by: Rick Johnson 
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
RikJohnson@juno.com
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We were sitting in the garden watching insects(?) flitter around the flowers(?). The colors were strange but then everything was strange since the Demons changed me. People on Earth used to complain about those little bald runty aliens abducting then, shoving a camera up their backsides and then dumping them back home a few hours later. HAH! Try being abducted by reptilian Demons from a planet ten thousand light years away. Then let them experiment on you for three years, grafting a tail onto your rear, changing your eyes and ears so nothing looked or sounded or felt the same. And then be returned more than a century after they took you. THEN they can complain.
I looked at my hand and saw three fingers and two thumbs, one on either side of my hand. I knew it was flesh colored but it didn’t completely look like that now. Oh, it was basically flesh-tone but now I saw a dozen colors I hadn’t noticed before, I saw blood pumping through the veins and the veins pulsed a heat glow with every heart-beat. When I moved my fingers, I … I needed another word, something to describe how my antennae picked up the e-m fields generated by my nerves. The Demons had a word for it but speaking Demon made my throat and tongue hurt. The Race had more than thirty-six different ‘S-sounds.’
And here I am now, on Mars. Well, technically I was on Barsoom. I didn’t even know if Barsoom and Mars were the same place even though I had looked through their telescopes and seen Earth. Earth was the third planet sunward and Barsoom the fourth and it was red so I should be on Mars. Through their telescopes I had seen the nuclear wasteland that was my home. Seen the trolls that used to be human prowl the countryside seeking prey, seen the terminator robots hunting the survivors who were dying from the plagues. Seen the ruins of Los Angeles under a hundred feet of water forty miles from shore. Seen central Africa under water. And seen the remenants of Humanity trying to pick up the pieces of their existance. The Barsoomian telescopes were that powerful.
And I didn’t even now what year it was. I had been abducted around 1970. The survivors on earth were so busy trying to just survive that they forgot to count the years but I figured that it was around 2150. I had been gone three years, I think, and a century and a half had passed while I was gone. Maybe Einstein was right after all.
Something passed nearby so I picked it up with my feet. The Demons had turned my big toe into a tarsial thumb and said it would help me hold onto things in zero-gravity. I tried to foot(?) it to my hands but I wasn’t that flexible. Good thing I didn’t mention that or they’d probably have turned my legs into octopus arms. So I reached out and curled my tail around the thing and held it close to see.
“I’ll never get used to how you do that,” Florina said. She had been given to me as a slave some six months ago when I first arrived here and I had tried to free her but she refused. “A slave is free to do things a free woman cannot” she had told me. And so we became lovers. Had she been free, we couldn’t touch so she chose this as the solution for her feelings. I didn’t have enough experience with women to understand. Come to think of it, my experience with women was restricted to exactly three, and two were aliens. There should be a word for that too. Bestiality wasn’t it for Florina and Chrysiese weren’t animals, they simply weren’t human. Exterality! That’s it! Extra-Terrestrial sexuality! Physical congress with a non-human sentient being. I don’t know what the Red Men thought of her being with me. Probably nothing for she was a slave and my property so I could do to her whatever I wished. Had she been free, they might have stoned her to death for exterality because I wasn’t a Red man and I certainly wasn’t human any more. Or her family would kill me for disgracing a free Red Woman.
“What do you call this?” I asked.
“It’s a *****,” she said. I had her repeat it a dozen times until I could pronounce it. Six months later and I was still learning the language.
“It’s pretty how those insects(?) are pollinating the flowers(?),” I said.
“Pollinating?” she asked. “What is pollinating?”
I explained to her how earth insects would be attracted to a flower which would feed it in return for moving sperm/pollen from one plant to another so they could breed. She burst out laughing. “Flowers(*) using insects(*) to reproduce. What a strange world. No, look closely at that one.”
I did and when the insect(?) entered to collect or leave what I thought was pollen, the flower(?) closed. From the e-m fields generated, I now saw the flower(?) had a nervous system. Heat was building up and I asked, “Is it eating the bug?”
“Of course it is. The flower(*) grows something for the insect(*) to eat. And every few insects are themselves eaten. Plants(*) don’t need help to reproduce, they do that on their own. But they need food so they create these eating places to lure prey.”
“Why don’t they eat every insect(?)?” I asked.
“Because is they did, the insects(*) would stop visiting them.”
Well, I guess it made sense. People here laid eggs, flowers ate bugs. Animals were intelligent. What else? The thing I was holding started to scratch my tail so I set it on the moss and it crawled away on a hundred legs.
It was dark now and the atmosphere was so thin that when the sun set, it was like turning off a light switch. And it was also like the air conditioning went on high at sunset. I wrapped my cloak around me and Florina’s around her. She never got used to me being kind to her but I had been a galley slave on Earth and learned the lesson of the lash and had no wish to use such an instrument on her.
“My Lord, men approach.” She said. Her telepathy was superior to mine, despite the Demon’s work and she always knew when someone was nearby.
It was dark and so my eye slits had opened so I could see in the dark but I still needed light and in this dark, everything was black-and-white, only as if I were seeing it through sunglasses. I could see better at night than before but even Demon-enhanced night vision was monochromatic and required some light. Then I saw the torch. Cold light from a radium cell, but those carrying it were glowing with body heat and they stood out as if they were carrying firebrands. There were three of them and with the Barsoomian concept of clothing, or lack of clothing, they glowed all over except where their cloaks blanketed them.
“Lord Innis,” one called. “Gan Kanar wishes to speak to you. Come with us please.” I shrugged and caressed Florina’s cheek with my tail as I turned to leave. She kissed the tip and I suppose she watched me leave before returning to our quarters. When the king calls, you obey and Gan Kanar, Jed of Ardane of the Empire of Toonol had been very gracious to me. He had decreed that my Irish title be accepted on Barsoom and so I was again minor nobility. He had allowed me a certain freedom and paid me well for my services. All things considering, I was well-off serving the man. And all I had to do was pretty much anything he told me to.
When we reached the throne room I stopped, bowed and said, “Greetings Gan Kanar, Jed of Ardane and the northern Toonolian marshes. I come at your bidding.”
He told me to rise and started up for it wasn’t his way to waste time. “Jason Obrien (he never used the title he insisted others call me), I have need of your service one again. Look here.”
I approached and saw a large map of the marshes. It looked like every other map I saw of the Marshes. Mostly green and blue as if someone had tossed two pigments that wouldn’t mix and tried to stir them together. There was almost no brown. In the East was a city labeled Toonol, in the west another city marked Phundahl and a number of smaller cities scattered here and there across the Marsh with Ardane prominantly marked in the north near Toonol. This map, however, had a small device that I recognized as from the harness of a Phundahl soldier sitting on the map.
“Some weeks ago we discovered a number of flyers from Phundahl flying towards and away from this point. The border between the empires of Toonol and Phundahl are unmarked and determined more by military presence than negotiation. I believe that Phundahl is trying to build a base here to establish claim to our part of the marshes. I want you to go there and spy upon them and learn what you can. Then report back to me immediately.”
I looked at the map and said, “My Lord, Wouldn’t it be easier to simply send a flyer over the see?”
He looked a the map and said, “If we do, then they will know that we know that they are there. I wish you to be subtle. Sneak in, spy and sneak out without them learning of your presence. With the information you bring, we will decide what to do and if we choose to attack, then they will not be forewarned. You leave tomorrow before dawn.” And with that I was dismissed.
It was clear why he wanted me. Most nations around the Marshes had heard of Gan Kanar’s alien Panthan so if I were caught, they’d instantly now that he was aware of them. But I had talents that were useful here. Those modifications that the Demons created in me to work their starships worked equally well in a jungle or forest or swamp. I could climb from tree to tree and avoid being sucked into the ooze. I could climb any wall they built and hide in the rafters of their buildings for like Earthlings, Red Martians never looked up.
Florina wasn’t happy, “He uses you as if you were his slave. He sends you on dangerous missions alone. We should leave here.”
“And if I went elsewhere, what would be my reception? Death? Imprisonment in the pits? Slavery? Gan Kanar was right, I serve him because he has never harmed me and any other place would. If we went to your home of Amhor, what would happen? If you arrived a slave, I’d be killed by your family. If you arrived a free woman, we would never be together for they wouldn’t allow you to associate with an alien panthan. Have you any other ideas?” I demanded.
She knelt, “No my Lord. I think every day to no avail.”
I sat and pulled her to my lap. “I’m not happy either but I’ve learned to accept things until I can find a way to change them. Yes, if I told Gan Kanar I was leaving his service, he’d reward me and let me go. But where would I go? Where would we go?”
I sighed at what I would say next. “I’ve been her half a year now and have risen from prisoner to minor noble. From penniless to secure. From alone to having a King to serve and you by my side. I’ve dome very well for myself so far. I may never go further but at least I am here. Yet, John Carter had become Prince of Helium by this time. Vad Varo became Prince of whatever city he married a princess of by this time. I almost feel as if I had let my planet down by NOT doing those things.”
“My Lord, I am sorry I am not the princess you deserve. Even when free, I was a commoner of no position or wealth. You should send me away and seek a woman of position.” She said into my chest.
“And why would I do that? Princess’ are always kissing frogs looking for a prince to marry and complaining about peas under their beds or getting locked into towers that are guarded by dragons or kidnapped by villains. No, I know when I am well off. You may not have the title and position of a Princess but at least I know that you care for me and you take care of me and what could be better?” I laughed. “I’m much happier with you.”
“Then, My Lord, let me make you happy before you leave.” She smiled that way that proved that she was a woman. But I said, “First I need supplies. I doubt that I can live off the marsh as John Carter does off the desert. So please collect for me the foods and medicines I will need. I go to the armory and collect ammunition.” And so kissing her again, we left for our own deeds.
It was only the last month that Gan Kanar had allowed me to carry firearms. He had called me in after a sucessful mission and said, “Jason Obrien, of all my retainers yours is the only mind I cannot read. From what I hear this is peculiar to Jasoomians so I must trust my feelings and not your thoughts. If you harbor ill will against me, I don’t know it. If you have ambitions, I don’t know it. So when faced with the unknowable, do what you feel is the best path. Here is a revolver. Take ammunition from the armory and learn to use it.”
The weapon was a marvel. Not as effective as a Demon beamer but far more so than any Earthly weapon. It was a very small caliber, maybe half that of a .22. But the cylinder carried a hundred rounds, each carrying a small nuclear charge that could blow a hole the size of a fist in a man’s chest. The rifles were larger and more powerful but the revolver was a comforting weight on my right hip.
We packed my gear and double checked to ensure I had everything then she said goodbye in the manner that fighting men have always been sent off. My escort had to pound very hard to wake me up in the morning.
I huddled in the flyer, wrapped in my furs to stay warm and the flyer left the city, flying low to allow me to breathe and to avoid detection by the enemy. And soon enough, it landed, and as I leapt over the side, the pilot called, “Signal and I will return,” then he was gone and I had to find my way across miles of marshland to seek my goal.
Once off the flier, I removed my long-sword and clipped it across my back. The less I had banging against my legs and tail, the easier my travels would be. Having my sword there made it impossible to draw so I would have to avoid trouble if I oculd.
Crossing the marshes was miserable. Between the mud and water and reeds, I spend half my time knee to waist deep in muck. It was worse than an Irish bog during the rains. I tried to take to the trees(?) and that usually worked as many of the branches were close enough together for me to step or jump from one to the other. However, I was standing on one branch looking for my next step when I felt something wrap around my leg. Looking down, I expected a serpant but was, instead a vine. I stepped but it tightened so I drew my short sword and cut it in twain. Big mistake for the tree(?) reacted and suddenly I was the target of a dozen vines. Hacking about me I jumped away, not careing where I landed and was fortunate to reach solid ground. The tree(?) was whipping it’s vines around seeking me or any prey and I found myself wondering if I were as to this as an insect(?) tothe flowers(?) in Ardane.
OK, reality check. Barsoom was a dying planet and so evolution was going all out to survive a loosing battle. Everything on this world was intelligent to an extent. Everything on this planet possessed some telepathic ability. And everything on this planet survived by killing and eating something else and thinking that I was on the top of the food chain would get me killed real fast. MY main advantages were that I was stronger and faster than any Red Man, I tasted bad tothe local insect(?) life and the Barsoomians couldn’t read my thoughts so I was an empty space in their mental perception.
I kept on, remembering my directions and since Barsoom lacked a strong magnetic field, I had to note direction by the position of the sun and moons, their directions and the time of day. Travel on Earth was a lot easier.
I had no real schedule so I stopped and ate when I was hungry and usually while sitting in a tree(?) because although the local wildlife may not like biting me, they seemed to enjoy what I was eating. I got to the point where I’d sit in a tree(?) holding on with feet and tail, use one hand to eat and the other to sweep bugs and vermin away. This is where my engineered body was a benefit. When I was crossing Africa, back when I was still human, George and I sat in a tree for a day and a half waiting for a pride of lions to leave and had to use both hands to hold on which left us unable to use any weapons or swat flies. Now I could grasp a branch with my feet, wrap my tail around another for stability and have both hands free.
I was finishing my latest meal when I saw the flier approach. It was a little to the north so had I not seen it, I might have missed the Phundahl base completely. So I noted it’s position as it dropped and figured it was about three miles… no about eight or nine Haads away. I had to get used to the local measurements. At least they used a base-10 so I could count on my fingers when I converted. Demons used base-12, adding two more numbers which I called tic and tac between nine and ten.
I cleaned up, starships are fanatical about cleanliness and taught me well, then headed for my target.
About a couple of Haads away, I saw the first sentry. I had been going slow and carefully through the trees when I noticed him walking his rounds. He wasn’t making any effort at concealment so I settled in and started to look for hidden snipers. Maybe the sentry was a diversion?
No heat sources or e-m fields were noticable which didn’t mean a lot as a thick blanket of mud and grass could hide those. Usually though when a sentry knows he is bait, he keeps glancing to his hidden protector to make certain that he is still safe. This one did nothing of the sort and kept scanning the marshes. I noted a clear overhead path and bypassed him easily. I could say a lot about Gan Kanar but the man did know his business and I was learning a lot from him. Sometimes I think he would drop some saying like ‘why hire advisors that you won’t listen to’ becaue he was thinking out loud and it was these gems of wisdom I memorized.
I was easily able to get into the Phundahl camp via the trees which they hadn’t bothered to cut down. Perhaps they liked the vegetation, perhaps it was good cover but they never thought that someone like me existed so they would suffer for their ignorance.
I traveld around the camp slowly, waiting in the foliage until the coast was clear enough for me to leap across the distance or drop to the ground and run to my next hiding place. Each time I took a great amount of time to ensure my new position would be safe before I moved so moving even a Haad sometimes took an hour. At every opportunity I took pictues with the camera I carried. Unlike Earthly cameras, this one didn’t used film but recorded the images in three dimensions somehow. I could point it at a person and not only have a 3-d image but it also could determine his range and size and the time and date I took the picture. Whenever I saw the moons in the sky near each other, I’d take their pictures too so the tactitians in Ardane could use their positions and view at that time to more esaily locate the camp.
In short I was happily spying on the enemy as was my task when the sun set.
I settled down, wrapped in my furs that had been dyed to match the vegetation and waited for the soldiers to settle down and sleep before I made my next move.
The Phundahl soldiers eventually settled down and the lights dimmed. Somehow the Barsoomian lights recycled their energy. John carter said that the light they emitted returned to the lamps which was impossible for if that could happen how did we see without scattered light? No, they had some way of ensuring that the light was short range only so if you were a Haad away, the light was gone. This was impossible as energy continues forever, dimming only because it spreads over a large area so there was something here to cause the light to diffuse quickly. They did this not to save energy but to prevent approaching aircraft from seeing the city from miles away.
Regardless how they did it, and what I saw the demons do was always impossible by earthly science, it worked and if I was a Haad away from a lamp, I was in darkness even though anyone under that lamp was visible. Then another Haad and the light from that lamp faded away. Tactically, it was good and bad, good because you could illuminate your entire camp but be invisible a half mile away. Bad because once I was inside, I could move about totally invisible.
The stars were brilliant due to lack of atmosphere to absorb their light and I saw thousands of them More than you could see on earth, so many the constellations were drowned in the confusion. But unless one of the moons was passing overhead, it was too dark for even my enhanced night vision to see well.
I kept close enough to the lamps to enable me to see but far enough away to prevent me being seen and was able to get very close to the buildings that were being built. Construction was simple and consisted of little more than an internal frame and canvas covering with a wooden floor. The place looked more like a temporary camp than a real military base. I snuck into one unguarded building and found a number of small fliers moored tothe ground. These ranged from small one-man scout flyers that resembled a surfboard with a windshield at the front and a small motor and propellor at the rear to larger ones that seemed to be mostly cargo area. On the scouts, the pilot would lay on the flat deck, clip his harness to the deck rings and hang on as the wind whipped overhead. I climbed aboard one, grabbed a couple rings with my feet and tail and pretended I was surfing the California beaches with cute beach babes watching.
I took pictures, noted the designs for future reference then left as I had come, silently and carefully.
Another building was the office and had one officer working late. But my telepathic invisibility allowed me to sneak past him undetected. I rifled through the papers I found but although Phundahl spoke the same language as did Toonol and all of Barsoom, their written languages were different and so, my long months of larning to be literate were useless here. So I took photos of whatever I found and wondered how many more I could take before my camera was filled.
Another was the barracks and I glanced inside through a window to find half the men asleep, the other half playing at Jetan which is a 100 square chess game that required a different way of thought as Chess deals with lines of attack but Jetan is concerned with areas of defence. Others were playing Yano which is like like golf or croquette or horseshoes or.. well ,they toss a small ball into a hole. You have to play it to understand it but the gambling was fierce. None of these looked like a crack regiment of soldiers but appeared to be just normal grunts relaxing on their off-duty time.
It was the last and second largest building that told me what was happening. The place was deserted by men but was filled with cages and terreriams. One side had dozens of all sizes stacked, all empty, the other side was filled with dozens, each holding some animal of the marsh. Some were filled with water and contained a fish or other aquatic creature, some with a bug or other insect(?) but most were simple wire cages holding an animal. Here a silian, there a bird(?), another held a swamp calot with overly broad feet. One even had a white ape though why one of those would be in the marsh is beyond wonder as these monsters haunt the seabeds and dead cities of the long-dried sea bottoms. And there were cases with almost every plant or plant-animal in the marsh.
This wasn’t an invasion, but a zoo! These people were simply collecting biological specimins for some reason.
I now had the information Gan Kanar needed so I took more pictures and snuck out, climbed a tree and beganto make my way past the sentries and to freedom.
Once past these, I settled down and waited for daylight for only a fool crosses the Marshes in the dark. If these were zoo hunters, they’d need to start going out in the dark beause more than half the things in the Marsh slept during the day and only came out at night.
So, wrapping my furs around me and grasping limbs with tail and feet, I fell asleep.
The morning sun awoke me so I rolled my furs up and after packing them away, had breakfast and relieved myself from a high branch. I entertained myself watering an arbok that was seeking prey thirty feet below and following him as he ran to and fro. Then with bladder empty and a really pissed on and pissed off arbok seeking something to bite, I took off across the trees towards my pick-up point.
I was crossing an open area when a flier passed overhead. I froze then ducked into the reeds but they turned. Drat! They saw me. So I ran. In the lighter gravity I could outrun any of them but with this soft ground and their air mobility they soon had headed me off and dropped soldiers around me. I had no choice but to shift my long-sword to my hip and that was easily done as I simply wrapped my tail around the sheath and held it from falling as I unbuckled both top and bottom at once. Then I swung it around and buckled it to my hip and drew.
“Surrender, we are five to your one.” Their Padwar said.
“How do you know I am not bait and you should surrender,” I countered. A few of his men looked around but the Padwar didn’t.
“Again, surrender. What are you? White skin like a Thern but a tail and… hey, you’re Gan Kanar’s pet moorouk aren’t you?” A moorouk was a six legged tree-dwelling animal with a prehensile tail. It was the closest he could come to calling me a monkey.
“I am a noble in his service, if you mean to be more polite,” I suggested. I wasn’t worried about being stabbed in the back for what an Earthling saw as a good idea, the Red Man saw as dishonor. They’d all attack, but to my face and probably only one or two at a time. Still, I could feel my tail twitching in the grass from nervousness.
One said, “he’d look good in the zoo. We should put him in a cage.” Another offered, “Tur never made anyone like that so it must be an animal.” Tur was their god for the Phundahl’s were as religious as the Toonols were athiests. Me, I grew up in a family where half my relatives were priests and nuns and that tends to pound religion out of your head real fast.
“Settle down,” their leader commanded. “What are you doing so far from Ardane? Are you spying on us?”
“Good Grief,” I swore. “Can’t a guy even go for a walk to admire nature without someone accusing him of criminal activity? Do you think I want to spend my life in one small city in a swamp? There is an entire world out there that I can’t see because I am stuck in Ardane. What opportunities are out there that I havn’t seen yet. I don’t suppose that you are hiring Panthans?”
I was hoping to talk my way out of this mess.
One of them, obviously more religious than the rest insisted, “We don’t hire beasts, we put them in cages.”
I looked at him then asked the Padwar, “How do you manage to do anything with idiots like this?”
His friends laughed at this so he turned redder than before and jumped me. I barely avoided his attack but instead of helping their friend or pulling him off, they stepped back and watched. The man was good but frankly, I had been playing with a sword for less than six months. He may have been using one in war for six centuries. I was outmatched and only my enhanced Earthly strength and speed kept me alive. Within a minute I was bleeding from a number of wounds which indicated he was playing with me so I got desperate and rushed him. He couldn’t back off fast enough but blocked my thrust until it was too late and he felt my tail wrap around his ankle and pull.
“Foul!” cried one of his friends as I sent him to his back, knocked bis blade away and put my sword to his throat.
“Enough! It is enough he won. Moorouk, let him live and you may pass in freedom.” The Padwar said.
“My name is Jason Obrien, Lord Innis not moorouk or silian or calot or anything other than my name.” I insisted without removing my blade.
“Fair enough. Then I repeat, Jason Obrien, if you let him live, there will be peace between us. Kill him and you face me and your trick won’t work a second time.”
I removed my blade and saluted him, “You are a noble man, Padwar. If you have no other pressing business, it seems that I would not do well seeking service with Phundahl so farewell.”
As I turned to leave, he called, “You may be right but we are not all like Gheeyat here.”
I tried very hard to not shake as I walked away. The Kris Wars were nothing like this. If you faced a man there, you did it through a view screen a thousand kilometers away before you touched a button that destroyed his entire ship. Or they vaporized you before you knew you were dead. War was clean and you could pretend that you were playing a game. This facing your enemy and looking into his eyes as you killed him or he killed you was terrifying.
But I was alive and that was the important thing.
I returned to my pick-up point, or as close as I could to where I thought it was and waited until dark. Shortly after sunset I saw a flyer heat-glowing in the darkness (infra-red vision was useful) and flashed my pick-up code with my light and as the flier settled nearby, I climbed aboard and returned to Ardane.
Once there I reported to my Jed. “My Lord, they are simply collecting animals for their zoos. I don’t believe that they intend to invade at all. Here is what I discovered and will write my report later.” He took the camera and nodded, “You did well as usual. I shall consider my next move later. Now I think we both will benefit from your bath.” And with that I was dismissed.
I returned to my quarters to find Florina waiting and she almost flung herself into my arms but stopped, “My Lord, you stink! First a bath, then your reward for your success. You can tell me all about it as I scrub your back.” I’m glad they expected slaves to wash their owners, it make things nicer.
To contact me or to request topics to be covered, send to RikJohnson@juno.com
by: Rick Johnson
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
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