Read Online Under the Moons of Mars by John Joseph Adams - Free Book Online Page B

straddling the beast’s spine stretched his mighty quadriceps painfully. But the eight-legged stride, much like that of the pacers he sometimes bet on when in England, was surprisingly smooth—perhaps because the thoat’s well-padded feet absorbed the jolt of the Martian desert surface easily—and Tarzan quickly grew accustomed to the rolling rhythm.
    John Carter, with Princess Dejah Thoris riding behind him, kept pace with the ape-man’s mount, keeping up conversation with a tone that made Tarzan’s mighty teeth hurt. “Odd, you fetching up at exactly the same place where I arrived. Might be some sort of harbor for transmigrating astral bodies, eh?”
“Perhaps.” Tarzan kept his own tone noncommittal. “I have seen stranger things.”
    “From up in your tree, chattering and scratching with your monkey friends?” John Carter chuckled again. “I’ll tell you what would have been strange—seeing a few British warships sailing into Charleston Bay, Mobile Bay. Seeing the British standing up like men, instead of howling away across the ocean like a flock of monkeys— that would have been strange, don’t you think?” He slanted his glance sideways at Tarzan, his contemptuous chuckle continuing.
    Tarzan of the Apes, Lord of the Jungle, would have flown at his throat well before now, merely for the look of his eyes, ignoring his words. John Clayton, Viscount Greystoke, alone, friendless, weaponless, and naked on Mars, kept his temper, replying simply, “We desired your cotton, certainly, but the price was too high. England has done well enough without slave labor for some while now.”
    John Carter’s Virginia accent grew more pronounced; his skin seemed to grow taut with anger. “Wasn’t long ago that our cotton was good enough for you, no matter where it came from. Now suddenly you’re all heart-bleeding hypocrites.” He spat, narrowly missing Tarzan’s bare foot.
    “I was a slave myself once,” the ape-man mused aloud. “Never liked it much.”
    “The War was never about slavery!” John Carter jabbed his forefinger at Tarzan as though it were a sword blade, or the barrel of a pistol. “The War was about states’ rights to refuse to be told how to live, what to think, what to grow, how to grow it . . .” His face was flushed, and he was literally spluttering with furious disgust. “It was a second American Revolution, is what it was, and our Cause was just as honorable as theirs! Deny that , Sir House-of-Lords, and—” He checked himself abruptly, and his voice slowed and quieted to a menacing drawl. “Deny that, and we might quarrel.”
It was Dejah Thoris who hastily changed the subject, describing the magnificence of the old city to which the ape-man was being escorted, so that by the time the caravanserai arrived there, toward evening, he was well prepared for the long, low marble buildings, brilliantly illuminated by the two Martian moons—both shockingly near, from an Earthman’s perspective—and for the wide streets, now filling with the tusked green natives who spilled out into them to welcome their countrymen (and especially the great John Carter) back from their expedition into the barren wasteland.
    Tarzan’s mighty lip curled slightly to watch the Virginian visibly swelling under their praise, but he had to admit that the Tharks’ previous experience with one Earthman made it a good bit easier for him to move around freely among the Martians—though every so often, he was waylaid and, with gestures toward John Carter, requested to sak , like his compatriot. Once it finally penetrated his comprehension that sakking meant bouncing straight up to fully the height of a Thark, he complied vigorously, and was eventually left alone, free to wander the city: no prisoner, but merely a visiting diplomat of some sort. He was well aware that he owed this privilege to John Carter’s intervention, which pleased him not at all; but it amused him greatly, all the same, to feel snug around