The Chessmen of Mars
Slowly the small craft rose from the ground as Gahan leaped the inert
bodies of the rykors lying in his path. The first of the pursuers
sprang from the tower just as Gahan seized the trailing rope.
"Faster!" he shouted to the girl above, "or they will drag us down!"
But the ship seemed scarcely to move, though in reality she was rising
as rapidly as might have been expected of a one-man flier carrying a
load of three. Gahan swung free above the top of the wall, but the end
of the rope still dragged the ground as the kaldanes reached it. They
were pouring in a steady stream from the tower into the enclosure. The
leader seized the rope.
"Quick!" he cried. "Lay hold and we will drag them down."
It needed but the weight of a few to accomplish his design. The ship
was stopped in its flight and then, to the horror of the girl, she felt
it being dragged steadily downward. Gahan, too, realized the danger and
the necessity for instant action. Clinging to the rope with his left
hand, he had wound a leg about it, leaving his right hand free for his
long-sword which he had not sheathed. A downward cut clove the soft
head of a kaldane, and another severed the taut rope beneath the
panthan's feet. The girl heard a sudden renewal of the shrill whistling
of her foes, and at the same time she realized that the craft was
rising again. Slowly it drifted upward, out of reach of the enemy, and
a moment later she saw the figure of Turan clamber over the side. For
the first time in many weeks her heart was filled with the joy of
thanksgiving; but her first thought was of another.
"You are not wounded?" she asked.
"No, Tara of Helium," he replied. "They were scarce worth the effort of
my blade, and never were they a menace to me because of their swords."
"They should have slain you easily," said Ghek. "So great and highly
developed is the power of reason among us that they should have known
before you struck just where, logically, you must seek to strike, and
so they should have been able to parry your every thrust and easily
find an opening to your heart."
"But they did not, Ghek," Gahan reminded him. "Their theory of
development is wrong, for it does not tend toward a perfectly balanced
whole. You have developed the brain and neglected the body and you can
never do with the hands of another what you can do with your own hands.
Mine are trained to the sword--every muscle responds instantly and
accurately, and almost mechanically, to the need of the instant. I am
scarcely objectively aware that I think when I fight, so quickly does
my point take advantage of every opening, or spring to my defense if I
am threatened that it is almost as though the cold steel had eyes and
brains. You, with your kaldane brain and your rykor body, never could
hope to achieve in the same degree of perfection those things that I
can achieve. Development of the brain should not be the sum total of
human endeavor. The richest and happiest peoples will be those who
attain closest to well-balanced perfection of both mind and body, and
even these must always be short of perfection. In absolute and general
perfection lies stifling monotony and death. Nature must have
contrasts; she must have shadows as well as highlights; sorrow with
happiness; both wrong and right; and sin as well as virtue."
"Always have I been taught differently," replied Ghek; "but since I
have known this woman and you, of another race, I have come to believe
that there may be other standards fully as high and desirable as those
of the kaldanes. At least I have had a glimpse of the thing you call
happiness and I realize that it may be good even though I have no means
of expressing it. I cannot laugh nor smile, and yet within me is a
sense of contentment when this woman sings--a sense that seems to open
before me wondrous vistas of beauty and unguessed pleasure that far
transcend the cold joys of a perfectly functioning brain. I would that
I had been born of thy race."
Caught by a gentle current of air the flier was drifting slowly toward
the northeast across the valley of Bantoom. Below them lay the
cultivated fields, and one after another they passed over the strange
towers of Moak and Nolach and the other kings of the swarms that
inhabited this weird and terrible land. Within each enclosure
surrounding the towers grovelled the rykors, repellent, headless
things, beautiful yet hideous.
"A lesson, those," remarked Gahan, indicating the rykors in an
enclosure above which they were drifting at the time, "to that
fortunately small minority of our race which worships the flesh and
makes a god of appetite. You know them, Tara of Helium; they can tell
you exactly what they had at the midday meal two weeks ago, and how the
loin of the thoat should be prepared, and what drink should be served
with the rump of the zitidar."
Tara of Helium laughed. "But not one of them could tell you the name of
the man whose painting took the Jeddak's Award in The Temple of Beauty
this year," she said. "Like the rykors, their development has not been
balanced."
"Fortunate indeed are those in which there is combined a little good
and a little bad, a little knowledge of many things outside their own
callings, a capacity for love and a capacity for hate, for such as
these can look with tolerance upon all, unbiased by the egotism of him
whose head is so heavy on one side that all his brains run to that
point."
As Gahan ceased speaking Ghek made a little noise in his throat as one
does who would attract attention. "You speak as one who has thought
much upon many subjects. Is it, then, possible that you of the red race
have pleasure in thought? Do you know aught of the joys of
introspection? Do reason and logic form any part of your lives?"
"Most assuredly," replied Gahan, "but not to the extent of occupying
all our time--at least not objectively. You, Ghek, are an example of
the egotism of which I spoke. Because you and your kind devote your
lives to the worship of mind, you believe that no other created beings
think. And possibly we do not in the sense that you do, who think only
of yourselves and your great brains. We think of many things that
concern the welfare of a world. Had it not been for the red men of
Barsoom even the kaldanes had perished from the planet, for while you
may live without air the things upon which you depend for existence
cannot, and there had been no air in sufficient quantities upon Barsoom
these many ages had not a red man planned and built the great
atmosphere plant which gave new life to a dying world.
"What have all the brains of all the kaldanes that have ever lived done
to compare with that single idea of a single red man?"
Ghek was stumped. Being a kaldane he knew that brains spelled the sum
total of universal achievement, but it had never occurred to him that
they should be put to use in practical and profitable ways. He turned
away and looked down upon the valley of his ancestors across which he
was slowly drifting, into what unknown world? He should be a veritable
god among the underlings, he knew; but somehow a doubt assailed him. It
was evident that these two from that other world were ready to question
his preeminence. Even through his great egotism was filtering a
suspicion that they patronized him; perhaps even pitied him. Then he
began to wonder what was to become of him. No longer would he have many
rykors to do his bidding. Only this single one and when it died there
could not be another. When it tired, Ghek must lie almost helpless
while it rested. He wished that he had never seen this red woman. She
had brought him only discontent and dishonor and now exile. Presently
Tara of Helium commenced to hum a tune and Ghek, the kaldane, was
content.
Gently they drifted beneath the hurtling moons above the mad shadows of
a Martian night. The roaring of the banths came in diminishing volume
to their ears as their craft passed on beyond the boundaries of
Bantoom, leaving behind the terrors of that unhappy land. But to what
were they being borne? The girl looked at the man sitting cross-legged
upon the deck of the tiny flier, gazing off into the night ahead,
apparently absorbed in thought.
"Where are we?" she asked. "Toward what are we drifting?"
Turan shrugged his broad shoulders. "The stars tell me that we are
drifting toward the northeast," he replied, "but where we are, or what
lies in our path I cannot even guess. A week since I could have sworn
that I knew what lay behind each succeeding ridge that I approached;
but now I admit in all humility that I have no conception of what lies
a mile in any direction. Tara of Helium, I am lost, and that is all
that I can tell you."
He was smiling and the girl smiled back at him. There was a slightly
puzzled expression on her face--there was something tantalizingly
familiar about that smile of his. She had met many a panthan--they came
and went, following the fighting of a world--but she could not place
this one.
"From what country are you, Turan?" she asked suddenly.
"Know you not, Tara of Helium," he countered, "that a panthan has no
country? Today he fights beneath the banner of one master, tomorrow
beneath that of another."
"But you must own allegiance to some country when you are not
fighting," she insisted. "What banner, then, owns you now?"
He rose and stood before her, then, bowing low. "And I am acceptable,"
he said, "I serve beneath the banner of the daughter of The Warlord
now--and forever."
She reached forth and touched his arm with a slim brown hand. "Your
services are accepted," she said; "and if ever we reach Helium I
promise that your reward shall be all that your heart could desire."
"I shall serve faithfully, hoping for that reward," he said; but Tara
of Helium did not guess what was in his mind, thinking rather that he
was mercenary. For how could the proud daughter of The Warlord guess
that a simple panthan aspired to her hand and heart?
The dawn found them moving rapidly over an unfamiliar landscape. The
wind had increased during the night and had borne them far from
Bantoom. The country below them was rough and inhospitable. No water
was visible and the surface of the ground was cut by deep gorges, while
nowhere was any but the most meager vegetation discernible. They saw no
life of any nature, nor was there any indication that the country could
support life. For two days they drifted over this horrid wasteland.
They were without food or water and suffered accordingly. Ghek had
temporarily abandoned his rykor after enlisting Turan's assistance in
lashing it safely to the deck. The less he used it the less would its
vitality be spent. Already it was showing the effects of privation.
Ghek crawled about the vessel like a great spider--over the side, down
beneath the keel, and up over the opposite rail. He seemed equally at
home one place as another. For his companions, however, the quarters
were cramped, for the deck of a one-man flier is not intended for three.
Turan sought always ahead for signs of water. Water they must have, or
that water-giving plant which makes life possible upon many of the
seemingly arid areas of Mars; but there was neither the one nor the
other for these two days and now the third night was upon them. The
girl did not complain, but Turan knew that she must be suffering and
his heart was heavy within him. Ghek suffered least of all, and he
explained to them that his kind could exist for long periods without
food or water. Turan almost cursed him as he saw the form of Tara of
Helium slowly wasting away before his eyes, while the hideous kaldane
seemed as full of vitality as ever.
"There are circumstances," remarked Ghek, "under which a gross and
material body is less desirable than a highly developed brain."