Latest / Classic Adventure Books Collection / 05 - At The Earth's Core - Edgar Rice Burroughs
Transcript
- Chapter five Slaves. As we descended the broad staircase which led to the main avenue of Phutra, I caught my first sight of the dominant race of the inner world. Involuntarily, I shrank back as one of the creatures approached to inspect us. A more hideous thing it would be impossible to imagine. The all powerful Mahars of Pellucidar are great reptiles, some six or eight feet in length, with long, narrow heads and great round eyes. Their beak like mouths are lined with sharp white fangs, and the backs of their huge lizard bodies are serrated into bony ridges from their necks to the end of their long tails. Their feet are equipped with three webbed toes, while from the four feet membranous wings, which are attached to their bodies just in front of the hind legs, protruded at an angle of forty five degrees toward the rear, ending in sharp points several feet above their bodies. I glanced at Perry as the thing passed me to inspect him. The old man was gazing at the hard creatures with wide, astonished eyes. When it passed on. He turned to me a Rampherhnkus of the middle Olitic David, He said, but gad, how enormous. The largest remains we've ever discovered have never indicated a size greater than that attained by an ordinary crow. As we continued on through the main avenue of Phutra, we saw many thousand of the creatures coming and going upon their daily duties. They paid but little attention to us. Phutra is laid out underground with a regularity that indicates remarkable engineering skill. It is hewn from solid limestone strata. The streets are broad and of a uniform height of twenty feet At intervals. Tubes pierced the roof of this underground city, and by means of lenses and reflectors transmit the sunlight softened and diffused to dispel what would otherwise be Simerian darkness. In like manner, air is introduced. Perry and I were taken with Ghak to a large public building, where one of the Sagoths who had formed our guard explained to Maharan official the circumstances surrounding our capture. The method of communication between these two was remarkable in that no spoken words were exchanged. They employed a species of sign language. As I was to learn later, the Mahars have no ears, not any spoken language among themselves. They communicate by means of what Perry says must be a sixth sense, which is cognizant of a fourth dimension. I never did quite grasp him, though he endeavored to explain it to me. Upon numerous occasions. I suggested telepathy, but he said no, that it was not telepathy, since they could only communicate when in each other's presence. Nor could they talk with the Sagoths or the other inhabitants of Pellucidar by the same method they used to converse with one another. What they do, said Perry, is to project their thoughts into the fourth dimension when they become appreciable to the sixth sense of their listener. Do I make myself quite clear, you do not, Perry, I replied. He shook his head in despair and returned to his work. They had set us to carrying a great accumulation of Maharan literature from one apartment to another, and there arranging it upon shelves. I suggested to Perry that we were in the public library of Phutra, but later, as he commenced to discover the key, to their written language. He assured me that we were handling the ancient archives of the race. During this period, my thoughts were continually upon Dian the Beautiful. I was, of course glad that she had escaped the Mahars, and the fate had been suggested by the Sagoth, who had threatened to purchase her. Upon our arrival at Phutra, I often wondered if the little party of fugitives had been overtaken by the guards who had returned to search for them. Sometimes I was not so sure, But I should have been more contented to know that Dian was here in Phutra than to think of her at the mercy of Hooja. The sly one Ghak, Perry and I often talked together of possible escape, But the Sarian was so steeped in his life long belief that no one could escape from the Mahars except by a miracle, that he was not much aid to us. His attitude was of one who waits for the miracle to come to him. At my suggestion, Perry and I fashioned some swords of scraps of iron, which we discovered among some rubbish in the cells where we slept, for we were permitted almost unrestrained freedom of action within the limits of the building to which we had been assigned. So great were the number of slaves who waited upon the inhabitants of Phutra, that none of us was apt to be overburdened with work, nor were our masters unkind to us. We hid our new weapons beneath the skins which formed our beds, and then Perry conceived the idea of making bows and arrows, weapons apparently unknown within Pellucidar. Next came shields, but these I found it easier to steal from the walls of the outer guard room of the building. We had completed these arrangements for our protection after leaving Phutra. When the Sagoths who had been sent to recapture the escaped prisoners, returned with four of them, of whom Hooja was One Diane and two others had eluded them. It so happened that Hooja was confined in the same building with us. He told Ghak that he had not seen Diane or the others after releasing them within the dark grotto. What had become of them. He had not the faintest conception they might be wandering yet lost within the labyrinthine tunnel, if not dead from starvation, I was now still further apprehensive as to the fate of Diane, And at this time, I imagine, came the first realization that my affection for the girl might be prompted by more than friendship. During my waking hours, she was constantly the subject of my thoughts, and when I slept, her dear face haunted my dreams more than ever. I was determined to escape the Mahars Parry, I confided to the old man, if I have to search every inch of this diminutive world, I am going to find Dian, the beautiful and right the wrong that I unintentionally did her. That was the use I made for Perry's benefit. Diminutive world. He scoffed, you don't know what you're talking about, my boy, and then he showed me a map of Pellucidar, which he had recently discovered among the manuscript he was arranging. Look, he cried, pointing to it. This is evidently water in all this land. Do you notice the general configuration of the two areas where the oceans are upon the outer crust is land. Here, these relatively small areas of ocean follow the general lines of the continents of the outer world. We know that the crust of the globe is five hundred miles in thickness, then the inside diameter of Pellucidar must be seven thousand miles, and the superficial area one hundred sixty five million, four hundred and eighty thousand square miles three fourths of this is land. Think of it a land area of one hundred and twenty four million, one hundred and ten thousand square miles. Our own world contains but fifty three million square miles of land, the balance of its surface being covered by water. Just as we often compare nations by their relative land areas, so if we compare these two worlds in the same way, we have the strange anomaly of a larger world within a smaller one. Where with invest Pellucidar, would you search for your Diane without stars or moon or changing sun, How could you find her even though you knew where she might be found? The proposition was a corker. It quite took my breath away, but I found that it left me all the more determined to attempt it. If Ghak will accompany us, we may be able to do it. I suggested Perry, and I sought him out and put the question straight to him. Ghak, I said, we are determined to escape from this bondage. Will you accompany us? They will set the thipdars upon us, he said, and then we shall be killed. But he hesitated. I would take the chance if I thought that I might possibly escape and return to my own people. Could you find your way back to your own land, asked Perry. And could you aid David in his search for Diane? Yes? But how persisted Perry. Could you travel to strange country without heavenly bodies or a compass to guide you? Ghak didn't know what Perry meant by heavenly bodies or a company us, but he assured us that you might blindfold any man of Pellucidar and carry him to the farthest corner of the world. Yet he would be able to come directly to his own home again by the shortest route. He seemed a surprised to think that we found anything wonderful in it. Perry said, it must be some sort of homing instinct, such as is possessed by certain breeds of earthly pigeons. I didn't know, of course, but it gave me an idea. Then Diane could have found her way directly to her own people, I asked, surely, replied Ghak, unless some mighty beast of prey killed her. I was for making the attempted escape at once, but both Perry and Ghak counseled waiting for some propitious accident which would insure us some small degree of success. I didn't see what accident could befall a whole community in a land of perpetual daylight, where the inhabitants had no fixed habits of sleep. Why, I am sure that some of the Mahars never sleep, while others may, at long intervals crawl into the dark recesses beneath their dwellings and curl up in protracted slumber. Perry says that if a Mahar stays awake for three years, he will make up all his lost sleep in a long year's snooze. That may all be true, But I never saw but three of them asleep. It was the sight of these three that gave me a suggestion for our means of escape. I had been searching out far below the levels that we slaves were supposed to frequent, possibly fifty feet beneath the main floor of the building, among a network of corridors and apartments, when I came suddenly upon three mahars curled up upon a bed of skins. At first I thought they were dead, but later their regular breathing convinced me of my error. Like a flash, the thought came to me of the marvelous opportunity these sleeping reptiles offered as a means of eluding the watchfulness of our captors and the Sagoth guards. Hastening back to Perry, where he pored over a musty pile of to me meaningless hieroglyphics, I explained my plan to him. To my surprise, he was horrified. It would be murder. David, he cried, to kill a reptilian monster, I asked, in astonishment. Here they are not monsters, David, he replied, Here they are the dominant race. We are the monsters. The lower orders. In Pellucidar, evolution has progressed along different lines that upon the outer Earth. These terrible convulsions of nature time and time again wiped out the existing species. But for this fact, some monster of the Saurozoic epoch might rule today. Upon our own world. We see here what might well have occurred in our own history, had conditions been what they have been. Here. Life within Pellucidar is far younger than upon the outer crust. Here man has but reached a stage analogous to the stone age of our own world's history. But for countless millions of years these reptiles have been progressing. Possibly it is the sixth sense, which I am sure they possess, that has given an advantage over the other and more frightfully armed of their fellows. But this we may never know. They look upon us as we look upon the beasts of our fields. From their written records that other races of Mahars feed upon men. They keep them in great droves, as we keep cattle. They breed them most carefully, and when they are quite fat, they kill and eat them. I shuddered, What is there horrible about it? David the old man asked, They understand us no better than we understand the lower animals of our own world. Why I have come across here? Varied learned discussions of the questions as to whether gilaks, that is, men have any means of communication. One writer claims that we do not even reason that our every act is mechanical or instinctive. The dominant race of Pellucidar David have not yet learned that men converse among themselves or reason. Because we do not converse as they do. Is beyond them to imagine that we converse at all. It is thus that we reason in relation to the brutes of our own world. They know that the Sagoths have a spoken language, but they cannot comprehend it or how it manifests itself, since they have no auditory apparatus. They believe that the motion of the lips alone convey the meeting. That the Sagoths can communicate with us is incomprehensible to them. Yes, David, he concluded, it would entail murder to carry out your plan very well, then, Perry, I replied, I shall become a murderer. He got me to go over the plan again most carefully, and for some reason which was not the time clear to me, insisted upon a very careful description of the apartments and quarters. I just explored. I wonder, David, he said, at length, as you are determined to carry out your wild scheme, if we could not accomplish something of very real and lasting benefit for the human race of Pellucidar. At the same time, listen, I have learned much of a most surprising nature from these archives of the Mahars, that you may not appreciate my plan. I shall briefly outline the history of the race. Once the males were all powerful, but ages ago, the females, little by little assumed the mastery. For other ages, no noticeable change took place in the race of Mahars. It continued to progress of the intelligent and beneficent rule of the ladies. Science took vast strides. This was especially true of the sciences which we know as biology and eugenics. Finally, a certain female scientist announced the fact that she had discovered a method whereby eggs might be fertilized by chemical means after they were laid. All true reptiles, you know, are hatched from eggs. What happened immediately the necessity for males ceased to exist. The race was no longer dependent upon them. More ages elapsed, until at the present time we find a race consisting exclusively of females. But here is the point. The secret of this chemical formula is kept by a single race of Mahars. It is in the city of Phutra, And unless I am greatly in error, I judge from your description of the vaults through which she passed to day that it lies hidden in the cellar of this building. For two reasons, they hide it away and guard it jealously. First because upon it depends the very life of the race of the Mahars, and second, owing to the fact that, when it was public property, as at first, so many were experimenting with it that the danger of over population became very grave. David, if we can escape and at the same time take with us this great secret, what will we not have accomplished for the human race within Pellucidar. The very thought of it fairly overpowered me. Why we two would be the means of placing the men of the inner world in their rightful place among created things. Only the Sagoths would then stand between them and absolute supremacy. And I was not quite sure, but that the Sagoths owed all their power to the greater intelligence of the Mahars. I could not believe that these gorilla like beasts were the mental superiors of the human race of Pellucidar. Why, Perry, I exclaimed, you and I may reclaim a whole world. Together, we can lead the races of men out of the darkness of ignorance into the light of advancement and civilization. At one step, we may carry them from the age of stuf Own to the twentieth century. It's marvelous, absolutely marvelous, just to think about it, David said the old man. I believe that God sent us here for just that purpose. It shall be my life work to teach them his word, to lead them into the light of His mercy. While we are training their hearts and hands in the ways of culture and civilization. You are right, Perry, I said, And while you are teaching them to pray, I'll be teaching them to fight. And between us we'll make a race of men that will be an honor to us both. Ghak had entered the apartment some time before we concluded our conversation, and now he wanted to know what we were so excited about. Parry thought we had best not tell him too much, and so I only explained that I had a plan for escape. When I had outlined it to him. He seemed about as horror struck as Perry had been, but for a different reason. The Hairy One only considered the horrible fate that would be ours were we discovered. But at last I prevailed upon him to accept my plan as the only feasible one, And when I had assured him that I would take all the responsibility for it were we captured, he accorded a reluctant assent end of Chapter five.