Jandar of Callisto

5. I GAIN MY FREEDOM

It is not difficult for me to analyze my feelings on hearing the news of this disaster. To be candid, a certain amount of personal interest occupied my mind. For were Koja to die, his hoard would fall to the next most powerful chieftain of the Yathoon, an arthropod known as Gamchan. While Koja treated me, if not kindly, at least not unkindly, Gamchan had often loudly remarked in my presence and that of Koja that I was no curiosity but an ugly hybrid―he mentioned two nations or races of which I had not heard ―"a by-blow of a Zanadar pirate and a Ku Thad" was how he expressed it.

I had gathered that Gamchan was jealous of Koja and sought by such unsubtle means to "put down" his prime curiosity―myself. Koja took no notice of the bad temper of the envious Gamchan, who was a minor chieftain of inferior rank and prowess, although next to Koja in the hierarchical structure of Horde command. But I had few illusions about the sort of treatment I might expect if ever I were unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of Gamchan.

But beyond the problem of my personal safety there was the simple matter of my indebtedness to Koja, who had not only saved me from the yathrib but had given me food and shelter in his retinue. So I questioned Sujat as to the nature and extent of Koja's injuries.

To my queries Sujat merely shrugged―or, rather, gave a negligent twitch of his brow antenna―a gesture which was the Yathoon equivalent of a shrug. I gathered that the Yathoon warriors take no care of their injured. Here again I saw the drawbacks of their lack of sentiment, and also the advantage inherent in their lack of innate cruelty. For among terrene barbarians, such as the Mongol horde, for example, the injured are often slain. At least his comrades had not bothered to dispatch the injured Koja: they had merely left him behind to die.

Among the possessions of Koja were a number of thaptors. These are the weird bird-horses the Thanatorians use for steeds. They are the size of terrene stallions, or perhaps a bit larger, and, like their equine counterparts on Earth, they have four legs, an arched neck, are ridden from a saddle and guided by reins and a bit. But there the resemblance to a horse ends. For the thaptor is a quadruped species of wingless bird, with clawed feet spurred like those of a rooster. Around the base of their skulls a stiff ruff of feathers extends, almost like a horse's mane. Their heads are very unhorselike, though, with sharp yellow parrot-beaks and glaring eyes wherein a bright orange pupil, ringed with a black iris, stares forth with fierce malignancy. These bird-horses are broken to the bridle with great difficulty and never become completely tractable, although they come at length to recognize their owners and are resigned to carrying them. But woe to the stranger who attempts to ride one!

Snatching up a clean cloth and a container of water, I went out into the compound where Koja's thaptors were constrained in pens. My heart was in my mouth and I confess to an extreme nervousness. I had fed and watered these thaptors many times, and I knew they would recognize me. Whether or not they would permit me astride their backs was another question, and one of considerable dubiety.

Sujat followed me curiously.

"What do you intend to do?" he inquired.

"I am going to help Koja," I said.

"But Koja is wounded," he said. There was a stolid finality behind his words which made them equate to "Koja is dead."

I climbed over the bars of the paddock and made soothing clucking sounds to one of the thaptors who had always seemed less unfriendly than the others.

"Wounds heal," I suggested. Sujat shrugged.

"What does it matter?" he asked indifferently.

"To you, nothing; to me, quite a bit," I said. "It is the difference between your kind and mine, Sujat."

I saddled the thaptor, who sidled restlessly but soon subsided at my touch. Then, daring much, I carefully climbed astride the thaptor, speaking quietly to him all the while. He peered about with his wide, round, mad little parrot's eye but did not seem particularly enraged to see me in the saddle. I began to relax.

"Where is Koja?" I asked. Sujat described the place; I thought I could find it without difficulty.

At my request, Sujat opened the paddock gate and I guided the thaptor out and down the narrow lane of beaten earth that ran between two rows of tents towards the south gate of the vast encampment. This being the noon hour, few warriors were abroad, most feeding in the quiet of their quarters. But many servitors were about, and these eyed me with stolid indifference, although if they had been human they must have been amazed to see a human riding one of their savage thaptors.

I had expected to have to argue with the guards at the perimeter of the encampment, but such was not the case. One guard hailed me.

"Where are you going, Jandar? You know you are not permitted beyond the encampment."

I should explain that to the vocal apparatus of the Thanatorians my name, Jon Dark, is slightly difficult to pronounce. On their tongues it sounds more like Zhandar, or Jandar. After several futile attempts to correct this pronunciation, I have become resigned to it. And I have been Jandar to the inhabitants of Thanator ever since.

"I am going to help the chieftain, Koja," I replied.

"But he is wounded!"

"That's why he needs my help," I returned.

He seemed somewhat nonplussed. He stood there, tall ungainly creature, the daylight glistening on his carapace of silvery gray chitin, fiddling with the hilt of his long whip-sword.

"But Koja is likely dead by now," he objected. "And it is his order that you may not venture beyond the perimeter of the camp."

"If Koja is dead then his orders are meaningless, is that not so?" I asked. Then, without waiting for a reply, but also without precipitous haste, I rode past him and left the puzzled guard standing there striving to figure out what to do.

I rode for the better part of an hour until I found where Koja had fallen. Several dead arthropods lay sprawled about, and from the unfamiliar thorax markings they wore I assumed them to have been warriors of the rival clan.

Koja had apparently dragged himself some distance and now lay partially propped up against the thorny bole of a sorad tree. The sorad is rare among the trees of the Thanatorian jungles in that, instead of having black wood and crimson foliage, it has crimson wood and black foliage. I knew that this rareness lent it a unique interest in the minds of the Yathoon, for they prize that which is unusual and hold almost in superstitious veneration that which is unique. Doubtless the rarity of the sorad tree lent it an aspect of reverence in the eyes of Koja, and hence he must have painfully dragged himself to its foot. Now he lay sluggish and dull-eyed, waiting for death, but sustained and heartened in some fashion by his proximity to the unusual tree.

He unlidded his eyes and turned their black glittering gaze on me as I approached, dismounted, and strode over to where he lay.

"Jandar? Why are you here?" he said faintly as I knelt down by him to examine his wounds.

"To give you assistance," I replied. He had sustained a terrible blow across the thorax. The bladed barb of an enemy's whip sword had laid open the horny covering of his thorax and he was losing his bodily fluids. A bubbling froth of colorless, oily liquid seeped from the edges of this ghastly wound and the sharp, medicinal stench of formic acid hung thickly about him.

Koja was somewhat more quick-witted than the majority of his race. But to his way of thinking it was incredible that one creature should render aid to another in this world where all beings were engaged in a relentless war against all other beings.

"Why should you wish to assist me?" he asked as I began tending to his injuries.

As I cleaned them as best I could with clean cloths soaked in fresh water, I replied absently: "Because you saved me from the fangs of the yathrib. Because you gave me food and shelter and the protection of your retinue in a world where all beings are strangers to me. And because you have not mistreated me."

"These are facts; they are not reasons," he protested.

"Very well, then. If you must have a reason, because I―" And here I was forced to hesitate. The Yathoon vocabulary contains no words for such concepts as "friendship" or "pity." The closest I could come was the word uhorz, which means something like "indebtedness."

"Because I feel uhorz towards you," I said finally.

"Uhorz?"

"Yes. And now please do not speak. I must draw the edges of your wound together tightly, and bind them thus, if they are to heal."

Somehow or other I got Koja back to the encampment, although we were forced to go very slowly so that the jogging pace of the thaptor would not open his wounds and cause him to lose yet more of his bodily fluids. I went afoot, leading the bird-horse at the end of the reins, while Koja rode upright in the saddle, swaying with weakness. I went as slowly and as carefully as possible so as to spare Koja as much pain as I could; but I believe he fainted at least twice during the journey. I had taken the precaution of strapping him securely in the saddle by means of strips torn from the wet cloths wherewith I had cleansed his wounds.

I found no difficulty in reentering the encampment. The guards stood about staring as I led the thaptor past them, but they made no attempt to interfere with my actions. If Koja lived, he was a chieftain of great power, authority, and prowess; if he died, it was a matter of complete indifference to them. So long as I had returned to camp and had not seized this opportunity to escape, they were vindicated in having permitted me to leave it in the first place.

Sujat and I put Koja to bed. The Yathoon sleep in a sort of nest of cloths: devilishly uncomfortable, to humans at least, but they seem to find the nests adequate. Koja had fallen into a deep trancelike sleep, and I did not attempt to awaken him, even so that he might partake of nourishment.

He slept an unbroken slumber for the next several days. As Sujat seemed indifferent to the condition of his master's health, I tended to the warrior myself. This was a simple matter. As the arthropods have no knowledge of the pharmaceutical arts, there were no salves or medicines or healing unguents with which I could treat his injuries. The most I could do was to change the bandages on his wounds once a day and make certain that fresh water and food were at hand, should he awaken and desire them.

Several times during these days the warrior Gamchan came to the area reserved for Koja's retinue and demanded entrance. Each time I told him my master was asleep and did not wish to be disturbed. He seemed baffled at my taking such unwonted authority upon myself and at a loss as to how to face me down. Repeatedly he asked me if Koja was dead: each time I replied, quite truthfully, that Koja lived. He went away, grumbling and dissatisfied, and each time it was more difficult to persuade him to desist from his attempts to enter.

I was not in the least afraid of Gamchan, for I was by now well aware of the enormous difference in strength between the insect creatures and a human being. But I had no desire to blatantly offend against the clan laws of the Yathoon Horde, or to risk the dangers of open enmity between a lowly possession like myself and a chieftain such as Gamchan.

Eventually, the wound seemed to be healing. Cartilage formed, uniting the lips of the wound, gradually hardening into chitin. Koja awoke and requested food. He was very weak, and famished, but he seemed to be mending. He inquired as to who had been tending him and I explained that I had been doing it myself. He made no reply to this, but after I found him eyeing me in a thoughtful fashion.

It was towards the end of the second month of my sojourn among the warriors of the Yathoon Horde that the orders came down that all should be made ready for the expected departure for the Secret Valley. Koja, who was now up and around and seemed almost entirely to have recovered from his near brush with death, came to me in my tent one night, shortly before the departure of the clan. In one hand he bore a bundle of garments and a whip-sword.

"Put these on, Jandar," he said solemnly.

I examined them curiously: they were the first body coverings of any kind that I had seen among the Yathoon, except for the ever-present baldric and shoulder scabbard. They consisted of a high-necked, open-throated leather tunic with short sleeves, a tunic obviously devised for an anatomy such as my own. The bottom of the tunic extended down to mid-thigh, and there was a loincloth for an undergarment, and soft supple buskins that laced up the ankles.

"What are these, Koja?"

"They are the raiment worn by creatures such as yourself," he replied calmly. "I have always wondered why such beings covered their bodies with these layers, but since you have been among my hoard possessions, I have observed that your body is softer than my own, and I assume that such coverings are designed to protect such softness against the sharp thorn-edged leaves of the jungle."

"That is thoughtful of you," I said. "Is the clan riding through the jungle, then?"

"The clan takes the hill road to the mountains," he said. "But the safest place for you will be the jungles."

My pulses began to race, as I perceived his meaning.

"You are permitting me to escape?" I asked.

"I am," he said. "Take this sword for your defense. And here is a packet of food. As soon as it is completely dark you can leave the tent and find your way to the perimeter with the least chance of discovery. Should any stop you, tell them that you are obeying a command of the chieftain Koja."

He turned away and opened the tent flap and would have gone without another word had I not halted him.

"Why are you doing this, Koja?" I asked.

He turned and regarded me for a long moment of silence. His black jeweled gaze held utterly no expression; the hard gleaming casque of his ovoid face was not capable of registering emotion, and his harsh metallic voice was able to suggest only a limited range of inflection. But there was a wealth of meaning in his words.

"I do this so that you will know that even a Yathoon warrior can feel―uhorz," he said simply.

And then he was gone.

And so I left the Yathoon encampment, where I had spent my first two months upon Thanator in captivity.

I found no difficulty in leaving the great camp, for the darkness of the night made visibility poor. Only one moon was aloft, lime-green Orovad, and in the bustle of preparation and the confusion of breaking camp, no one had eyes for the small human figure that slipped silently from shadow to shadow until it was well beyond the camp.

I faced the mysterious terrors of the Thanatorian jungles alone, but I was not afraid. I was clothed and armed, and a knapsack of food was upon my back. I did not know where I was going, but it was sufficient that I was free at last to go wherever I wished. I would have struck out for the Gate Between The Worlds had I known in which direction it lay, but I did not know, and so sudden and unexpected was the decision of Koja to give me my freedom that it had not occurred to me to ask its whereabouts.

I reached the edge of the jungle before the rising of the second moon, rose-red Imavad, and entered therein. For two nights and two days I traveled through the trackless jungles of Thanator, without the slightest idea of where I was going. Or even of my direction. I should explain that here upon Thanator ―I did not at this time know which of the twelve moons of Jupiter Thanator was―the sun is so distant that it is but the brightest of the stars. The surface of the jungle moon receives very little direct sunlight. I have never been able to decide the source of the light that bathes Thanator, but I suspect that it is the sunlight reflected from the enormous disk of giant Jupiter, or that reflected from the three huge moons that are almost always in the skies.

But I have also observed a curious phenomenon. The orbits of the major Jovian moons are endlessly complex, and there are times when only one moon is aloft in the skies of Thanator during the day. This, oddly enough, in no way diminishes the amount of daylight. The quantity of the daylight remains constant no matter how many moons are aloft, and whether or not the giant orb of Jupiter is visible. I have often wondered if what seems to be daylight is not some radiant effect of the upper atmosphere; I have mentioned earlier in this account of my adventures the odd appearance of the skies of Thanator―that appearance of a crawling film of golden mists. Perhaps the illumination of the moon's surface is somehow due to the effects of radiation striking that golden mist, which must be a layer of unknown gas high above the breathable air of Thanator. An effect perhaps akin to the light that flares from inert neon gas when an electrical current passes through it. You will of course be familiar with neon signs, that boon to the advertising profession: the inert vapor lies in glass tubes, which, when an electrical current is passed through them, blaze with light. Perhaps the upper layers of the atmosphere of Thanator are composed of neon, or of some comparable gas which, during the hours of daylight, is under the bombardment of electrical forces.

But this was only one of the baffling questions that had puzzled me during the many weeks of my captivity.

I had given considerable thought to the problem of just where I was. Astronomy has always interested me, and as I have a good head for figures and an almost photographic memory, I was able to recall quite a bit of information about the solar system, enough, it seemed, to base a firm opinion.

This, obviously, was one of the twelve moons of Jupiter. It could hardly be either of the two planets nearest to Jupiter, which are Mars and Saturn. Mars is something like three hundred million miles closer to the sun than Jupiter, and surely even that banded and Brobdingnagian giant would not bulk so hugely in its skies. Besides, Mars has only two moons and this world at least four.

Nor could it very easily be Saturn, and for much the same reasons. For Saturn was even farther away from Jupiter than was Mars―somewhere in the neighborhood of four hundred million miles distant.

The only bodies close enough to Jupiter for the giant world to bulk so enormously in their skies would be the Jovian satellites themselves. I recalled that some of these are quite large―lo, the second moon counting outwards from Jupiter, is about two thousand miles in diameter, only slightly smaller than Earth's own moon. Europa, the next of the satellites, is slightly smaller than that, while the fourth moon, Ganymede, with its diameter of more than three thousand miles, is perhaps the largest of all the moons in the solar system. The fifth moon, Callisto, has a diameter of about two thousand seven hundred miles. The moons beyond the orbit of Callisto, Hestia, Hera, Demeter, are all extremely small, with a diameter of eighty to ten miles each. These three I could safely eliminate from consideration. And the four outermost of the Jovian moons―Adrastea, Pan, Poseidon, and Hades―could also safely be eliminated because of their very small size, as well as their retrograde orbits. My conclusion, then, was easy and obvious. Three large moons and one very small one were visible in the night sky between this world of Thanator and its titanic primary; they must be the four innermost of the Jovian satellites, the first moon, Amalthea, and the three larger ones, lo, Europa, and Ganymede. Hence I decided, to my own satisfaction, at least, that Thanator was Callisto!

But if this is true, how can the gravity of Callisto be so very similar to that of Earth? Earth's diameter at the equator is 7,927 miles, almost three times larger than Callisto. It would seem natural for Callisto to have a gravity one third that of Earth, but such is not the case.

And how can a world so small hold an atmosphere? Earth's moon is only a little smaller than Callisto, and its gravity is insufficient to hold anything like this thick rich air that I had been breathing now for two months. Would I ever find the answer to these mysteries?

During the entire period of my stay on Thanator, I have never ceased to puzzle over the curious and baffling anomalies between what I knew the surface of a Jovian satellite should be like, and the living reality through which I moved.

Everything that the terrene astronomers had ever discovered about the conditions on other worlds made it clear that Callisto should be a dead, frozen, airless world of jagged peaks and ammonia snow. Yet I walked through a jungle landscape of weird, terrific grandeur, limned in vivid and unlikely hues, and teeming with exotic life.

To this day I have not discovered the answer to this riddle.

On the third day of my freedom, I was suddenly arrested by the sounds of a battle some distance ahead of me.

I had been remarkably fortunate in that my journey through the black and crimson jungles had thus far brought me into no dangerous encounter with any of the ferocious predators wherewith this planet swarmed. In part this was due, I suppose, to blind chance or luck; but to some degree it was the result of a certain oily cream prepared by the arthropods. This substance, the distillation of an herbal sap, had the peculiar property of protecting the traveler who smeared himself therewith from the attack of a yathrib. For, although odorless to my nostrils at least, the substance is extremely offensive to the yathrib.

The Yathoon hunters use it to drive the yathrib from their proximity while engaged in rounding up a beast called the vastodon, which they hunt for its succulent meat. The yathrib is a predator who does not scruple to attack even a Yathoon hunter, and when one of the tribal hunts are in session the fearsome dragon-cat of the Thanatorian jungle has the annoying habit of lying low while the hunters round up their meat-beasts, and then charging in to carry off a prize for itself. The offensive cream, therefore, is a valuable adjunct to these meat-gathering expeditions, and I had taken the precaution to carry off a jar and kept my bare arms and legs liberally smeared with the oily stuff.

I burst through a wall of foliage into a small glade or clearing, and an astounding tableau met my eyes.

At one end of the clearing a snarling, hulking brute crouched, about to charge.

Facing him, her back against a tree trunk, her hands empty of any weapon, a young and beautiful woman faced the predator . . . and at last I knew for certain that the jungle moon of Thanator was inhabited by humans like me!