Ardor on Aros (2 page)

I sighed and pulled at the brandy soda (heavy on Coronet; light on IGA soda). I remember thinking that Dr. Blakey was playing hell keeping gold in the country.

“Yes sir. But sir—where? I mean—vanished to
where?
”

“Henry, in a word—we do not know.” He favored my gaping mouth with a benign smile. “I call that platform and the materials, that, uh, motivate it, a temporal dissociator.”

“Sir?”

“Time machine,” Evelyn Shay said.

“Time machine,” Dr. Blakey said, not without some sigh of irritation. “‘Time machine,’ however, is a fictional phrase, an over-used one, and it has been proved impossible. I could not even discuss it with the editor of my favorite magazine,
Engineering Analogies,
for he considers time, uh, travel to be fantasy, and his mind is closed until and unless I allow some university dean to drive it to his office, with blueprints. But—I cannot
prove
that it is a ‘time machine,’ of course.” (His eyebrows placed the quote-marks around the phrase.) “Nevertheless, two solid objects have been placed on the platform and both have vanished. Unfortunately we know neither to where, nor to
when,
if we may invent a new phrase.” He looked thoughtful. “And I think perhaps we must.” He rose to his feet, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. It was a peanut-butter glass.

“I propose we try to think of something else. I must make notes—Henry, you will type these, and I remind you of your secrecy pledge. Tomorrow—tomorrow we shall experiment once again, this time with a live subject: Pope Borgia.”

Poor ole Pope,
I thought, secretly delighted. Loudmouthed bighead!

Doctor Blakey departed. Evelyn and I stared at each other.

“Marry me,” I said, “ and let me take you away from all this.”

“Oh god, Hank, shut up!”

“OK. Where, O Iron Maiden dedicated to Science, did Dr. Blakey’s hardware
go?
”

She spread her hands. “Even
he
doesn’t know. The future? (“Fū chah.” Sounds pretty.) The past? 10 B.C.? The Pleisocene Maybe tomorrow; maybe tomorrow he’ll have his pen back again. Maybe key, pen, and paper are in the LaBrea Tar Pits. Or Waukegan. We’re trying to find out, Hank.”

“In other words, male secretary, don’t bug us geniuses.”

She looked contrite. “Oh Hank—“

I had her contrite, which was enough for starts, and I pursued by switching off on another track. “Oh god, Evelyn,” I sighed, “give me your manuscript.” I needed to think of something else. Too, I thought, the flattery of being asked for her story should aid my amorous angling.

He eyes were suddenly bright, her voice unscientifically eager. That manuscript was her go-button, all right! I hoped it would lead me to her other one. “Let me read it to you.”

If she’d had a tail she’d have wagged it. Interesting idea;
let’s keep Pope Borgia,
I thought,
and send Iron Evelyn. And her cute li’l tail.

I watched it switch as she went for her manuscript. I typed up the notes. Including this description of the temporal dissociator, which didn’t tell me much:

“When brass plates A & B (cf. enclosed diagram) are opposite each other, the two fixed plates A & C may be considered as one mass, in accord with Kohlrausch’s law. Anode plate B, together with diode plate D, constitute another mass. These masses do
not
possess the same electric state. Using an electrowinning, nonaqueus solution plus the harnessed—and long recognized—electrical current emitted by
my own brain waves.
I have succeeded in forcing the two masses AC-DB into separate spatiotemporal existences. As the bell descends, a proportional augmentation of this peculiar property is achieved, reaching its maximum when the contacts of the bell are firmly joined with the brass plates on the platform itself. A strong electromotive force is instantaneously impressed across all terminals.
Within the bell, ‘reality’ as we know it does not exist.
Any foreign object (sendee) contained there perforce vanishes—with no manifestation of the resultant phenomenon we call ‘breaking the sound barrier’; that is no vacuum pocket is created by the departure of the foreign body.

“Thus the object introduced into the mechanism, the
sendee, cannot
have ceased to exist, or to have been transported to another area in space as we know it. Rejecting outright fantasy then, my these is that the
sendee
is transferred through time. A simple perusal of Professor Einstein’s quaint concept of ‘time’ will indicate clearly why this must, empirically, be so.”

There you are. You’re welcome.

“My name,” Evelyn began, “is Achilles Caxton.”

“You’re a
man?
”

She looked up accusingly. I looked down. “You’re a man,” I said. “Sorry. It was a surprise. After all, how many novels have such surprise
beginnings?
”

Which brought something approaching a simper, as she continued to read. “I was born in Virginia, rather well-born, as a matter of fact. I was well-educated, graduating from Harvard as captain of the football and fencing teams and salutatorian with a prelaw degree in political science and history.”

I refrained from groaning. Achilles Caxton sounded like Frank Merriwell. Just a bit much.

“Since I had by my education increased my value to my country,” Evelyn continued reading, not noticing my masked reaction, “it immediately made use of my intellect and education. My services began in Fort Benning, Georgia, and four months later I was in the mystic Orient. Three days after my arrival in Vietnam, I was driving the Colonel’s jeep, the army having in its inscrutable wisdom decided this was the duty for which I was best suited, to the Officers’ Club in Saigon. It was one of those clear nights when the stars and planets are bright, twinkling gems in an indigo sky, and the cry of the numerous Saigon
filles de joie
wafted loud and clear through the city.”

I laughed; Evenly beamed.
Hey,
I thought,
she doesn’t sound so prudish, on paper. She’s an interesting mixture. Dream-fantasist?

“I was rankling, I admit, at my duties; as I waited impatiently, engine idling, for the passage of an ox-cart, I gazed up at a ruddy spot in the sky. A child’s marble, it appeared, tossed carelessly there and named for the ward-god of Rome. Mars. How I’d love to be there! Anywhere but here. Anywhere but—

“The tarpaulin on the back of the oxcart suddenly flipped back. A child, a long-haired girl of no more than twelve, bobbed up. Grinning at me, she tossed something. I ducked instinctively. The dark, fist-sized missile whished past my head. In the back seat, the Colonel strove to catch it, bobbled, and the grenade fell to the floor of our jeep and blew up. My last thought was that I’d never live to see Mars!

“I am sure we were both killed instantly, but when I awoke, I saw that there were two moons in the strangely clear sky.

“I was on Mars!”

I interrupted. “Uh—Evelyn—it sounds mighty familiar. That pretty much repeats the openings of at least two famous novels by the author of about eighty books.”

Evelyn grinned in delight, ignoring my callously cast aspersions. “You recognize it? Mahvelous! You know Burroughs?”

Sure, I knew Burroughs, and since it’s rather integral to my own weird story, let’s explore the writing of Edgar Rice Burroughs for a moment. (I will give you Evenlyn’s and my discussion later.)

His first novel, A PRINCESS OF MARS, was published as a magazine serial in 1912. Pursued by a band of Indians, Captain John Cater of Virginia takes refuge in a cave, where he falls asleep thinking of the Red Planet. He awakes on Mars! Then beings a series of adventures, mainly concerned with very bad men, monsters both good and bad, sexless damsels in distress, and some fascinating customs. Mars is dying; its people have forgotten most of the great science they possessed before the cataclysmic days when their seas dried up. Their only land conveyance is a colorful eight-legged
thoat.
They also have “fliers,” open aircraft rather like great rafts that move very swiftly through the thin Martian air. They possess deadly radium pistols and, like the men of the American old West, they never go out without ’em. But they also carry dagger and sword (two). These are their main fighting weapons—they fight a lot, but using the radium guns isn’t cricket. Generally speaking, only villains use them in dire exigency; the good guys always fence. Like John Carter.

Cater is more agile than anyone else on Mars (there are thousands of people, red, yellow, green and, and
true
white, not your Earthly pink-tan), since he is lighter (lower gravity, remember?). He is also, as he constantly reminds his reader, the finest swordsman on two planets. He does a great deal of killing, a great deal of getting captured, and a great deal of rescuing—mostly women. Chastely. Mostly one woman: his Dejah Thoris (by his own constant admission the most beautiful woman on two planets). She is the daughter of the ruler of Mars’s greatest city, and so John Carter gets to be crown prince: “warlord.” John Carter apparently possesses no genitalia, nor does Dejah.

In another of Burroughs’ Mars books, Ulysses Paxton is killed—sort of. He wakes up on Mars, whole, where he has a lot of adventures and marries a princess. Chastely. So does Carson Napier, another Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) hero, who crash-lands on Venus. It’s just as barbaric and weird as ERB’s Mars: monsters, triple-dyed villains, flying men, strange races, rayguns and swords, lots of capturing and rescuing and escaping. Carson marries a princess, and they live adventurously but chastely ever after.

Many of the further adventures of the ERB heroes were set into motion by their various womenfolk—Dejah Thoris of Mars, Duare of Venus, Dian the Beautiful of Pellueidar, Jane of Greystoke Manor, etc. Constantly borne off by a succession of black-hearted, double-dyed villains. Despite fantastic periods of separation, each Burroughs hero remained ever constant to his one true love. Nor were the kinapped beauties raped.

The people of ERB-places are utter barbarians. Life is cheap; extremely cheap. Blood flows like words from a politico’s mouth. But, while the rules are pretty much Jenghiz han, there is great
honour
, and all the good guys live strictly by the code—unless you count Carter’s constant goading of others into fighting him. But usually: swords, no guns. No back-stabbing. And most incredible of all: these barbarians treat women by Arthurian Table-Round rules. Very chivalrous. Courtly manners. Lots of capturing and kidnaping (with intent either to punish the husband or marry the girl). But nary a rape. Just the sort of thing for Evelyn to write.

Well, I’m a Burroughs fan, whatever his shortcomings, but—. The status of women in a barbaric culture is almost invariably lower than a snake’s rectum. They’re tolerated, as chattel. They are gifts: servants, cooks, bedmates, and child-rearers, to bring up more sons to murder and rape and die gloriously. Rape’s as common as peanuts at a ballgame. You either kill ’em or rape ’em. Why kidnap agirl and not use her, unless she’s as homely as Aunt Stella, with a body like Twiggy’s or your local DAR president?

I said as much to Evelyn Shay, bright young physicist and aspiring author.

“But…but…respect for women, Hank. I mean—”

“Respect for women my eye! Oh look, Evelyn, I’ve always loved Burroughs, paradoxical aspect or not—
and
Otis Kline,
and
Ralph Farley.”

I did. Certainly I never thought then I’d have the personal opportunity—very personal—to prove or disprove that one most jarring note. Did these barbarians really differ from every barbarian society of Earth, or was ERB merely reflecting the Victorian morality of his times toward what he called “base animal passions?”

Despairing of getting into her lab smock, I at last told Evelyn to go write me the next chapter. I ate, and I wondered where those little items of Dr. Blakey’s went, and I fumed, and I went outside. I walked, and I looked at the sky. It was clear, and Mars was very clear, a red-rimmed hole in the black curtain , twinkling. I stared at it, thought about it, prompted by Evelyn’s transcript and our talk.

Nothing happened, of course. There ain’t no life on Mars. But how my romantic mind longed to be a port of the savage but chivalrous world of John Carter! Where white was white, and villains black, and solutions simple: instant scabbard justice.
(You can’t fence,
I reminded myself.) I went in to bed.

And no, this
isn’t
going to be one of those stories.

At two minutes to noon the next day we sent poor Pope Borgia—raising hell all the while—off to parts or times unknown. Not a sign remained, not even a scrawk or a green feather. At 2:00 Dr. Blakey left for his meeting with Gordon. Evelyn and I talked about Pope Borgia and about her novel. She’d been thinking, she said, and I was right: she was changing the novel. Barbaric as Jenghiz Khan’s Mongols, the men would treat their women the same way. I thought I saw something flicker in her eyes, and I made my pass. It was 4:13. Evelyn repulsed me.

“You want to be ravished by force, me proud beauty,” I grinned, grabbing—and she showed me a judo thro. My fling elbow accidentally closed the relay. The bell began to descend—with me under it. At something like 4:16 or :17 I started to get up, stumbled, and fell. My head barely missed gonging the descending bell. I was just able to jerk in my legs—and the bell thumped down.

I didn’t even have time to yell. The air whished out and my head roared and I saw red and then black and then felt blood rushing from my nostrils. Then—blotto. Sorry; time unknown.

I lay there with my eyes closed, unable to understand what had happened, what was happening, I
must
have died! But—I vaguely remembered a moment of pain,
after
the blackout, a tearing, a blurring of everything, and a great rushing sensation. And blankness, and—now.

I opened my eyes. I was not staring at the bell, or at the lab ceiling.

I was staring at the sky.

Let me amend that; I was staring at
a
sky. It was not a sky I had ever seen before, or hoped to. It was not very bright, the clouds extraordinarily pronounced in their wispy, orange-tinted shapes, floating on a yellow sky. Yellow! A very pale orange, really; fulvous. The sun was an enormous orange ball hanging high in a sky it tinged ruddy with its brightness, its nearness.

Slowly, I saw up. It didn’t take me four seconds to realize something else of considerable significance. I was naked.

I got to my feet, feeling a litter vertiginous, but not what I’d call weak. As a matter of fact, I felt fresh, light, as if I’d just had a long rest and was in superb condition.

I was on some sort of yellowish dust plain, stretching as far as I could see, darkening as it merged into a sky of nearly the same hue. It was not eye-dazzling box-top yellow, but a pale one, more like an artist’s well-toned pastels. Slowly, I turned. Here and there the jejune plain was dotted with boulders and rock outcrops of various sizes, as if some long-ago giant had dropped them casually,
en passant.
And then I turned completely, and I saw that I was a the base of a mountain, rising at an ever-increasing angle to brush the sky. It was orange, and yellow, and red, and there was some russet, and brown, and an occasional patch of green.

Where was I? How had I come here, at the base of this mountain, towering above this perdurable plain of yellow dust?

The answer was simple: the gizmo Dr. Blakey called a “Temporal Dissociator”—wasn’t. It was a Spatial Dissociator, if anything. I wasn’t on Earth!

I looked down. Yes, it was still me, and I was still naked. But there was a difference; I seemed somehow more trim. I exclaimed aloud—and froze. My voice was loud in the stillness. Wherever I was, there were no birds, no insects, no little animals, no engine sounds. And neither smoke nor smog.

I was very alone.

Also curious, and elated, and again I bent my head to peer down at myself. Suddenly I wasn’t sure it was me, or, more properly put, that I was I. Here was something I’d missed when I had examined myself a minute ago, sitting down.

I’ve never had much stomach. I’ve always stayed in condition and exercised, and haven’t had to worry much about what I eat. Still, I’m human, and a product of civilization, of the American Carbohydrate Civilization, and there was a
little
soft swell to my gut.

Not any more. I was as flat below the midriff as a New York model—lying on her back.

I kept frowning, examining. But yes, this was my old scar—about as big as a minute—on my finger, where I’d raised a blister with a cigarette and let the thing heal without trimming the dead skin off; it healed crookedly, with a little lump of skin. How many people have one of those, on the inside of the right ring finger?

I stared, bug-eyed.
I
didn’t. I had a scare on the inside of my
left
ring finger, and I’d kidded and been kidded about whether there’d be trouble when some girl tried to put a wedding ring on me. My scare had moved from me left hand to my right!

I raised my right hand. That is, my brain said:
Right hand, rise.

But my
left
hand rose. I gazed at it.
Raise left leg,
I ordered. Up came my right leg.

It was easy to check out, of course. All I had to do was feel my heart. Simple—no clothes. But it took me several seconds; my heart is no under my right pectoral. I wondered whether I were really here; I was obviously a mirror image. I had not explanation. I couldn’t even explain where I was, nor how. But ‘m here, and have been for years, and I’m still reversed. So’s my watch, but I haven’t got to that yet. And remember I did tell you: things are not as they seem. How can you be sure you exist? There is no objective way.

“Where am I? What place is this, where I’m built like something Praxiteles sculpted?” I smiled as I shouted the words, and, in a sudden asinine burst of elation, I let out a yell and sprang into the air.

Way into the air. I soared up a good six feet, coming down rather slowly, as if in a dream, ten feet away from where I’d been. I sank nearly to my knees to absorb the shock of my landing, but there was really little shock to begin with. Not the shock that should have accompanied alighting after such an Olympic standing jump!

“My god!” Last night I was thinking about Mars—just like Burroughs’ John Carter and Paxton. I woke somewhere else—just as they did. And I’m light—just as they were. Because this isn’t Earth. There’s less air pressure on this world, less gravity! I
am
lighter! That’s why I have such a flat gut—it’s lighter here, and my innards are sort of floating up, instead of being dragged down by Earth’s gravity! If I were older and had chins—they’d be gone too. This…this is…I must be on Barsoom, ERB’s Mars!”

For fun, I did it again, this time
trying
. I went up a good eight feet and sailed (I paced if off, returning to my tracks), fourteen feet. A cloud of yellow dust flew up when I landed. The stuff lay everywhere, generally to a wind-swirled depth of about an inch, although there were some smallish mounds here and there, against rocks. Its density was obviously, uh, designed for this planet. Thus it settled even more quickly than I’d have expected on Earth. I sneezed, there times, and got the heck away from it.

Then I looked up at the sun, and I frowned again.

No, this isn’t Mars. And it isn’t Venus, or Mercury, or anything else in our solar system. Because “solar system” means “sun system,” and that isn’t
my
sun up there in the yellow-orange sky! It’s a younger sun (or older; I can’t remember if a sun cooks
to
orange or builds slowly up through orange, red, yellow, white-hot—and where does blue-white come in? Sorry I can’t be more precise, but you have the references to check. I haven’t, and I’ve read a lot of books but never wasted my time memorizing things I can—could, on Earth—look up). It’s also a lot closer, or a lot bigger than the sun of Earth.

Naked, I was toasty warm standing on that plain at the base of a brightly colored mountain. If I found anything here resembling people, I was sure they’d wear next to nothing or perhaps the coolth-trapping, heat-reflecting robes worn in the Arab countries on Earth.

Leather harnesses, like Carter? Swords and zap guns?

Anyhow, I had been unaccountably transported to another planet—under another sun! I wasn’t just thousands or millions of miles from Earth (I
thought
); I was sever light-years, and that is a hell of a long way!

Light-years from Earth. Judging by what I could see from where I stood, I was on an uninhabited planet under a young sun—as it grew hotter, would it destroy this world and the life on it—if there was any? (not I; I’d be long since dead.) Dead—alone.

I admit it freely. I was scared.

I stood there naked under an orange sun and started shivering like a teenager on his first date. Sweat poured off me to make pockmarks, tiny craters, in the yellow dust.

Then I heard the voice.

“Help!” it said, and it sounded weak and faraway. “Help….”

I stopped breathing to listen. Again I turned all about, straining to hear. A voice! A human voice.

“I’m here!” I yelled. “Keep calling! Keep calling! I’ll follow the sound of your voice!”

“h e l p….” Very weak.

Yes—it definitely emanated from behind me, and I turned to face: the mountain! Perhaps that explained why I had heard only the voice, without echo. It arose in the mountain and thus did not bounce off it—I swept my eyes over those garish slopes, once, twice, and three times. I turned away to rest my eyes, and then back, peering hard. And I saw the cave, a dark hole thirty or forty feet up, and I heard the voice again.

“Help!”