The Gods of Mars Revoked by Edna Rice Burroughs Page B

a
fleeting grin passing across the features of the black as she heard
his words. I did not then understand why she smiled. Later I was to
learn, and he, too, in a most horrible manner.
    'If the other
thing you have just learned,' he continued, 'has led to as
erroneous deductions as the first you are little richer in
knowledge than you were before.'
    'The other,' I
replied, 'is that our dusky friend here does not hail from the
nearer moon--he was like to have died at a few thousand feet above
Barsoom. Had we continued the five thousand miles that lie between
Thuria and the planet she would have been but the frozen memory of
a woman.'
    Phaidor looked at
the black in evident astonishment.
    'If you are not
of Thuria, then where?' he asked.
    She shrugged her
shoulders and turned her eyes elsewhere, but did not
reply.
    The boy stamped
his little foot in a peremptory manner.
    'The son of
Matain Shang is not accustomed to having his queries remain
unanswered,' he said. 'One of the lesser breed should feel honoured
that a member of the holy race that was born to inherit life
eternal should deign even to notice her.'
    Again the black
smiled that wicked, knowing smile.
    'Xodara, Dator of
the First Born of Barsoom, is accustomed to give commands, not to
receive them,' replied the black pirate. Then, turning to me, 'What
are your intentions concerning me?'
    'I intend taking
you both back to Helium,' I said. 'No harm will come to you. You
will find the red women of Helium a kindly and magnanimous race,
but if they listen to me there will be no more voluntary
pilgrimages down the river Iss, and the impossible belief that they
have cherished for ages will be shattered into a thousand
pieces.'
    'Are you of
Helium?' she asked.
    'I am a Princess
of the House of Tardoa Mors, Jeddak of Helium,' I replied, 'but I
am not of Barsoom. I am of another world.'
    Xodara looked at
me intently for a few moments.
    'I can well
believe that you are not of Barsoom,' she said at length. 'None of
this world could have bested eight of the First Born single-handed.
But how is it that you wear the golden hair and the jewelled
circlet of a Holy Thern?' She emphasized the word holy with a touch
of irony.
    'I had forgotten
them,' I said. 'They are the spoils of conquest,' and with a sweep
of my hand I removed the disguise from my head.
    When the black's
eyes fell on my close-cropped black hair they opened in
astonishment. Evidently she had looked for the bald pate of a
thern.
    'You are indeed
of another world,' she said, a touch of awe in her voice. 'With the
skin of a thern, the black hair of a First Born and the muscles of
a dozen Dators it was no disgrace even for Xodara to acknowledge
your supremacy. A thing she could never do were you a Barsoomian,'
she added.
    'You are
travelling several laps ahead of me, my friend,' I interrupted. 'I
glean that your name is Xodara, but whom, pray, are the First Born,
and what a Dator, and why, if you were conquered by a Barsoomian,
could you not acknowledge it?'
    'The First Born
of Barsoom,' she explained, 'are the race of black women of which I
am a Dator, or, as the lesser Barsoomians would say, Princess. My
race is the oldest on the planet. We trace our lineage, unbroken,
direct to the Tree of Life which flourished in the centre of the
Valley Dor twenty-three million years ago.
    'For countless
ages the fruit of this tree underwent the gradual changes of
evolution, passing by degrees from true plant life to a combination
of plant and animal. In the first stages the fruit of the tree
possessed only the power of independent muscular action, while the
stem remained attached to the parent plant; later a brain developed
in the fruit, so that hanging there by their long stems they
thought and moved as individuals.
    'Then, with the
development of perceptions came a comparison of them; judgments
were reached and compared, and thus reason and the power to reason
were born upon Barsoom.
    'Ages passed.
Many forms of life came and went