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ERB'S EMBRYONIC JOURNEY:
THE TRIMESTERS OF CASPAK

INTRO AND CONTENTS PAGE
Part Eighteen
by
Woodrow Edgar Nichols, Jr.
(Dedicated to George McWhorter)

OUT OF TIME’S ABYSS
(Chapter 1)

INTRODUCTION
We leave the familiar territory of our first person narrators and enter into the third person told largely from one person’s point of view, that of the British Tug Boat first mate, Bradley. I have given my theory of why there is a change in the mode of narration, and that is that Bradley, being the epitome of efficiency, would have told the whole story in one short chapter. We got a whiff of his style in the very brief report he submitted to Bowen Tyler after his first exploratory expedition. But that is only a theory. To tell you the truth, I just don’t know why. Maybe he was just bored with the first person. As it is, Chapter 1 of Out of Time’s Abyss, the third book in the Caspakian Trilogy, begins like this:

“This is the story of Bradley, after he left Fort Dinosaur upon the west coast of the great lake that is in the center of the island.” (OTA/1.)

Logically, the person telling the story is likely the Unidentified Narrator (U.N.) of the first two books. Bradley and the survivors of his ill-fated expedition probably told the U.N. their account and he then embellished it dramatically. As mentioned before, ERB was an early master of horror, and the Wieroo’s are very scary creatures, especially in the way they think. Bradley’s experience among the Wieroo is a very gripping story. But see for yourself.

“Upon the fourth day of September, 1916, he set out with four companions, Sinclair, Brady, James, and Tippet, to search along the base of the barrier cliffs for a point at which they might be scaled.” (OTA/1.)

We must recall what a debacle of timing this expedition was. It depleted the amount of non-Germans among the Fort Dinosaur crowd, tilting the balance of power. We are not sure if oil had been yet discovered, but I submit that they left right before the discovery. Otherwise, I assume that Bradley would have been intelligent enough to realize that the fragile allliance for survival between the British, Americans, and Germans would have been short lived. But that is water under the bridge. They had enough worries of their own to be too concerned over what was happening at Fort Dinosaur.

“Through the heavy Caspakian air, beneath the swollen sun, the five men marched northwest from Fort Dinosaur, now waist-deep in lush, jungle grasses starred with myriad gorgeous blooms, now across open meadlow-land and parklike expanses and again plunging into dense forests of eucalyptus and acacia and giant arboreous ferns with feathered fronds waving gently a hundred feet above their heads. 
“About them upon the ground, among the trees and in the air over them moved and swung and soared the countless forms of Caspak’s teeming life. Always were they menaced by some frightful thing and seldom were their rifles cool, yet even in the brief time they had dwelt upon Caprona they had become callous to danger, so that they swung along laughing and chatting like soldiers on a summer hike.” (OTA/1.)

As you will recall, the men of Caspak have a similar attitude about the terror they face on a minute to minute basis. This appears to be an universal human adaptive quality. Otherwise everyone would be frozen powerless in fear and no one would survive.

“‘This reminds me of South Clark Street,’ remarked Brady, who had once served on the traffic squad in Chicago; and as no one asked him why, he volunteered that it was ‘because it’s no place for an Irishman.’
“South Clark Street and heaven have something in common, then,’ suggested Sinclair. James and Tippet laughed, and then a hideous growl broke from a dense thicket ahead and diverted their attention to other matters.” (OTA/1.)

I have no idea what South Clark Street and Irishmen and heaven have in common, but this may refer to Chicago's infamous South Side of which Al Capone was so infamous. Perhaps a Chicago Mucker can help me out on this one. You can contact me at woodrownichols@aol.com, if you have any knowledge you would like to share.

“‘One of them behemoths of “Oly Writ,’ muttered Tippet as they came to a halt and with guns ready awaited the almost inevitable charge.
“‘Hungry lot o’ beggars, these,’ said Bradley; ‘always trying to eat everything they see.’
“For a moment no further sound came from the thicket. ‘He may be feeding now,’ suggested Bradley. ‘We’ll try to go around him. Can’t waste ammunition. Won’t last forever. Follow me.’ And he set off at right angles to their former course, hoping to avert a charge. They had taken a dozen steps, perhaps, when the thicket moved to the advance of the thing within it, the leafy branches parted, and the hideous head of a gigantic bear emerged.
“‘Pick your trees,’ whispered Bradley. ‘Can’t waste ammunition.’
“The men looked about them. The bear took a couple of steps forward, still growling menacingly. He was exposed to the shoulders now. Tippet took one look at the monster and bolted for the nearest tree; and then the bear charged. He charged straight for Tippet. The other men scattered for the various trees they had selected – all except Bradley. He stood watching Tippet and the bear. The man had a good start and the tree was not far away; but the speed of the enormous creature behind him was something to marvel at, yet Tippet was in a fair way to make his sanctuary when his foot caught in a tangle of roots and down he went, his rifle flying from his hand, and falling several yards away. Instantly Bradley’s piece was at his shoulder, there was a sharp report answered by a roar of mingled rage and pain from the carnivore. Tippet attempted to scramble to his feet.” (OTA/1.)

We know that Tippet does not die at this time, for we know that Bowen Tyler discovered his marked grave months later and discovered that a T-Rex had taken him down. But here we get a foretaste of what brought him down. Tripping and losing his weapon is not a good way to survive in Caspak. Anyway, back to the action:

“‘Lie still!’ shouted Bradley. ‘Can’t waste ammunition.’
“The bear halted in its tracks, wheeled toward Bradley, and then back again toward Tippet. Again the former’s rifle spit angrily, and the bear turned again in his direction. Bradley shouted loudly. ‘Come on, you behemoth of Holy Writ!’ he cried. ‘Come on, you duffer! Can’t waste ammunition.’ And as he saw the bear apparently upon the verge of deciding to charge him, he encouraged the idea by backing rapidly away, knowing that an angry beast will more often charge one who moves than one who lies still.
“And the bear did charge. Like a bolt of lightning he flashed down upon the Englishman. ‘Now run!’ Bradley called to Tippet and himself turned in flight toward a nearby tree. The other men, now safely ensconced upon the various branches, watched the race with breathless interest. Would Bradley make it? It seemed scarce possible. And if he didn’t! James grasped at the thought. Six feet at the shoulder stood the frightful mountain of blood-mad flesh and bone and sinew that was bearing down with the speed of an express train upon the seemingly slow-moving man.
“It all happened in a few seconds; but they were seconds that seemed like hours to the men who watched. They saw Tippet leap to his feet at Bradley’s shouted warning. They saw him run, stooping to recover his rifle as he passed the spot where it had fallen. They saw him glance back toward Bradley, and then they saw him stop short of the tree that might have given him safety and turn back in the direction of the bear. Firing as he ran, Tippet raced after the great cave bear – the monstrous thing that should have been extinct ages before – ran for it and fired even as the beast was almost upon Bradley. The men in the trees scarcely breathed. It seemed to them such a futile thing for Tippet to do, and Tippet of all men! They had never looked upon Tippet as a coward – there seemed to be no cowards among the strangely assorted company that Fate had gathered together from the four corners of the earth – but Tippet was considered a cautious man. Overcautious, some thought him. How futile he and his little pop-gun appeared as he dashed after that living engine of destruction! But, oh, how glorious! It was some such thought as this that ran through Bradley’s mind, though articulated it might have been expressed otherwise, albeit more forcefully.
“Just then it occurred to Brady to fire and he, too, opened upon the bear, but at the same instant the animal stumbled and fell forward, though still growling most fearsomely. Tippet never stopped running or firing until he stood within a foot of the brute, which lay almost touching Bradley and was already struggling to gain his feet. Placing the muzzle of his gun against the bear’s ear, Tippet pulled the trigger. The creature sank limply to the ground and Bradley scrambled to his feet.
“‘Good work, Tippet,’ he said. ‘Mightily obliged to you – awful waste of ammunition, really!’
“And then they resumed the march and in fifteen minutes the encounter had ceased even to be a topic of conversation.” (OTA/1.)

Bradley is obsessed with saving ammunition for good cause. People have a tendency under panic conditions to keep firing until their gun or rifle is empty. This was a lesson the Army learned in Vietnam. When I was taught how to fire an M-16, they taught us to fire in three burst sequences at a time when it was turned to fully automatic, or rock n’ roll. Otherwise you could go through a whole 22 bullet magazine in two seconds. If your aim was off at the beginning, then all 22 bullets would miss their target. I think the Army eventually calculated that it took one thousand rounds for every one of the enemy that was killed. Is that effecient? Under the circumstances, perhaps it was. But it was not uncommon for troops to run out of ammunition during an ambush for this very reason.

“For two days they continued upon their perilous way. Already the cliffs loomed high and forbidding close ahead without sign of break to encourage hope that somewhere they might be scaled. Late in the afternoon the party crossed a small stream of warm water upon the sluggishly moving surface of which floated countless millions of tiny green eggs surrounded by a light scum of the same color, though of a darker shade. Their past experience of Caspak had taught them that they might expect to come upon a stagnant pool of warm water if they followed the stream to its source; but they were almost certain to find some of Caspak’s grotesque, manlike creatures. Already since they had disembarked from the U-33 after its perilous trip through the subterranean channel beneath the barrier cliffs had brought them into the inland sea of Caspak, had they encountered what had appeared to be three distinct types of these creatures. There had been the pure apes – huge, gorilla-like beasts – and those who walked a trifle more erect and had features with just a shade more of the human cast about them. Then there were men like Ahm, whom they had captured and confined at the fort – Ahm, the club-man. ‘Well-known club-man,’ Tyler had called him. Ahm and his people had knowledge of speech. They had a language, in which they were unlike the race just inferior to them, and they walked much more erect and were less hairy: but it was principally the fact that they possessed a spoken language and carried a weapon that differentiated them from the others.” (OTA/1.)

ERB skates over the fact that the millions of green eggs and scum is a new observation about Caspak and will prove to be a key to its unique evolution.

“All of these peoples had proven belligerent in the extreme. In common with the rest of the fauna of Caprona the first law of nature as they seemed to understand it was to kill – kill – kill. And so it was that Bradley had no desire to follow up the little stream toward the pool near which were sure to be the caves of some savage tribe; but fortune played him an unkind trick, for the pool was much closer than he imagined, its southern end reaching fully a mile south of the point at which they crossed the stream, and so it was that after forcing their way through a tangle of jungle vegetation they came out upon the edge of the pool which they had wished to avoid.
“Almost simultaneously there appeared south of them a party of naked men armed with clubs and hatchets. Both parties halted as they caught sight of one another. The men from the fort saw before them a hunting party evidently returning to its caves or village laden with meat. They were large men with features closely resembling those of the African Negro though their skins were white. Short hair grew upon a large portion of their limbs and bodies, which still retained a considerable trace of apish progenitors. They were, however, a distinctly higher type than the Bo-lu, or club-men.” (OTA/1.)

It is this kind of comparison that caused ERB to be termed a racist among critics. They were able to accuse ERB of saying the black race was inferior because they had characteristics that were more “ape-like.” But if they would have paid more attention to the story rather than to their own prejudices, they would have realized that ERB was one of the more progressive white men of the time when it came to the acceptance of all races.

Perhaps the makers of the John Carter film were a little too sensitive about this when they had to invent a entirely new take on the Therns, making them from another planet or galaxy seeking universal domination. By this method they didn’t have to deal with the First Born, a black race that preceded the Red Race of Martians, for the plot doesn’t appear to have left any room for this development.

It was fascinating at this year’s Dum Dum to hear Jim Morris speak about the problems they had writing the plot for the screenplay. He said that because of the portal problem caused by the Arizona cave, they had to come up with a different angle to make it plausible, and so they had to reinvent the Therns. This amazed me because they were the ones to begin that created the socalled portal problem. They just didn’t like ERB’s mysterious gasses that caused him to go into a death trance and hence astral travel to Mars.

Sure, their space portal is a much more modern “Star Gate” idea, but is it more probable?

And then one thing led to another, causing them to change the personality of John Carter from a divine being to a screwed-up Civil War Confederate war veteran from Virginia with a grudge against the Union Army for causing the death of his wife and child. Then they went on to butcher Tars Tarkas and Sola. Jim Sullos, head of ERB Inc. wanted to know if there was going to be a sequel. While good for ERB Inc., is it really good for the fans? Good grief, do we really want to see a sequel that bad?

It is obvious to me that Disney was doing the same to John Carter that MGM had done to Tarzan, making the characters and story their own, making it possible to do sequels without any input or permission from the original creators, otherwise known as ripping off the author, an old Hollywood standby, and a plague that ERB had to tolerate most of his writing life. He learned the hard way that if you are going to sleep with Hollywood you have to expect to get screwed.

But without Hollywood, he wouldn’t have become a legend in his own time. One has to choose their brand of Hemlock wisely.

“Bradley would have been glad to have averted a meeting; but as he desired to lead his party south around the end of the pool, and as it was hemmed in by the jungle on one side and the water on the other, there seemed no escape from an encounter.
“On the chance that he might avoid a clash, Bradley stepped forward with upraised hand. ‘We are friends,’ he called in the tongue of Ahm, the Bo-lu, who had been held a prisoner at the fort; ‘permit us to pass in peace. We will not harm you.’
“At this the hatchet-men set up a great jabbering with much laughter, loud and boisterous. ‘No,’ shouted one, ‘you will not harm us, for we shall kill you. Come! We kill! We kill!’ And with hideous shouts they charged down upon the Europeans.
“‘Sinclair, you may fire,’ said Bradley quietly. ‘Pick off the leader. Can’t waste ammunition.’
“The Englishman raised his piece to his shoulder and took quick aim at the breast of the yelling savage leaping toward them. Directly behind the leader came another hatchet-man, and with the report of Sinclair’s rifle both warriors lunged forward in the tall grass, pierced by the same bullet. The effect upon the rest of the band was electrical. As one man they came to a sudden halt, wheeled to the east and dashed into the jungle, where the men could hear them forcing their way in an effort to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the authors of this new and frightful noise that killed warriors at a great distance.
“Both of the savages were dead when Bradley approached to examine them, and as the Europeans gathered around, other eyes were bent upon them with greater curiosity than they displayed for the victims of Sinclair’s bullet. When the party again took up the march around the southern end of the pool the owner of the eyes followed them – large, round eyes, almost expressionless except for a certain cold cruelty which glinted malignly from under their pale gray irises.”

Yes, we are getting our first glimpse of a Wieroo, other than as told by Ajor. From this description, we cannot expect any kindness from a Wieroo, which at first, may not seem any different from any other creature in Caspak. But we know that the other peoples of Caspak can be kind to members of their own tribe, or to those who are kind to them.

“All unconscious of the stalker, the men came late in the afternoon, to a spot which seemed favorable as a campsite. A cold spring bubbled from the base of a rocky formation which overhung and partially encircled a small inclosure. At Bradley’s command, the men took up the duties assigned them – gathering wood, building a cook-fire and preparing the evening meal. It was while they were thus engaged that Brady’s attention was attracted by the dismal flapping of huge wings. He glanced up, expecting to see one of the great flying reptiles of a bygone age, his rifle ready in his hand. Brady was a brave man. He had groped his way up narrow tenement stairs and taken an armed maniac from a dark room without turning a hair; but now as he looked up, he went white and staggered back.
“‘Gawd!’ he almost screamed. ‘What is it?’
“Attracted by Brady’s cry the others seized their rifles as they followed his wide-eyed, frozen gaze, nor was there one of them that was not moved by some species of terror or awe. Then Brady spoke again in almost inaudible voice.
‘Holy Mother protect us – it’s a banshee!”
“Bradley, always cool almost to indifference in the face of danger, felt a strange, creeping sensation run over his flesh, as slowly, not a hundred feet above them, the thing flapped itself across the sky, its huge, round eyes glaring down upon them. And until it disappeared over the tops of the trees of a near-by wood the five men stood as though paralyzed, their eyes never leaving the weird shape; nor never one of them appearing to recall that he grasped a loaded rifle in his hands.
“With the passing of the thing came the reaction. Tippet sank to the ground and buried his face in his hands. ‘Oh, Gord,’ he moaned. ‘Tyke me awy from this orful plice.’ Brady, recovered from the first shock, swore loud and luridly. He called upon all the saints to witness that he was unafraid and that anybody with half an eye could have seen that the creature was nothing more than ‘one av thim flyin’ alligators’ that they all were familiar with.
“‘Yes,’ said Sinclair with fine sarcasm, ‘we’ve saw so many of them with white shrouds on ‘em.’
“‘Shut up, you fool!’ growled Brady. ‘If you know so much, tell us what it was after bein’ then.’
“Then he turned toward Bradley. ‘What was it, sor, do you think?’ he asked.
“Bradley shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It looked like a winged human being clothed in a flowing white robe. Its face was more human than otherwise. That is the way it looked to me; but what it really was I can’t even guess, for such a creature is as far beyond my experience of knowledge as it is beyond yours. All that I am sure of is that whatever else it may have been, it was quite material – it was no ghost; rather just another of the strange forms of life which we have met here and with which we should be accustomed by this time.’
“Tippet looked up. His face was still ashy. ‘Yer cawn’t tell me,’ he cried.
‘Hi seen hit. Blime, Hi seen hit. Hit was ha dead man flyin’ through the hair. Didn’t Hi see ‘is heyes? Oh, Gord! Didn’t Hi see ‘em?’
“‘It didn’t look like any beast or reptile to me,’ spoke up Sinclair. ‘It was lookin’ right down at me when I looked up and I saw its face plain as I see yours. It had big round eyes that looked all cold and dead, and its cheeks were sunken in deep, and I could see its yellow teeth behind then, tight-drawn lips – like a man who had been dead a long while, sir,’ he added, turning toward Bradley.
“‘Yes!’ James had not spoken since the apparition had passed over them, and now it was scarce speech which he uttered – rather a series of articulate gasps. ‘Yes – dead – a – long – while. It – means something. It – come – for some – one. For one – of us is goin’ – to die. I’m goin’ to die!’ he ended in a wail.
“‘Come! Come!’ snapped Bradley. ‘Won’t do. Won’t do at all. Get to work, all of you. Waste of time. Can’t waste time.’
“His autoritative tones brought them all up standing, and presently each was occupied with his own duties; but each worked in silence and there was no singing and no bantering such as had marked the making of previous camps. Not until they had eaten and to each had been issued the little ration of smoking tobacco allowed after each evening meal did any sign of relaxation of taut nerves appear. It was Brady who showed the first signs of returning good spirits. He commenced humming ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ and presently to voice the words, but he was well into his third song before anyone joined him, and even then there seemed a dismal note in even the gayest of tunes.” (OTA/1.)

We will leave our semi-happy group at this stage. This will be one of the last moments of semi-joy they will have. We will conclude Chapter 1 in the next installment.