Under the Moons of Mars (25 page)

He also put me to work. Though expressing the opinion that a Union quartermaster was only worth the merest part of a good Virginian quartermaster, or at a pinch an Alabaman, he still considered that a cut above the Martian variety. I was given a Martian assistant, and with Kala to help translate, was assigned the task of putting in order the stores and armories of Helium, the city which Carter’s old man-in-law was the mayor of or the governor or whatever Jeddak signified.

I didn’t mind the work, for to tell the truth, those Martians already had things pretty well sorted. It was just Carter wanted things done the way he was used to, and him being such a hero to all of them Heliumites, they was happy to oblige.

I didn’t mind the living either, once I worked out that Kala wasn’t just provided to teach me the lingo but was happy to warm me up on that silk shelf as well. She wasn’t a princess, but a princess wouldn’t have suited me anyhow. If it wasn’t for my gold waiting for me I s’pose I could have got used to the quiet life as a quartermaster in Helium.

“I’ve been thinking about that subterranean lair you found where we picked you up, Lam,” he says to me one day, suddenly turning up as I was quietly counting bandoliers in a nice little corner armory where hardly no one ever visited. “You said you noticed a round trapdoor or some such, I think?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied enthusiastically, before I let my face fall. “Only I’d never find it now, all that red dust and moss looks the same to me.”

“Not to me,” says Carter. “I have a complete recollection of the area. We’ll pick up Kantos Kan and go and take a look. I’ve been wondering what’s under there and there’s nothing much else on at the moment.”

Kantos Kan, I should have said, was the fellow who’d been driving the air boat when I was rescued. He was Carter’s best friend and as mad a cavalry type as he was. Kind of an equivalent to General Custer, inasmuch as he’d do something crazy as heck just because he could, everyone would follow, and he’d come out the other side smiling even if most of the followers didn’t. Only that don’t always work, as Custer found out on the Greasy Grass. Kan had better luck than Custer all round, but I reckon he probably got ten times as many Heliumite soldiers killed in his time than Custer managed with the Seventh Cavalry.

“You and Kantos have fun, then, sir,” I said, turning back to my bandoliers. Intentionally misunderstanding him, you see. Only Carter could play that game one better, for he really
didn’t
understand why anyone would not want to go out on some crazy expedition with him.

“You have to come!” he laughed, clapping me on the back hard enough to kill a Thark. “Satisfy your curiosity, man!”

We left that night in a three-man flyer, Kantos Kan naturally leapin’ at the opportunity to stick his nose in somewhere dangerous. He laughed at me as I found it difficult to sit on what passed for a seat in them Martian flyers, but it wasn’t because of the buttock wound. (That had healed up right nicely.) I just was a little awkward what with my three radium pistols, sword, knife, water bottle, and haversack, all of it worn over a fur robe ’cause I felt the cold. Carter and Kan, as per usual, were wearing outfits that would have got them arrested just about anywhere civilized, just a few leather straps, a pouch over the unmentionables, and some bits of metal stuck on here and there that Carter told me in his case meant much the same as Grant’s three stars.

The valley where they’d found me was quite some distance away. I forget how far in Martian haads or karads, but it was nine hundred miles, give or take, about six hours’ flight. Shame we ain’t got those flyers here on Earth, cause they beat the railroad hollow for speed, and you don’t get covered in soot, neither.

We arrived soon after the Martian dawn, and sure enough, Carter knew almost exactly where to go. Kantos Kan dropped the flyer down where Carter pointed, and then the three of us took no more than ten minutes looking about before we found that circular hatch.

As before, there weren’t no way of opening the thing, but this didn’t put Carter off. He knelt down by it, and just
thought
at it for a while, while I fidgeted about nearby and Kantos Kan went back and leant on his flier.

Carter rapped on the side of it with his knuckle, and a door slid open. There was a whitish-kind of Martian standing there, dressed up in the kind of driving outfit folks wear here nowadays, with the long leather coat and the goggles and all. I guess I was staring like a fool, while Carter had stepped a little to the side—he always was in the right place—so when the Martian suddenly raised up this bellows thing and blew a cloud of green gas it went straight at me, and afore I knew it, I’d sucked it into my chest.

I don’t know what was in that gas, but as soon as I breathed it down, I was stuck fast where I was, unable to move a muscle. I watched Carter lean in and stick the goggle-wearing Martian with his sword, then haul him out by his coat and throw him a good dozen yards away to die in the dust. Then he came back to me, and I saw his mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear any words, and my eyes were already closing, being as I was unexpectedly come over weary.

I think he was saying summat along the lines of “Why did you stand there, idiot?” which fair sums up our dialogue, then and later. I reckon he thought I was willfully stupid, which was why he was always having to push me out of the way, or rescue me and all. Not that he ever complained when it was Dejah Thoris who needed rescuin’, which happened a damn sight more to her than anyone might expect. I guess I was never much of a hero, but at least I weren’t kidnapping-prone like Miss Dejah Thoris.

That was much later, anyhow. After I sucked that gas and was knocked out or put to sleep, the next time I opened my eyes I was no longer on Mars! I was back in my own body, sitting in the canyon mouth, with my back against the wall. There was a kind of lean-to built over my head, and dry-stone walls up to near my waist, and sitting alongside of me in a rocking chair was my partner, Nine-Tenths Noah.

“You awake, then?” he said pausing in his rockin’ to take a gulp of what had to be water, on account of I couldn’t smell it.

“Reckon I am,” I said, wonderingly. “How long has it been?”

“Five months and a week,” replied Noah.

I slowly stood up, marveling that all my muscles and faculties worked as they should. I flexed my fingers, and right then noticed that I was no longer holding the Indian painting or whatever it was.

Noah saw me looking at my empty hand.

“Real bad medicine,” he said. “I throwed it back in that there cave it come from, where it should have stayed.”

I looked at him properly, taking in his unusually bright eyes and pink skin. Forcible laying off the whiskey had done him good service it seemed, but I was kind of puzzled how come he was still alive.

“What you been eatin’ while I was out of my head, Noah?”

“Mules,” he replied. “You up to walkin’?”

“Yep,” I replied. I felt fine, and mighty relieved to be back where I belonged. For good, or so I thought at the time, little knowing that I’d be back on Mars within the year, once again running along behind John Carter, and wishing I wasn’t.

“Mars,” I said. “It ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Mars,” mused Noah, an odd, faraway expression passing across his face. “They got any gold up there?”

Anyhows, that’s how I first met up with the all high-and-mighty John Carter of Mars, even if he don’t care to recollect it himself, what with him being Warlord and Jeddak of Jeddaks and all that stuff. Or maybe he was still cantankerous about the South losing the War and all. He always did get all maudlin when he was back on Earth, whining about missing Dejah Thoris, and reminiscin’ something horrid about what went wrong at Chancellorsville and suchlike.

I tried to tell my old general, Phil Sheridan, that the folks in Washington ought to keep an eye on Mars, because there was a Johnny Reb up there itching to start over if he could figure a ways of getting his army alongside of Earth. But then I disappeared back to Barsoom myself, and by the time I returned, Phil was dead.

I guess if J. C. does decide to attack the United States, I’ll probably be there with him, dang it. I don’t know how it’s worked out like this, but I just can’t get rid of the fellow, at least not permanent-like.

Or maybe it’s that he can’t rid of
me
?

T
he days are warmer here in Arizona than their counterparts on Barsoom, but the nights there, on the planet that we of Earth call Mars, are much colder. I have always found it surprising how little the people of my adopted homeworld wear to protect themselves from the elements. I suspect that nature has cast the Red Martian race of somewhat firmer stuff than we.

But fate—no doubt with a laugh of outright glee—has cast me along a different road.

And not alone, either. Beside me on the trail rides my wife, though her mount carries but the riding blanket of the Apache, plus a sheath for her long gun, whereas mine is laden down with saddle and gear and a Henry rifle.

On Barsoom, Dejah Thoris rides naked—as do all her people, male and female, young and old—her sole adornments being decorative jewelry of breathtaking beauty, and, of course, weapons. Here, such a presentation would guarantee to cause trouble, and so she has dressed herself in a leather riding skirt and knee-high soft-skinned boots of the Apache style. She wears a blouse common to Chiricahua women and over that a leather horse jacket more akin to what a frontiersman might favor. At first glance, aside from her own Henry repeater in its rifle scabbard, she seems to ride without weapons. She is, of course, a dead shot. Beyond that, scattered about her person, are an assortment of knives in sheathes that are mostly hidden to the easy eye. She prefers blades to pistols, she says they provide more variety of practical use—asking with a smile if anyone’s ever tried carving up a piece of wood, or the day’s meal, with a pistol barrel? Whoever looks on her as easy prey will find themselves with a very nasty surprise.