Read Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs Online
Authors: Mike Resnick,Robert T. Garcia
Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (39 page)
The time had come.
I waited until it was dark once more and everyone could be expected to be asleep.
From my hidden location, I retrieved all the gear I had created and pilfered from Argos’ stores. I dressed in warm gear—my old flight suit had been destroyed when the Tonosians had recovered me—and I could not recreate the thermal layers required to live in the arctic conditions without alerting Argos to my plans.
At the doorway to the outside, I hesitated briefly. Of all the people I’d met, I would miss Danura the most. She was the most intelligent, the most demanding and the most attractive of all the people on Tonos. Her ways were strange to me, and I was not sure she or her people would ever grow to learn love, which I felt was a horrible loss for them.
Even so, I had to go. I had unwittingly exposed the people of Unis to a threat even greater than the one they’d sent me to free them from. I owed them a solution to the new problems I’d created.
Handon Gar would remain behind. I did not trust him enough to confide in him—for if he betrayed me, all would be lost.
With one final look, I turned away from my quarters and went to the main entrance. I triggered the special sequence I’d programmed into my communicator, and the special access door opened. I made my way quickly inside, closed it and then opened the outer door—for it was built much like the airlocks on a submarine.
The wind howled outside and I would have been blind in the darkness except for the marvelous Tonosian goggles that turned darkest night into a dim, greenish day for me.
I pulled out my compass, took a quick bearing, and set off.
I had only gone a few yards when a dark shape appeared in front of me.
My heart shuddered. All was lost.
I rocked back on my heels as the figure approached. It was dressed in cold-weather gear, and another suit of clothes hung over one shoulder.
“Did you think you could get away that easily?”
It was Danura.
“I must go,” I told her firmly, trying to decide how to leave her without causing her harm. For all that they now had a vast store of medical knowledge, Danura was one of a few women who could still bear children and repopulate the domes of Tonos.
“I know,” she said, moving close up beside me. She was wearing a long, clear mask that covered her face completely. She reached up to me. “Ah, you made night goggles. They are not as good as a thermal suit.”
“Thermal suits can be tracked,” I told her. “Argos will know you’re here.”
“And not you?” he asked, immediately unsealing her suit and starting to remove it.
“Don’t do that!” I cried. “You’ll freeze to death.”
“If Argos tracks us, it won’t matter.”
“Us?” I said uncertainly.
She continued to strip even as she shouted over the wind, “I’m coming with you.”
“What?”
“Did I not cry when I read about Golrina and her choice?” she said, half out of her suit. She gestured around her. “This is my choice, to be with you.”
I couldn’t speak. Finally, I said, “Put your suit back on or you’ll freeze to death.”
“But Argos!”
“We’ll deal with that,” I assured her. “Quickly—we need to move before he can track us.”
She closed her suit up again and sealed it. Through the clear mask, I could see that her lips had taken on a bluish tinge even in that short a time, but her blue eyes were resolute.
“Lead on,” she ordered.
I led. I looked back several times to be sure she was following. The last time I couldn’t find her until I turned completely around in a circle and found her in front of me.
“Your goggles are not as good as my mask,” she said. “Point the way and I’ll lead.”
I pointed and she led.
The craft resolved itself in the distance, growing from shadow to solidity.
“You came in that?” she said as she looked up at it. “And it will take us away?”
“When I make some changes,” I told her.
“What about Argos?”
“I’m thinking,” I told her. I gestured to the hatchway and we climbed inside. My fingers were numb from the cold, and I was desperate to get into my spare flight suit, but I knew that I needed to work fast.
I pulled off my pack and pulled out the circuits I’d made. I pointed to the panel. “We need to wire this in over there,” I said to her.
“I can do that,” she told me.
I hesitated. If she was wrong, we’d die either by Argos or when we turned on the power amplifiers.
“Trust me, Tangor,” she said. I handed her the circuitry.
“I’ve got to check the engines.”
“This isn’t the engine?” she said, pointing at the circuit I’d given her.
“That works when we’re off the planet. The engines will get us into the air.”
“We’re going to fly back to your homeworld?”
“Something like that,” I told her, hurrying reluctantly back out into the biting chill of the arctic night. Quickly I cut the mooring line, checked the engines, and eyed the inflatable pontoons. They were, thankfully, still all in good order. I had not dared come here any time before, so if they’d been damaged we were dead.
“We.” I hadn’t expected that. I shook myself out of my reverie and moved back into our craft.
Danura had finished wiring in the circuitry. I flicked on the power switches and saw that it was working.
“I need you to get out of your suit. Remove anything that’s powered and throw them down to me,” I told her.
“I’ll freeze!”
“You’ll die otherwise.”
She frowned at me but began peeling out of her suit. Moments later, shivering, she threw them down to me.
“In the back of the craft you should find stores. See if you can fit into Gar’s flight suit. He was nearer your size than I.”
She waved, her teeth chattering, and moved back.
I took all the gear and my communicator and threw them into the sea. A moment later, I was back in the cockpit firing up the engines.
Danura joined me as I swerved the craft around and pointed it into the bay.
“I thought you said we’re going to fly!” she cried through still-chattering teeth. She had found only a blanket and had draped it around herself.
“Strap in,” I said, pointing to the straps in the copilot’s chair. “It’s going to get bumpy.”
I gunned the power and we jumped into the water. I throttled back to be sure we didn’t get swamped by a wave and then slowly moved us out from the shore.
I had never tried to fly at night like this. For that matter, I wasn’t sure I’d succeed. And now, with Danura, I was doubly afraid.
“How can you see?” she asked, peering at the darkness in front of us. “Do you still have your goggles?”
“I have this,” I told her, pointing to a display that I’d set in front of me. It was a Tonosian version of an avionics display and like all the electronic displays, it was small, touch-activated, and incredibly powerful. I had readings of attitude, speed, direction—everything required to orient myself.
I gunned the power, and we started moving more swiftly, bobbing up and down as we skimmed over waves. Soon we had enough power to take off with both engines and I gently pulled the nose up, angling us toward the clouds above.
A moment later we lurched and were airborne.
An instant later, there was a loud bang, and a brilliant light flared in the night sky, blinding me. Instinctively, I looked back at the display and waited until my eyes recovered their night vision.
“Tangor, what was that?”
“I’d say that Argos found your thermal suit,” I told her, pushing more power into the throttles and lurching us up at the steepest angle I could maintain.
“Oh!” Danura cried as the g-forces slammed her back into her chair.
We climbed steadily until we were at twenty thousand feet. I double-checked our pressure seals and our oxygen tanks, glad that I’d set them to recharge when we’d first landed so many months ago. We had enough for two months, if need be.
We had slightly more rations than that.
Suddenly we broke through clouds and the stars came out, twinkling.
“What are those?” Danura cried, pointing at them. “Are those planets?”
“No, those are stars,” I told her. I checked our heading and then—with some trepidation—engaged the new circuits for the power amplifier. In an instant we were thrust back against our seats as the power amplifiers added to the thrust of the engines. I idled the engines, which were becoming ineffective in the high, thin air, and we continued our climb until we exited the atmosphere.
“What is it like on your home, Tangor?”
“We’re not going there,” I told her.
“Because Argos would follow us,” Danura said. I gave her a surprised look, and she giggled. “Did you not think I could figure it out?”
“So tell me,” I demanded, “what is my plan?”
“You are going for help,” she said. “You are going to the next planet over—what is its name?”
“Yonda,” I said, surprised at how much she had guessed.
“And I am coming with you,” she told me.
She started shivering and I said to her, “Go back to the sleep cabin and get under the sheets.”
“I’m too cold,” she said. “How will I keep warm?”
I looked at my display screen, tapped in a routine I’d set up when I’d first made it, and turned on the autopilot.
“I’ll join you,” I said, unstrapping my seatbelt.
“And how will that help, Tangor?” Danura asked, her eyes dancing.
“There are two heaters on this craft.”
“Heaters?”
“You and me,” I said, gesturing for her to precede me.
“And when we are warm, what then?” Danura asked, turning back to bat her eyelashes at me alluringly. “It is a long time to Yonda, is it not?”
“We’ll think of something,” I told her. She giggled again and I realized how much I loved the sound.
The last words remained at the bottom of the page, the typewriter stopped.
It remained silent all night long even as I waited. Finally, I went to sleep.
It was still silent in the morning.
It’s been that way now for over a month.
What of Tangor’s warning? Was it really him? How did he work through the typewriter?
And, most importantly, why didn’t he give us a clear warning?
I must tell you. I must tell you before it is too late. Your world is in danger. You must prepare. You must be ready. God forgive me, it is all my fault.
Tell us what? That Argos knows about us? Or the Kapars? Is Earth in danger?
Is it too late?
Each night I hope in vain that the typewriter will start up once more. I have a fresh sheet in the rubber rolling platen, and I have made sure that the keys are oiled, the ribbon is fresh.
I will wait, like Edgar Rice Burroughs, until Tangor returns.
Inspired by Conan Doyle’s
The Lost World
(1912) and the long history of Hollow Earth mythology, Burroughs created Pellucidar, a world inside ours with an eternal sun, horizonless vistas, and an eerie stationary moon. ERB pitted David Innes and his brilliant and eccentric scientist friend, Abner Perry, against mammoths, sabre-tooths and evil flying-reptile overlords in
At the Earth’s Core
(1914) and
Pellucidar
(1915). David Innes, of course, conquered all and became Emperor of Pellucidar. ERB followed those books with 5 others.
NY Times
bestselling author F. Paul Wilson takes on the mysteries of this geologically impossible world, and in the course of events sends David and Abner on a ride to the moon known as the Dead World.
—Bob
The Dead World
As related by David Innes to F. Paul Wilson
via Gridley Wave
As Emperor of Pellucidar, I’ve always felt it good policy to make occasional visits to the heads of state of the various Federated Kingdoms that make up the Empire. I find myself visiting Thuria more than the others. I hadn’t realized this until my wife, the beautiful Dian, mentioned it.
I was surprised. Why would I be drawn to a kingdom set in the Land of Awful Shadow?
On reflection, I realized I was drawn there
because
of the shadow.
For those new to Pellucidar, let me offer a quick tutorial.
Earth is hollow. Five hundred miles below the crust exists a separate world, seven thousand miles in diameter, with a miniature sun suspended in the center. Because its sun shines ceaselessly, Pellucidar has no day-night cycle, and the concept of time is, therefore, elusive and ephemeral.
It’s inhabited by refugees from ancient times, from the Jurassic through the Pleistocene epochs, including primitive
Homo sapiens
.
Pellucidar also has a moon—a small, strange sphere that hangs stationary about a mile above the surface. It has a number of names. I’ve heard it called the Pendant Moon, but most often it’s referred to as the Dead World. Since its orbit is, for want of a better term, geosynchronous or geostationary, the land below exists in the perpetual twilight of its shadow.
Since I’m from the surface world and grew up with a day-night cycle, perhaps my body craves periodic sojourns in the twilit Land of Awful Shadow. Perhaps it sees that Shadow as anything but Awful.
On this particular trip, after crossing the Sojar Az on my clipper ship, the
John Tyler
, I took lunch with Goork, the King of Thuria, in his palace. Thurians are hut dwellers, so their idea of a palace is a single-story structure made of stone block. These folk are unique among the humans of Pellucidar. Since they live in shadow, their skin is pale; they carry heavy traces of Neanderthal ancestors, with a squat physique that is more muscular and more hirsute than the average human here. Goork and I did not get off to a good start when first we met, but we’ve become fast friends since.
As we ate I found myself, as usual, gazing up at the Dead World slowly rotating only a mile above. I’ve never understood why they call it the Dead World. From here I could see mountains and oceans and lakes and rivers and forests. Nothing dead about it. I saw no sign of habitation, though. But then, finer details were difficult to discern since the side facing the land was always in shadow. I could not imagine normal humans living on that small world, not unless they were small themselves, like the Minunians, the fabled Ant Men of Africa.
We had barely begun our meal when a young Thurian came charging up, shouting, “Father! Father!”
I recognized the lad as Koort, younger brother to Goork’s other son, Kolk. He looked frightened and angry.
Goork shot to his feet. “What is the meaning of this? What is so important that you interrupt my meal with the Emperor.”
“My lidi!” he cried, panting. “Someone killed it!”
“What? Who?”
“A giant stone fell from the sky and killed it!”
Goork turned to me. “Are we being attacked? Could a Mahar have dropped it?”
I doubted that. I had long ago driven those winged reptiles out of their nearby cities and into the north regions.
“Let’s go look at this stone.”
We came upon the dead lidi about two miles deep in the Thurian forest. I use the term loosely. Forests in the Land of Awful Shadow are unlike those anywhere else in Pellucidar. The endless sunshine makes for thick, lush vegetation out there. In here, in the eternal twilight, the greenery tends to be pale and thin. Not pretty, but it makes for easier travel on foot.
The lidi are the Pellucidar equivalent of a diplodocus from the surface’s Jurassic period. There’s a polar entrance to the Inner World, and the theory is that fauna from various epochs wandered through over millions of years and never left. Thurians use the huge saurian quadrupeds as mounts and place a high value on one that’s trainable.
“There!” Koort cried, pointing. “I was letting it graze when that stone crashed through the trees and crushed its head. Someone owes me a lidi!”
As I stepped closer to examine the “stone,” I realized it was nothing of the sort. It measured perhaps four feet across and was perfectly spherical with a smooth, gray, almost polished surface. It looked like steel or some sort of alloy.
The seat of the Empire, back in Sari, had the most advanced technology in Pellucidar. We manufactured guns and knives and even cannon, but this was something beyond us.
I turned to Koort. “You say this fell through the trees?”
“Yes. I heard a terrible crashing from above, and then my poor Kinlap was dead.”
“Kinlap?”
He looked embarrassed. “I named her. She was a hard worker. Someone owes me a new lidi!”
I looked up and saw a number of broken branches, and beyond them the Dead World. Here, directly beneath the moonlet, it not only hid the sun but filled the sky. Yet even in the twilight I could see that the broken branches did not follow an arc as they might had this been flung by a catapult or shot from some giant cannon. The broken limbs trailed straight up toward . . .
. . . the Dead World.
No . . . it couldn’t be.
Just then came a crashing of underbrush from our left. I pulled my revolver—one never goes unarmed on Pellucidar—but relaxed when I saw two Thurian boys running toward us.
“There it is!” said the one in the lead.
They stopped short when they realized it had killed a lidi. Then they noticed the adults. They shrank back as Koort approached them with a menacing look.
“Did either of you two have anything to do with this?”
They both began babbling at once. Eventually I was able to piece together the story.
The two boys had been playing in the observation tower I had built on the edge of Thuria. My purpose had been to introduce time to Pellucidar based on the rotation of the Dead World. One full rotation equaled a “day.” I divided that into twenty-four equal “hours” and began marking the time by an hourly wireless signal sent to my headquarters in Sari. It turned out that Pellucidarians hated counting time. It simply was not in their nature and made them irritable. So I abandoned the plan. The tower, however, remained.
The boys had been on the upper level when one of them noticed an object sailing from the Dead World and heading toward Thuria. They’d begun searching the forest in the direction where they’d seen it land.
We all looked up.
“From the Dead World?” Koort said. “Someone up there owes me a lidi.”
“There’s no one up there,” his father said. “That’s why they call it the Dead World.”
I returned my attention to the “stone.”
“Someone’s up there,” I said. “Someone skilled in working with metals. But why would they launch this toward the surface?”
“To kill my lidi,” Koort said.
I didn’t know Koort well, but apparently once he found a train of thought, he did not veer from its track.
“I doubt they were aiming for your—”
Just then the sphere began to hiss, releasing a ten-foot jet of steam from its upper pole. I felt something land on my head, then my shoulder, and then it was raining what looked like tiny grains of red rice.
“They’re coming from the sphere!” I cried, backing away.
“What are they?” Goork said.
We had all retreated out of range. I pulled one bit from my hair and gave it a closer look. Yes—oblong and about the size of a kernel of rice, but a glossy red.
“Beads?” I said.
The sphere ran out of steam then, and the hail of tiny beads stopped. Had the little people of the Dead World sent us a gift?
Yes, I know. A number of unwarranted assumptions. The lidi death was obviously an unfortunate accident—how could this projectile travel a full mile and strike a bull’s eye on some unfortunate saurian’s head?
“Gifts?” Goork said, obviously thinking along the same lines. “What odd gifts.”
Koort scowled. “I’ll take the gift of a new lidi.”
Definitely a one-track mind.
Goork had brought a few guards along and he assigned them the task of carrying the empty sphere back to his village on the coast.
Later, to the tune of Koort’s complaints about his dead lidi and who was to replace it, I loaded the sphere aboard the
John Tyler
and set sail for my palace in Sari.
As we were leaving the mooring, my grizzled captain, Ah-gilak, came up to me. Ah-gilak means “Old Man” in Pellucidarian. He was a toothless, white-bearded ancient mariner out of Cape Cod who’d been stranded here seemingly forever—so long he’d forgotten his real name.
He pointed to my sleeve. “You’ve got something growing on you,” he said, speaking the local tongue with a New England accent.
I looked, and sure enough, a tiny red plant had taken root in the fabric of my shirt. Upon closer inspection, I recognized one of the beads that had sprayed us. It appeared to have germinated, meaning it was no bead, but a seed of some sort.
A twinge of unease tightened the muscles at the back of my neck. Why would the people of the Dead World send a load of seeds to the surface?
Just then the clipper cleared the shadowed area—which extends in an arc over the Sojar Az—and returned to Pellucidar’s perpetual noon.
When I looked again at the seedling, I noticed it had shriveled and died. No worry then. Whatever these seeds were, they didn’t seem fit for life on the surface.
