The Master Mind of Mars. Edgar Rice Burroughs

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ women would have gone mad with the horror and grief of it--to lose such wondrous beauty as was yours-- and you do not care."

      "Oh, yes, I care, my friend," she corrected me, "but I do not care enough to ruin my life in all other respects because of it, or to cast a shadow upon the lives of those around me. I have had my beauty and enjoyed it. It is not an unalloyed happiness I can assure you. Men killed one another because of it; two great nations went to war because of it; and perhaps my father lost his throne or his life--I do not know, for I was captured by the enemy while the war still raged. It may be raging yet and men dying because I was too beautiful. No one will fight for me now, though," she added, with a rueful smile.

      "Do you know how long you have been here?" I asked.

      "Yes," she replied. "It was the day before yesterday that they brought me hither."

      "It was ten years ago," I told her.

      "Ten years! Impossible."

      I pointed to the corpses around us. "You have lain like this for ten years," I explained. "There are subjects here who have lain thus for fifty, Ras Thavas tells me."

      "Ten years! Ten years! What may not have happened in ten years! It is better thus. I should fear to go back now. I should not want to know that my father, my mother too, perhaps, were gone. It is better thus. Perhaps you will let me sleep again? May I not?"

      "That remains with Ras Thavas," I replied; "but for a while I am to observe you."

      "Observe me?"

      "Study you--your reactions."

      "Ah! and what good will that do?"

      "It may do some good in the world."

      "It may give this horrid Ras Thavas some new ideas for his torture chamber--some new scheme for coining money from the suffering of his victims," she said, her harsh voice saddened.

      "Some of his works are good," I told her. "The money he makes permits him to maintain this wonderful establishment where he constantly carries on countless experiments. Many of his operations are beneficent. Yesterday a warrior was brought in whose arm was crushed beyond repair. Ras Thavas gave him a new arm. A demented child was brought. Ras Thavas gave her a new brain. The arm and the brain were taken from two who had met violent deaths. Through Ras Thavas they were permitted, after death, to give life and happiness to others."

      She thought for a moment. "I am content," she said. "I only hope that you will always be the observer."

      Presently Ras Thavas came and examined her. "A good subject," he said. He looked at the chart where I had made a very brief record following the other entries relative to the history of Case No. 4296-E-2631-H. Of course this is, naturally, a rather free translation of this particular identification number. The Barsoomians have no alphabet such as ours and their numbering system is quite different. The thirteen characters above were represented by four Toonolian characters, yet the meaning was quite the same--they represented, in contracted form, the case number, the room, the table and the building.

      "The subject will be quartered near you where you may regularly observe it," continued Ras Thavas. "There is a chamber adjoining yours. I will see that it is unlocked. Take the subject there. When not under your observation, lock it in."

      It was only another case to him.

      I took the girl, if I may so call her, to her quarters. On the way I asked her her name, for it seemed to me an unnecessary discourtesy always to address her and refer to her as 4296-E-2631-H, and this I explained to her.

      "It is considerate of you to think of that," she said, "but really that is all that I am here--just another subject for vivisection."

      "You are more than that to me," I told her. "You are friendless and helpless. I want to be of service to you--to make your lot easier if I can."

      "Thank you again," she said. "My name is Valla Dia, and yours?"

      "Ras Thavas calls me Vad Varo," I told her.

      But that is not your name?"

      "My name is Ulysses Paxton."

      "It is a strange name, unlike any that I have ever heard, but you are unlike any man I have ever seen--you do not seem Barsoomian. Your colour is unlike that of any race."

      "I am not of Barsoom, but from Earth, the planet you sometimes call Jasoom. That is why I differ in appearance from any you have known before."

      "Jasoom! There is another Jasoomian here whose fame has reached to the remotest corners of Barsoom, but I never have seen him."

      "John Carter?" I asked.

      "Yes, The War Lord. He was of Helium and my people were not friendly with those of Helium. I never could understand how he came here. And now there is another from Jasoom--how can it be? How did you cross the great void?"

      I shook my head. "I cannot even guess," I told her.

      "Jasoom must be peopled with wonderful men," she said. It was a pretty compliment.

      "As Barsoom is with beautiful women," I replied.

      She glanced down ruefully at her old and wrinkled body.

      "I have seen the real you," I said gently.

      "I hate to think of my face," she said. "I know it is a frightful thing."

      "It is not you, remember that when you see it and do not feel too bad."

      "Is it as bad as that?" she asked.

      I did not reply.

      "Never mind," she said presently. "If I had not beauty of the soul, I was not beautiful, no matter how perfect my features may have been; but if I possessed beauty of soul then I have it now. So I can think beautiful thoughts and perform beautiful deeds and that, I think, is the real test of beauty, after all."

      "And there is hope," I added, almost in a whisper.

      "Hope? No, there is no hope, if what you mean to suggest is that I may some time regain my lost self. You have told me enough to convince me that that can never be."

      "We will not speak of it," I said, "but we may think of it and sometimes thinking a great deal of a thing helps us to find a way to get it, if we want it badly enough."

      "I do not want to hope," she said, "for it will but mean disappointment for me. I shall be happy as I am. Hoping, I should always be unhappy."

      I had ordered food for her and after it was brought Ras Thavas sent for me and I left her, locking the door of her chamber as the old surgeon had instructed. I found Ras Thavas in his office, a small room which adjoined a very large one in which were a score of clerks arranging and classifying reports from various departments of the great laboratory. He arose as I entered.

      "Come with me, Vad Varo," he directed. "We will have a look at the two cases in L-42-X, the two of which I spoke."

      "The man with half a simian brain and the ape with a half human brain?" I asked.

      He nodded and preceded me towards the runway that led to the vaults beneath the building. СКАЧАТЬ