PHUNDAHL
The following night the Toonolian crew set us down just inside the wall
of the city of Phundahl, following the directions of Dar Tarus who was a
native of the city, had been a warrior of the Jeddara’s Guard and, prior
to that, seen service in Phundahl’s tiny navy. That he was familiar with
every detail of Phundahl’s defences and her systems of patrols was
evidenced by the fact that we landed without detection and that the
Toonolian ship rose and departed apparently unnoticed.
Our landing place had been the roof of a low building built within and
against the city wall. From this roof Dar Tarus led us down an inclined
runway to the street, which, at this point, was quite deserted. The
street was narrow and dark, being flanked upon one side by the low
buildings built against the city wall and upon the other by higher
buildings, some of which were windowless and none showing any light. Dar
Tarus explained that he had chosen this point for our entrance because
it was a district of storage houses, and while a hive of industry during
the day, was always deserted at night, not even a watchman being
required owing to the almost total absence of thievery upon Barsoom.
By devious and roundabout ways he led us finally to a section of
second-rate shops, eating places and hotels such as are frequented by
the common soldiers, artisans and slaves, where the only attention we
attracted was due to the curiosity aroused by Hovan Du. As we had not
eaten since leaving Mu Tel’s palace, our first consideration was food.
Mu Tel had furnished Gor Hajus with money, so that we had the means to
gratify our wants. Our first stop was at a small shop where Gor Hajus
purchased four or five pounds of thoat steak for Hovan Du, and then we
repaired to an eating place of which Dar Tarus knew. At first the
proprietor would not let us bring Hovan Du inside, but finally, after
much argument, he permitted us to lock the great ape in an inner room
where Hovan Du was forced to remain with his thoat meat while we sat at
a table in the outer room.
I will say for Hovan Du that he played his role well, nor was there once
when the proprietor of the place, or any of his patrons, or the
considerable crowd that gathered to listen to the altercation, could
have guessed that the body of the great, savage beast was animated by a
human brain. It was really only when feeding or fighting that the simian
half of Hovan Du’s brain appeared to exercise any considerable influence
upon him; yet there seemed little doubt that it always coloured all his
thoughts and actions to some extent, accounting for his habitual
taciturnity and the quickness with which he was aroused to anger, as
well as to the fact that he never smiled, nor appeared to appreciate in
any degree the humor of a situation. He assured me, however, that the
human half of his brain not only appreciated but greatly enjoyed the
lighter episodes and occurrences of our adventure and the witty stories
and anecdotes related by Gor Hajus, the Assassin, but that his simian
anatomy had developed no muscles wherewith to evidence physical
expression of his mental reactions.
We dined heartily, though upon rough and simple fare, but were glad to
escape the prying curiosity of the garrulous and gossipy proprietor, who
plied us with so many questions as to our past performances and future
plans that Dar Tarus, who was our spokesman here, was hard put to it to
quickly fabricate replies that would be always consistent. However,
escape we did at last, and once again in the street, Dar Tarus set out
to lead us to a public lodging house of which he knew. As we went we
approached a great building of wondrous beauty in and out of which
constant streams of people were pouring, and when we were before it Dar
Tarus asked us to wait without as he must enter. When I asked him why,
he told me that this was a temple of Tur, the god worshipped by the
people of Phundahl.
“I have been away for a long time,” he said, “and have had no
opportunity to do honor to my god. I shall not keep you waiting long.
Gor Hajus, will you loan me a few pieces of gold?”
In silence the Toonolian took a few pieces of money from one of his
pocket pouches and handed them to Dar Tarus, but I could see that it was
only with difficulty that he hid an expression of contempt, since the
Toonolians are atheists.
I asked Dar Tarus if I might accompany him into the temple, which seemed
to please him very much; and so we fell in with the stream approaching
the broad entrance. Dar Tarus gave me two of the gold pieces that he had
borrowed from Gor Hajus and told me to follow directly behind him and do
whatever I saw him doing. Directly inside the main entrance, and spread
entirely across it at intervals that permitted space for the worshippers
to pass between them, was a line of priests, their entire bodies,
including their heads and faces, covered by a mantle of white cloth. In
front of each was a substantial stand upon which rested a cash drawer.
As we approached one of these we handed him a piece of gold which he
immediately changed into many pieces of lesser value, one of which we
dropped into a box at his side; whereupon he made several passes with
his hands above our heads, dipped one of his fingers into a bowl of
dirty water which he rubbed upon the ends of our noses, mumbled a few
words which I could not understand and turned to the next in line as we
passed on into the interior of the great temple. Never have I seen such
a gorgeous display of wealth and lavish ornamentation as confronted my
eyes in this, the first of the temples of Tur that it was my fortune to
behold.
The enormous floor was unbroken by a single pillar and arranged upon it
at regular intervals were carven images resting upon gorgeous pedestals.
Some of these images were of men and some of women and many of them were
beautiful; and there were others of beasts and of strange, grotesque
creatures and many of these were hideous indeed. The first we approached
was that of a beautiful female figure; and about the pedestal of this
lay a number of men and women prone upon the floor against which they
bumped their heads seven times and then arose and dropped a piece of
money into a receptacle provided for that purpose, moving on then to
another figure. The next that Dar Tarus and I visited was that of a man
with the body of a _silian_, about the pedestal of which was arranged a
series of horizontal wooden bars in concentric circles. The bars were
about five feet from the floor and hanging from them by their knees were
a number of men and women, repeating monotonously, over and over again,
something that sounded to me like, _bibble-babble-blup_.
Dar Tarus and I swung to the bars like the others and mumbled the
meaningless phrase for a minute or two, then we swung down, dropped a
coin into the box, and moved on. I asked Dar Tarus what the words were
that we had repeated and what they meant, but he said he did not know. I
asked him if anyone knew, but he appeared shocked and said that such a
question was sacrilegious and revealed a marked lack of faith. At the
next figure we visited the people were all upon their hands and knees
crawling madly in a circle about the pedestal. Seven times around they
crawled and then they arose and put some money in a dish and went their
ways. At another the people rolled about, saying, “Tur is Tur; Tur is
Tur; Tur is Tur,” and dropping money in a golden bowl when they were
done.
“What god was that?” I whispered to Dar Tarus when we had quit this last
figure, which had no head, but eyes, nose and mouth in the center of its
belly.
“There is but one god,” replied Dar Tarus solemnly, “and he is Tur!”
“Was that Tur?” I inquired.
“Silence, man,” whispered Dar Tarus. “They would tear you to pieces were
they to hear such heresy.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” I exclaimed. “I did not mean to offend. I see
now that that is merely one of your idols.”
Dar Tarus clapped a hand over my mouth. “S-s-s-t!” he cautioned to
silence. “We do not worship idols—there is but one god and he is Tur!”
“Well, what are these?” I insisted, with a sweep of a hand that embraced
the several score images about which were gathered the thousands of
worshippers.
“We must not ask,” he assured me. “It is enough that we have faith that
all the works of Tur are just and righteous. Come! I shall soon be
through and we may join our companions.”
He led me next to the figure of a monstrosity with a mouth that ran
entirely around its head. It had a long tail and the breasts of a woman.
About this image were a great many people, each standing upon his head.
They also were repeating, over and over, “Tur is Tur; Tur is Tur; Tur is
Tur.” When we had done this for a minute or two, during which I had a
devil of a time maintaining my equilibrium, we arose, dropped a coin
into the box by the pedestal and moved on.
“We may go now,” said Dar Tarus. “I have done well in the sight of Tur.”
“I notice,” I remarked, “that the people repeated the same phrase before
this figure that they did at the last—Tur is Tur.”
“Oh, no,” exclaimed Dar Tarus. “On the contrary they said just exactly
the opposite from what they said at the other. At that they said, Tur is
Tur; while at this they absolutely reversed it and said, Tur is Tur. Do
you not see? They turned it right around backwards, which makes a very
great difference.”
“It sounded the same to me,” I insisted.
“That is because you lack faith,” he said sadly, and we passed out of
the temple, after depositing the rest of our money in a huge chest, of
which there were many standing about almost filled with coins.
We found Gor Hajus and Hovan Du awaiting us impatiently, the center of a
large and curious throng among which were many warriors in the metal of
Xaxa, the Jeddara of Phundahl. They wanted to see Hovan Du perform, but
Dar Tarus told them that he was tired and in an ugly mood.
“To-morrow,” he said, “when he is rested I shall bring him out upon the
avenues to amuse you.”
With difficulty we extricated ourselves, and passing into a quieter
avenue, took a roundabout way to the lodging place, where Hovan Du was
confined in a small chamber while Gor Hajus, Dar Tarus and I were
conducted by slaves to a large sleeping apartment where sleeping silks
and furs were arranged for us upon a low platform that encircled the
room and was broken only at the single entrance to the chamber. Here
were already sleeping a considerable number of men, while two armed
slaves patrolled the aisle to guard the guests from assassins.
It was still early and some of the other lodgers were conversing in low
whispers so I sought to engage Dar Tarus in conversation relative to his
religion, about which I was curious.
“The mysteries of religions always fascinate me, Dar Tarus,” I told him.
“Ah, but that is the beauty of the religion of Tur,” he exclaimed, “it
has no mysteries. It is simple, natural, scientific and every word and
work of it is susceptible of proof through the pages of Turgan, the
great book written by Tur himself.
“Tur’s home is upon the sun. There, one hundred thousand years ago, he
made Barsoom and tossed it out into space. Then he amused himself by
creating man in various forms and two sexes; and later he fashioned
animals to be food for man and each other, and caused vegetation and
water to appear that man and the animals might live. Do you not see how
simple and scientific it all is?”
But it was Gor Hajus who told me most about the religion of Tur one day
when Dar Tarus was not about. He said that the Phundahlians maintained
that Tur still created every living thing with his own hands. They
denied vigorously that man possessed the power to reproduce his kind and
taught their young that all such belief was vile; and always they hid
every evidence of natural procreation, insisting to the death that even
those things which they witnessed with their own eyes and experienced
with their own bodies in the bringing forth of their young never
transpired.
Turgan taught them that Barsoom is flat and they shut their minds to
every proof to the contrary. They would not leave Phundahl far for fear
of falling off the edge of the world; they would not permit the
development of aeronautics because should one of their ships
circumnavigate Barsoom it would be a wicked sacrilege in the eyes of Tur
who made Barsoom flat.
They would not permit the use of telescopes, for Tur taught them that
there was no other world than Barsoom and to look at another would be
heresy; nor would they permit the teaching in their schools of any
history of Barsoom that antedated the creation of Barsoom by Tur, though
Barsoom has a well authenticated written history that reaches back more
than one hundred thousand years; nor would they permit any geography of
Barsoom except that which appears in Turgan, nor any scientific
researches along biological lines. Turgan is their only text book—if it
is not in Turgan it is a wicked lie.
Much of all this and a great deal more I gathered from one source or
another during my brief stay in Phundahl, whose people are, I believe,
the least advanced in civilization of any of the red nations upon
Barsoom. Giving, as they do, all their best thought to religious
matters, they have become ignorant, bigoted and narrow, going as far to
one extreme as the Toonolians do to the other.
However, I had not come to Phundahl to investigate her culture but to
steal her queen, and that thought was uppermost in my mind when I awoke
to a new day—my first in Phundahl. Following the morning meal we set
out in the direction of the palace to reconnoitre, Dar Tarus leading us
to a point from which he might easily direct us the balance of the way,
as he did not dare accompany us to the immediate vicinity of the royal
grounds for fear of recognition, the body he now possessed having
formerly belonged to a well-known noble.
It was arranged that Gor Hajus should act as spokesman and I as keeper
of the ape. This arranged, we bade farewell to Dar Tarus and set forth,
the three of us, along a broad and beautiful avenue that led directly to
the palace gates. We had been planning and rehearsing the parts that we
were to play and which we hoped would prove so successful that they
would open the gates to us and win us to the presence of the Jeddara.
As we strolled with seeming unconcern along the avenue, I had ample
opportunity to enjoy the novel and beautiful sights of this rich
boulevard of palaces. The sun shone down upon vivid scarlet lawns,
gorgeous flowered pimalia and a score of other rarely beautiful
Barsoomian shrubs and trees, while the avenue itself was shaded by
almost perfect specimens of the magnificent sorapus. The sleeping
apartments of the buildings had all been lowered to their daytime level,
and from a hundred balconies gorgeous silks and furs were airing in the
sun. Slaves were briskly engaged with their duties about the grounds,
while upon many a balcony women and children sat at their morning meal.
Among the children we aroused considerable enthusiasm, or at least Hovan
Du did, nor was he without interest to the adults. Some of them would
have detained us for an exhibition, but we moved steadily on towards the
palace, for nowhere else had we business or concern within the walls of
Phundahl.
Around the palace gates was the usual crowd of loitering curiosity
seekers; for after all human nature is much the same everywhere, whether
skins be black or white, red or yellow or brown, upon Earth or upon
Mars. The crowd before Xaxa’s gates were largely made up of visitors
from the islands of that part of the Great Toonolian Marshes which owes
allegiance to Phundahl’s queen, and like all provincials eager for a
glimpse of royalty; though none the less to be interested by the antics
of a simian, wherefore we had a ready made audience awaiting our
arrival. Their natural fear of the great brute caused them to fall back
a little at our approach so that we had a clear avenue to the very gates
themselves, and there we halted while the crowds closed in behind,
forming a half circle about us. Gor Hajus addressed them in a loud tone
of voice that might be overheard by the warriors and their officers
beyond the gates, for it was really them we had come to entertain, not
the crowds in which we had not the slightest interest.
“Men and women of Phundahl,” cried Gor Hajus, “behold two poor panthans,
who, risking their lives, have captured and trained one of the most
savage and ferocious and at the same time most intelligent specimens of
the great white ape of Barsoom ever before seen in captivity and at
great expense have brought it to Phundahl for your entertainment and
edification. My friends, this wonderful ape is endowed with human
intelligence; he understands every word that is spoken to him. With your
kind attention, my friends, I will endeavor to demonstrate the
remarkable intelligence of this ferocious, man-eating beast—an
intelligence that has entertained the crowned heads of Barsoom and
mystified the minds of her most learned savants.”
I thought Gor Hajus did pretty well as a bally-hoo artist. I had to
smile as I listened, here upon Mars, to the familiar lines that I had
taught him out of my Earthly experience of county fairs and amusement
parks, so highly ludicrous they sounded falling from the lips of the
Assassin of Toonol; but they evidently interested his auditors and
impressed them, too, for they craned their necks and stood in earnest
eyed silence awaiting the performance of Hovan Du. Even better, several
members of the Jeddara’s Guard pricked up their ears and sauntered
towards the gates; and among them was an officer.
Gor Hajus caused Hovan Du to lie down at word of command, to get up, to
stand upon one foot, and to indicate the number of fingers that Gor
Hajus held up by growling once for each finger, thus satisfying the
audience that he could count; but these simple things were only by way
of leading up to the more remarkable achievements which we hoped would
win an audience before the Jeddara. Gor Hajus borrowed a set of harness
and weapons from a man in the crowd and had Hovan Du don it and fence
with him, and then indeed did we hear exclamations of amazement.
The warriors and the officer of Xaxa had drawn near the gates and were
interested spectators, which was precisely what we wished, and now Gor
Hajus was ready for the final, astounding revelation of Hovan Du’s
intelligence.
“These things that you have witnessed are as nothing,” he cried. “Why
this wonderful beast can even read and write. He was captured in a
deserted city near Ptarth and can read and write the language of that
country. Is there among you one who, by chance, comes from that distant
country?”
A slave spoke up. “I am from Ptarth.”
“Good!” said Gor Hajus. “Write some simple instructions and hand them to
the ape. I will turn my back that you may know that I cannot assist him
in any way.”
The slave drew forth a tablet from a pocket pouch and wrote briefly.
What he wrote he handed to Hovan Du. The ape read the message and
without hesitation moved quickly to the gate and handed it to the
officer standing upon the other side, the gate being constructed of
wrought metal in fanciful designs that offered no obstruction to the
view or to the passage of small articles. The officer took the message
and examined it.
“What does it say?” he demanded of the slave that had penned it.
“It says,” replied the latter: “Take this message to the officer who
stands just within the gates.”
There were exclamations of surprise from all parts of the crowd and
Hovan Du was compelled to repeat his performance several times with
different messages which directed him to do various things, the officer
always taking a great interest in the proceedings.
“It is marvellous,” said he at last. “The Jeddara would be amused by the
performance of this beast. Wait here, therefore, until I have sent word
to her that she may, if she so desires, command your presence.”
Nothing could have better suited us and so we waited with what patience
we might for the messenger to return; and while we waited Hovan Du
continued to mystify his audience with new proofs of his great
intelligence.