The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series (89 page)

Rituals similar in nature were repeated between Hurok of Kor and Gorah, and between Zuma the Aziru and the lovely Niema.

And then it was my turn!

Feeling absurdly nervous. I stood up with Darya smiling demurely at my side, and claimed her as my own before the presence of them all. Tharn, her father, gravely placed her hand in mine, holding both of our hands briefly in the grip of one huge hand, to signify that he gave the gomad to me to be my own Princess.

Then, while my warriors shouted and yelled our names, I stood there grinning sheepishly, feeling like a fool, while the women of my company pelted the two of us with flowers.

We shared our first kiss as mates, and the ritual was over and done.

And I felt very much married.…

* * * *

The honeymoon is a new custom which Darya and I introduced to the Cro-Magnons of Thandar. We went into the wilderness for a week or so, and I built a little hut beside a stream in the cozy circle of a copse of Jurassic conifers. I carpeted the floor of the hut with armfuls of fragrant grasses, and for a time we stayed apart from our people, enjoying the nuptial privacy of our honeymoon.

I hunted at day and brought my kill back to my mate for her to prepare and cook. It was like something from the first ages of mankind on the earth…like a memory of the Garden of Eden.

And it was certainly very much like Paradise to my darling wife and me.…

* * * *

A few days after Darya and I terminated our idyll and returned to the settlement, to take up residence in the “town hall” or royal palace of Thandar (a rather well constructed, two-story wooden edifice used as the residence of the High Chief and his family, and for judgments and ceremonial occasions), the Professor and I went on a brief, nostalgic expedition.

We took along my two giant friends, Gundar of Gorad and Hurok of Kor, for protection. These are the two most gigantic warriors I know, and with them at our backs, the Professor and I would safely have faced down half a herd of dinosaurs.

We trekked due west of Thandar, crossed the plains and entered the jungles. After a time, the jungles gave way to swampland and muddy fens; beyond, the placid surface of the Sogar-Jad glittered under the dim golden skies of Zanthodon.

We were looking for a little hilly promontory which thrust from the mainland on the shores of the subterranean sea.

We were looking for the very spot on which Professor Potter and I had first stepped forth upon the soil of the Underground World.…

Well, after a few days of wandering around, we reached the location we had determined to revisit. Directly overhead, like a circular and stationary dark cloud in the glowing heavens of Zanthodon, was the opening which led to the surface of the earth.

We found what remained of my faithful helicopter, Babe, by which we had long ago descended into the crater of the extinct volcano in the Sahara. She had crashed on landing, had Babe, and still lay where she had fallen, although now vines and bushes had grown thickly about her until she was almost buried in the foliage.

We cleared away the overgrowth, the four of us, and looked her over. One of her vanes was bent, and her under-carriage was crushed, and the door hung at a crazy angle on broken hinges. Aside from these unfortunate facts, she looked surprisingly whole and sound.

Dead leaves had been blown into the cabin, and a brace of zomaks had nested there, befouling the controls with their lime-white droppings. I cleaned the cabin out and checked the dials.

“You know, Doc,” I said in surprise, “if we fixed the bent vane and repaired the undercarriage, and cleaned out the engine…I bet Babe could fly again!”

“Really?” He sounded more than a bit skeptical. “And where do you expect to buy gasoline in this world of cavemen and dinosaurs?”

“Don’t you remember how many tins of gas I loaded her up with before we left the coast?” I returned. “Well, plenty of them are still full, for all the long way we flew…and they’re still sealed, too. They haven’t even sprung a leak.”

He played with his little tuft of chin-whiskers, looking thoughtful.

“Perhaps it could be done, after all…the Thandarians have only recently entered the first crude stages of metalworking, but there is iron ore in those hills to the south, or I’m no geologist! What an impressive means of defense your helicopter would be, if ever Thandar was invaded by an enemy…why, there would be no need to fight at all, all you would need do is fly over the enemy ranks at a low altitude—they would bolt in every direction like chicken’s in a henyard, when a hawk swoops low.…”

I nodded. “Yep! And, with the chopper, it would be an easy thing to chart and map the extent of Thandar and the surrounding countries.”

“We could even return to the surface again,” he mused to himself.

“I suppose we could, Doc, but—hey! I just got married, if you’ll kindly remember. I’m not about to fly off and leave my blushing bride!”

“Someday, however, we must go back, Eric my boy,” he said seriously. “The data and observations I have gathered here, not only my eyewitness descriptions of the great beasts, but what I have learned about the traditions and customs of the Cro-Magnons, the Neanderthals, even the people of Minoan Crete—all of this information is of inestimable scientific value. It
must
be made available to the Upper World!”

“Someday,” I agreed. But I privately thought to myself that it might not be necessary: Babe was equipped with a shortwave radio, and it looked to be still in one piece, although by now we would have to recharge the batteries, somehow. And I have a niece in upstate New York, on a farm near Lake Carlopa, who has a receiving set I built for her, tuned to the wavelength of Babe’s radio. Couldn’t we, someday, transmit the whole fantastic story of our adventures in Zanthodon to Jenny? Even if nobody believed a word of our story, it would sure make a heck of a series of Stone Age adventure stories for some paperback publisher like Ace or Ballantine or Wildside Press.…

* * * *

To make the story shorter, we resolved to try it! Gundar and Hurok felled trees with their axes and trimmed the twigs and branches from the logs. Then they dragged them to where Babe squatted on its crushed landing gear. With leathern thongs and ropes fashioned by weaving tough, long reeds and grasses together in a sort of braid, we fastened the logs into a crude sledge.

Babe was too heavy to be dragged back to Thandar, but the Professor worked out a clumsy set of wheels which we had to keep greased with the cooked fat of zomaks I brought down with my bow. The Professor was delighted with his contrivance, but Hurok and Gundar stared at it in bewilderment, scratching their heads and exchanging mystified glances.

I guess the Professor had every right to be proud. After all, he had just invented the wheel!

* * * *

It wasn’t a month later before we had Babe back in good working order—and she
flew
, the first flying machine ever in the long history of the Underground World.

The grown-ups of the tribes were shaking in their boots (well, you know what I mean!) at the unearthly noise and shuddersome fact of her uncanny flight. But the kids were tickled pink!

Hurok and Gundar firmly but politely refused to accept a free ride in the chopper. Even Von Kohler looked dubious—he had vaguely heard of autogyros, but a modem Sikorsky looked too risky, too flimsy, to his eyes.

Jorn was the only one who would go up with the Professor and me, and he had to be dared into it by Yualla. The adventure-loving kid was dying to go, but I put my foot down and said no: she was carrying their child and I didn’t think it would be smart to run the risk.

Anyway, Thandar’s air force was born.

CHAPTER 30

THE OMAD-OF-OMADS

After Jorn and Yualla had their baby, little Eric, a rash of births increased our numbers. Hurok became a proud father when Gorah his mate produced a set of twins; they named the male Tor and the she they called Ungala. Also, Zuma and Niema had a daughter, an exquisite, happy, laughing, bright-eyed child they called Azira, after the founder of their tribe. She was going to grow up into as stunningly beautiful a young woman as her mother, and I’ll place a bet right now that the young Cro-Magnon hearts of her teen years will be breaking to right and left.

Varak fathered a daughter too, a tiny, elfin creature that took more after his mate than after himself with the olive skin of Ialys and the golden hair of Varak—a striking combination.

The German soldiers, Borg and Schmidt, both married Cro-Magnon women and fathered sons, but Von Kohler remained single. Perhaps he was too busy working on his plans for the town (you could no longer call it a camp or even a settlement, not with its new walls, of cut and mortared stone and its straight streets and decent sanitation). The Baron had studied civil engineering in his university years, before joining the army, and took charge of the new buildings which began to be erected in place of the ramshackle huts of old.

The Professor, on the other hand, was our expert an metal-working and agriculture. He discovered edible roots and primitive vegetables he believed could be cultivated into something close to potatoes and carrots, and he also experimented with various grains and cereals, finding one plant which resembled prehistoric maize and another he believed to be wheat or barley.

He laid out the cultivated fields, watered by a system of irrigation ditches, and we were soon feasting off bread that was not at all untasty. This, of course, reduced the dependence of the Cro-Magnons upon hunting for food, and gave them more leisure to work at the rebuilding of the town, which was mostly to be constructed of sun-dried or oven-baked bricks, and the hoeing and planting of the fields.

All of this became practical, even possible, only after Professor Potter found the veins of iron ore in the hills which he had suspected were there. Now that the smiths could make the proper tools, the tribes advanced at a single step to the Iron Age, to agriculture, and to urban civilization.

My own modest contribution to the march of progress consisted of the domestication of the uld. If “domestication” is quite the word I want: what I mean is, we came to collect the uld into herds and to pen them in, rather than doing it the old-fashion Cro-Magnon way and trotting across the plains with bow and arrow or spear, hoping to find a fat uld and to make a kill.

Oh, yes; another contribution—not to the march of progress, exactly, but at least to the size of my evergrowing “tribe”…my mate presented me with a strong, lusty infant son whom I named Gar, after my father.…

* * * *

To celebrate the birth of our son, Tharn of Thandar and Garth of the Sotharians summoned the tribes to an enormous feast, with Darya and little Gor and me the principal guests of honor.

After the feast, Tharn rose to his feet to make a speech. For the occasion, he was rigged out in full ceremonial regalia, as befitted a Cro-Magnon High Chief: headdress plumed with zomak feathers, his necklace of sabertooth tiger fangs, bracelets and bangles of copper ornaments—the works.

“We are met here,” he began in solemn tones, “to consider how properly to honor Eric Carstairs for his many services to the tribes of our people.” And I felt my face turning red, for I had thought little Gar would be the center of attention, not myself. He went on:

“All of us owe very much to Eric Carstairs, and more than a few among us owe our very lives to him, to his courage, his strength, his wise counsels, his leadership, and his common sense. He came among us as a stranger from a far land, but he has earned our respect and admiration, our affection and our love. Was it not Eric Carstairs who enabled Jorn and Darya the gomad to escape from the captivity of the Drugars, and Eric Carstairs who slew Uruk, High Chief of Kor, and Eric Carstairs who led the escape to freedom of the Sotharians, from their vile slavery to the Gorpaks of the cavern city, and Eric Carstairs who brought about the destruction of the Scarlet City? It was none other than he.

“My brother Garth and I have long considered what honor to bestow upon this man, our friend. Already, he has become a chieftain of Thandar, and now his warriors have grown in number so as almost to constitute a third tribe, a soft in jest they are wont to refer to themselves. In the beginning they were seven, with Eric Carstairs and the Professor at their head—Jorn the Hunter, Parthon, Warza, Varak of Sothar, Erdon and Ragor, and Hurok of Kor. From of old, chieftains of Thandar have led seven warrior’s into battle, and seven only.

“But, in the course of many wanderings and adventures, to that number were joined yet others, strangers from other tribes and far lands, such as Grond of Gorthak and Jaira, and Varak’s mate, Ialys of Zar, and Gundar the Goradian, and Thon of Numitor. And, more recently, Zuma the Aziru and his mate Niema, and Hurok’s mate, Gorah, and Von Kohler and Borg and Schmidt. Add to this, the mates and children of the warriors, among the which is my own daughter, Darya, and the newborn among them, and you will find that those who follow Eric Carstairs as their chieftain are now many times the number of warriors that follow a mere chieftain.”

Tharn was right, of course. I did some mental addition, and came up with a grand total of
forty-one!

“It is the decree of the two tribes that we now consider ourselves three, and that Eric Carstairs shall be known in his own right as an Omad, to share our councils on equal footing and with equal voice and authority with Tharn and with Garth.”

His expression became brooding, his voice sank to low tones to which all strained to hear in the dead silence.

“The tribe of Thandar was founded by my ancestor, the High Chief Thandar; the tribe of Sothar was founded by Sothar the High Chief, the ancestor of my brother Garth. But we deem it not wise, in this instance, to follow the old ways, for among the new ways that Eric Carstairs and the Professor and Von Kohler are teaching us are many that are good. Already, the tribes are become the mightiest nation known in all of Zanthodon, since the Drugars of Kor were reduced, and the Barbary Pirates decimated, and the strength of the Scarlet City of Zar destroyed. In time, our people will come to dominate all of Zanthodon, but that will be in the time of Eric Carstairs or his sons, for by then Tharn of Thandar and Garth of Sothar will have joined their ancestors in another life.

“Let us therefore call the tribe of which Eric Carstairs is Omad, the tribe of Zanthodon.…

“And there is yet more! My only surviving child is my daughter, Darya the gomad, and when I am gone is not her mate, Eric Carstairs, to lawfully inherit the Omadship of Thandar? And likewise my brother Garth will be succeeded to the Omadship by Jorn the Hunter, the mate of his only surviving child, the gomad Yualla. But, as these are among the people who follow Eric Carstairs as their Omad, shall not he, too, inherit the Omadship of Sothar?

“It is so, and it can only be thus, for such are the ancient traditions which have now become the written law of our kind.

“Therefore, I hail my son-in-law and brother Omad, Eric Carstairs…Eric of Zanthodon…who will become, in times yet to be, the Omad-of-Omads, the ruler of Zanthodon itself.”

And the silence was split by a roar of approval such as I have never heard, and never thought to hear.…

* * * *

I rose to my feet, crimson to the ears, and stammered something awkward and inane, which I have long since mercifully forgotten, then bade the feast continue, and sat down again by my wife. But not before Garth and Tharn ceremoniously placed the ridiculous plumed headdress of an Omad on my brows, and clasped a necklace of sabertooth fangs about my throat, in token of my new royal rank.