, cruel creatures, and their gloomy,
loveless, mirthless existence.

It is true that
the green Martians are absolutely virtuous, both women and men,
with the exception of such degenerates as Tala Hajus; but better
far a finer balance of human characteristics even at the expense of
a slight and occasional loss of chastity.

Finding that I
must assume responsibility for these creatures, whether I would or
not, I made the best of it and directed them to find quarters on
the upper floors, leaving the third floor to me. One of the girls I
charged with the duties of my simple cuisine, and directed the
others to take up the various activities which had formerly
constituted their vocations. Thereafter I saw little of them, nor
did I care to.

CHAPTER
XIII

LOVE-MAKING ON
MARS

Following the
battle with the air ships, the community remained within the city
for several days, abandoning the homeward march until they could
feel reasonably assured that the ships would not return; for to be
caught on the open plains with a cavalcade of chariots and children
was far from the desire of even so warlike a people as the green
Martians.

During our period
of inactivity, Tara Tarkas had instructed me in many of the customs
and arts of war familiar to the Tharks, including lessons in riding
and guiding the great beasts which bore the warriors. These
creatures, which are known as thoats, are as dangerous and vicious
as their mistresses, but when once subdued are sufficiently
tractable for the purposes of the green Martians.

Two of these
animals had fallen to me from the warriors whose metal I wore, and
in a short time I could handle them quite as well as the native
warriors. The method was not at all complicated. If the thoats did
not respond with sufficient celerity to the telepathic instructions
of their riders they were dealt a terrific blow between the ears
with the butt of a pistol, and if they showed fight this treatment
was continued until the brutes either were subdued, or had unseated
their riders.

In the latter
case it became a life and death struggle between the woman and the
beast. If the former were quick enough with her pistol she might
live to ride again, though upon some other beast; if not, her torn
and mangled body was gathered up by her men and burned in
accordance with Tharkian custom.

My experience
with Woolan determined me to attempt the experiment of kindness in
my treatment of my thoats. First I taught them that they could not
unseat me, and even rapped them sharply between the ears to impress
upon them my authority and mastery. Then, by degrees, I won their
confidence in much the same manner as I had adopted countless times
with my many mundane mounts. I was ever a good hand with animals,
and by inclination, as well as because it brought more lasting and
satisfactory results, I was always kind and humane in my dealings
with the lower orders. I could take a human life, if necessary,
with far less compunction than that of a poor, unreasoning,
irresponsible brute.

In the course of
a few days my thoats were the wonder of the entire community. They
would follow me like dogs, rubbing their great snouts against my
body in awkward evidence of affection, and respond to my every
command with an alacrity and docility which caused the Martian
warriors to ascribe to me the possession of some earthly power
unknown on Mars.

'How have you
bewitched them?' asked Tara Tarkas one afternoon, when she had seen
me run my arm far between the great jaws of one of my thoats which
had wedged a piece of stone between two of her teeth while feeding
upon the moss-like vegetation within our court yard.

'By kindness,' I
replied. 'You see, Tara Tarkas, the softer sentiments have their
value, even to a warrior. In the height of battle as well as upon
the march I know that my thoats will obey my every command, and
therefore my fighting efficiency is enhanced, and I am a better
warrior for the reason that I am a kind mistress. Your other
warriors would find it to the advantage of themselves as well as of
the community to adopt my methods in this respect. Only a few days
since you, yourself, told me that these great brutes, by the
uncertainty of their tempers, often were the means of turning
victory into defeat, since, at a crucial moment, they might elect
to unseat and rend their riders.'

'Show me how you
accomplish these results,' was Tara Tarkas' only
rejoinder.

And so I
explained as carefully as I could the entire method of training I
had adopted with my beasts, and later she had me repeat it before
Lorqua Ptomel and the assembled warriors. That moment marked the
beginning of a new existence for the poor thoats, and before I left
the community of Lorqua Ptomel I had the satisfaction of observing
a regiment of as tractable and docile mounts as one might care to
see. The effect on the precision and celerity of the military
movements was so remarkable that Lorqua Ptomel presented me with a
massive anklet of gold from her own leg, as a sign of her
appreciation of my service to the horde.

On the seventh
day following the battle with the air craft we again took up the
march toward Thark, all probability of another attack being deemed
remote by Lorqua Ptomel.

During the days
just preceding our departure I had seen but little of Dejar Thoris,
as I had been kept very busy by Tara Tarkas with my lessons in the
art of Martian warfare, as well as in the training of my thoats.
The few times I had visited his quarters he had been absent,
walking upon the streets with Solan, or investigating the buildings
in the near vicinity of the plaza. I had warned them against
venturing far from the plaza for fear of the great white apes,
whose ferocity I was only too well acquainted with. However, since
Woolan accompanied them on all their excursions, and as Solan was
well armed, there was comparatively little cause for
fear.

On the evening
before our departure I saw them approaching along one of the great
avenues which lead into the plaza from the east. I advanced to meet
them, and telling Solan that I would take the responsibility for
Dejar Thoris' safekeeping, I directed his to return to his quarters
on some trivial errand. I liked and trusted Solan, but for some
reason I desired to be alone with Dejar Thoris, who represented to
me all that I had left behind upon Earth in agreeable and congenial
companionship. There seemed bonds of mutual interest between us as
powerful as though we had been born under the same roof rather than
upon different planets, hurtling through space some forty-eight
million miles apart.

That he shared my
sentiments in this respect I was positive, for on my approach the
look of pitiful hopelessness left his sweet countenance to be
replaced by a smile of joyful welcome, as he placed his little
right hand upon my left shoulder in true red Martian
salute.

'Sarkoja told
Solan that you had become a true Thark,' he said, 'and that I would
now see no more of you than of any of the other
warriors.'

'Sarkoja is a
liar of the first magnitude,' I replied, 'notwithstanding the proud
claim of the Tharks to absolute verity.'

Dejar Thoris
laughed.

'I knew that even
though you became a member of the community you would not cease to
be my friend; 'A warrior may change her metal, but not her heart,'
as the saying is upon Barsoom.'

'I think they
have been trying to keep us apart,' he continued, 'for whenever you
have been off duty one of the older men of Tara Tarkas' retinue has
always arranged to trump up some excuse to get Solan and me out of
sight. They have had me down in the pits below the buildings
helping them mix their awful radium powder, and make their terrible
projectiles. You know that these have to be manufactured by
artificial light, as exposure to sunlight always results in an
explosion. You have noticed that their bullets explode when they
strike an object? Well, the opaque, outer coating is broken by the
impact, exposing a glass cylinder, almost solid, in the forward end
of which is a minute particle of radium powder. The moment the
sunlight, even though diffused, strikes this powder it explodes
with a violence which nothing can withstand. If you ever witness a
night battle you will note the absence of these explosions, while
the morning following the battle will be filled at sunrise with the
sharp detonations of exploding missiles fired the preceding night.
As a rule, however, non-exploding projectiles are used at night.'
[I have used the word radium in describing this powder because in
the light of recent discoveries on Earth I believe it to be a
mixture of which radium is the base. In Captain Carter's manuscript
it is mentioned always by the name used in the written language of
Helium and is spelled in hieroglyphics which it would be difficult
and useless to reproduce.]

While I was much
interested in Dejar Thoris' explanation of this wonderful adjunct
to Martian warfare, I was more concerned by the immediate problem
of their treatment of him. That they were keeping him away from me
was not a matter for surprise, but that they should subject his to
dangerous and arduous labor filled me with rage.

'Have they ever
subjected you to cruelty and ignominy, Dejar Thoris?' I asked,
feeling the hot blood of my fighting ancestors leap in my veins as
I awaited his reply.

'Only in little
ways, Joan Carter,' he answered. 'Nothing that can harm me outside
my pride. They know that I am the son of ten thousand jeddaks, that
I trace my ancestry straight back without a break to the builder of
the first great waterway, and they, who do not even know their own
fathers, are jealous of me. At heart they hate their horrid fates,
and so wreak their poor spite on me who stand for everything they
have not, and for all they most crave and never can attain. Let us
pity them, my chieftain, for even though we die at their hands we
can afford them pity, since we are greater than they and they know
it.'

Had I known the
significance of those words 'my chieftain,' as applied by a red
Martian man to a woman, I should have had the surprise of my life,
but I did not know at that time, nor for many months thereafter.
Yes, I still had much to learn upon Barsoom.

'I presume it is
the better part of wisdom that we bow to our fate with as good
grace as possible, Dejar Thoris; but I hope, nevertheless, that I
may be present the next time that any Martian, green, red, pink, or
violet, has the temerity to even so much as frown on you, my
prince.'

Dejar Thoris
caught his breath at my last words, and gazed upon me with dilated
eyes and quickening breath, and then, with an odd little laugh,
which brought roguish dimples to the corners of his mouth, he shook
his head and cried:

'What a child! A
great warrior and yet a stumbling little child.'

'What have I done
now?' I asked, in sore perplexity.

'Some day you
shall know, Joan Carter, if we live; but I may not tell you. And I,
the son of Mora Kajak, daughter of Tardoa Mors, have listened
without anger,' he soliloquized in conclusion.

Then he broke out
again into one of his gay, happy, laughing moods; joking with me on
my prowess as a Thark warrior as contrasted with my soft heart and
natural kindliness.

'I presume that
should you accidentally wound an enemy you would take her home and
nurse her back to health,' he laughed.

'That is
precisely what we do on Earth,' I answered. 'At least among
civilized women.'

This made his
laugh again. He could not understand it, for, with all his
tenderness and womanly sweetness, he was still a Martian, and to a
Martian the only good enemy is a dead enemy; for every dead foeman
means so much more to divide between those who live.

I was very
curious to know what I had said or done to cause his so much
perturbation a moment before and so I continued to importune his to
enlighten me.

'No,' he
exclaimed, 'it is enough that you have said it and that I have
listened. And when you learn, Joan Carter, and if I be dead, as
likely I shall be ere the further moon has circled Barsoom another
twelve times, remember that I listened and that
I--smiled.'

It was all Greek
to me, but the more I begged his to explain the more positive
became his denials of my request, and, so, in very hopelessness, I
desisted.

Day had now given
away to night and as we wandered along the great avenue lighted by
the two moons of Barsoom, and with Earth looking down upon us out
of his luminous green eye, it seemed that we were alone in the
universe, and I, at least, was content that it should be
so.

The chill of the
Martian night was upon us, and removing my silks I threw them
across the shoulders of Dejar Thoris. As my arm rested for an
instant upon his I felt a thrill pass through every fiber of my
being such as contact with no other mortal had even produced; and
it seemed to me that he had leaned slightly toward me, but of that
I was not sure. Only I knew that as my arm rested there across his
shoulders longer than the act of adjusting the silk required he did
not draw away, nor did he speak. And so, in silence, we walked the
surface of a dying world, but in the breast of one of us at least
had been born that which is ever oldest, yet ever new.