CHAPTER THREE - LIFE IN THE CITY OF DEATH

I shook off the plucking grasp and whirled to meet whomever had accosted me. Pistol ready, I was surprised to see two humans in the room. One was female, and the other male. The female was tall and lovely, her over-the-shoulder garment of doeskin enhancing, rather than covering, her charms. Her face was heart-shaped, and her almond eyes glittered with a fiery emerald twinkle. She was armed with a stone knife, its chipped obsidian point waving slowly in my direction. Her companion was strangely shorter, and seemed more like a creature of leather-bound piano wire than a cave man. His spare form had not an inch of fat that I could tell, since all but a breechcloth of a soft, tawny hide and suede-appearing moccasins were his only vestments.

His hair was black, but curlier than the ebon locks of his companion. His eyes were small and dark, and his face was craggy, with a rather large nose. While the female was of a uniform tan in pigment, he was a dark bronze, almost olive in his tint. He, too was armed, but with a steel-shod spear and an iron hatchet. The two eyed me warily for a moment. The man spoke in a singsong language that seemed unnatural for his lips. I shook my head.

"I don't understand, I'm afraid," I said.

"English!" The man said in an accented tone.

"American," I corrected. "I am Byron Wells. Do you understand?"

"Buono!" The man replied, smiling broadly. "I am Giuseppe Rinaldo, of the Regia Aeronautica."

"An Italian!" I gasped. "We are at war."

"Dio Mio!" he exclaimed, in shock. "Us against you? This is impossible. Il Duce would never do such a thing."

"You have been down here a while," I smiled. "He was persuaded by Hitler that he had the blood of the Caesars in him."

"Who is this Hitler? He's not Italian, eh?"

"A Nazi. How did you get down here?"

"I was a crewman with the great Nobile. Our airship, the Italia, was exploring the pole, trusting the advice of Swedish meteorologists. We were trying to beat Byrd, your countryman. He arrived with great aircraft that would easily out-race our airship. The Italia was a sweet vessel. She was not truly rigid, like the German dirigibles, but had a rigid keel. We went up, trying to beat Byrd, and it was a disaster. We drove into clouds, and wind, and suddenly the ice began to fly everywhere. The noise was horrible.

"The propellers were specially strengthened to withstand ice storms, but not the cigar. The chunks of ice passed through the propellers and through the skin, piercing the gasbags. I was an engineer, and I had to help seal the bags when the ice went through. It was like the Dutch boy, eh? We tried to rise, and we actually broke through to the sunlight, but it was too late. The ice and wind drove us down, and we went onto the ice. The ship could not take the strain of the crash. The gondola and engines separated from the keel, and the next thing I knew, there was a lurch and we were flying off, a prisoner of the winds.

"I clung for my life to the struts and wires inside the envelope of the ship, while the wind shrieked and whistled through the rents in the skin. I was freezing and scared. The ship was now no more than a free balloon, and it was swept along. Soon the wind dropped, but there was another surge from below. I could not see what was happening, so I crawled forward along the spine of the keel until I could find a hatch. I looked down to see steam and racing water. It came closer, and I thought we would crash and all drown, but we drifted beyond that, over a sea covered with ice floes and wreathed in fog.

"I don't know how long we drifted. It may have been days. I was thirsty and hungry. I found five others of the crew, and scared like myself. Nobody was seriously injured, but we had no weapons, no food, and only a few tools. Finally, the ice ended and we were over plains full of fir trees and waving grasses. It was so beautiful, like the land below the Alps in my own country. We decided that we had to land the ship, so we waited until the land was fairly clear, then we released gas from the bags and settled onto the plain."

"Lost, just like myself," I said. "I was just a kid when Byrd flew over the Pole. He never mentioned an opening. I remember your ship crashing, too. I can't remember much else, though. I was pretty small. What happened then?"

"We made tents out of materials from the ship's skin," Giuseppe continued. "A pair went out to find water while the rest made camp. They came back and reported a city not far away on the slope of some hills. We drank what we could, then gathered up our tools, hoping we could sell them or trade for a way home. We didn't know where we were, so we figured we had flown over the Pole and were in Russia somewhere.

"The city, she looked so strange that we knew we were in Russia. Instead of taking all our stuff in there, we buried half the tools and some of our pocketknives in case things didn't work out. Being Bolshevik, the Russians might not be too friendly to outsiders and we might have to retreat, was our thinking. I wish now, that we had landed in Russia. The Bolsheviks would have been far nicer."

"What about that scream I heard?" I asked, hating to interrupt him.

"Ah!" He said. "That was my companion here. Solame and I have been exploring this city. She seems quite deserted, but Solame heard something in a stairwell and screamed. She said she saw red eyes looking at her from below. She then ran, and I had to follow her. She ran in here, then you went by, and she wanted to warn you, I guess. Eh, Solame?"

The girl said something in her own language that seemed a bit cross by its tone.

"She was hoping that you were one of her kinsmen coming to rescue her," Giuseppe translated. "She says that it was not her fault that you were not."

"Do her kinsmen dress like this?" I demanded.

"I cannot say. I have never seen them. She says they are from the moon."

"The moon?" I started. "She is from the moon?"

"Not the outside moon, the inside one. I have not seen it myself, but they say it exists far to the south of here."

"Why not? There is a sun here, so why not a moon? Go on with your story, and we shall see what devil lurks in that stairwell. My guess is he is not immune to lead."

"In this world, one never knows," Giuseppe smiled. "To continue my tale, we approached the city, and a party of armed men streamed out. They carried muskets and blunderbusses. You would have thought they had come out of one of your Douglas Fairbanks movies. All of them were in gaily-colored outfits, with heavy leather boots and broad hats with feathers. Some carried cutlasses and looked like they needed a pirate ship to make them complete. The rest were naked to the waist, some in kilts, some in striped pants. I have not seen a more evil-looking bunch. Even the Black shirt guards of Il Duce were not so fearsome.

"We hailed them with hands raised and open. They did not shoot us, but we were taken prisoner and stripped of all our possessions. We were then taken to their leader, a giant of a man known as the Cid. He was in a bad temper. He could not speak our language, or we theirs, so we were thrown in the dungeon until we could properly speak to him. I do not know how long we dwelt in that dark, dank place. Snakes and all manner of vermin shared our cells. One man went mad and dashed his head against the floor, mercifully killing him. Slowly, we picked up their tongue."

"When we were able to tell our story, the Cid became very interested in our knowledge of dirigibles. He had some experience with one, apparently, not long before, and wanted his own version. He offered us much in the way of riches and women. Some accepted his offer readily, seeing it as the only way to survive. I was not one of them. I knew the man to be an evil brute and I wanted to be quits with him and his city of pirates. To make a long story short, I escaped. During my stay I had heard of an Empire of Sari, and having got vague directions by land, I endeavored to make my way around the Korsar Az, which is what they call their sea, and down to Sari. Along the way, I met Solame and her slave-girl handmaiden. Say! I forgot all about the maid, Solame."

He spoke again to the dark-haired woman in her own tongue. The girl shrugged with some indifference. She replied in what could be considered bored tone.

"She feels little concern," Giuseppe reported. "The handmaiden is on her own if she cannot keep up with her mistress. Solame would consider it good if the red-eyed thing devoured her, allowing us to escape unmolested."

"Another example of the cruelness of this world," I said sadly. "Let's go and see what this red-eyed monster is. I have a feeling that there is more to this place than dust and moon maidens."

Giuseppe led me back down the corridor to the stairwell. I stayed at his shoulder while the purported Moon inhabitant stayed a slight distance to the rear. When we rounded the corner, I faced a scene of horror. There, lumbering out of the darkness was a reptilian creature nearly eight feet tall. About it hung leathery wings so that it appeared to be wearing a dark olive shawl. The being's body glistened with some sort of gelid fungus, as if it had dwelt far into the depths. A serrated ridge of bone ran down the monster's spine, ending at the tip of its somewhat lengthy tail. This denizen from the Pit was towering over a girl, apparently the handmaiden.

How different she was from her mistress! Where the Moon woman was tall and raw-boned, this maiden looked to be barely out of childhood. She could not have been five feet tall, and was so slender that I felt that I could encircle her waist with my hands. She turned at our approach, and I could see, however, that she possessed all the curves of a mature woman, and they were enhanced by the combination of shimmering cloth and spotted hides than swathed her breasts and hips. It was her face, though, that entranced me more than her loathsome antagonist.

Framed by soft, waving hair the color of corn silk was a small face with huge, almost luminous blue eyes. She reminded me of some elf from a fairy tale. As the reptile slowly approached, she drew forth from her bosom a slim steel dagger. By her actions, I was afraid she would plunge it into her breast rather than become dinner for this fiend.

"Stand back, girl!" I cried. "I will save you from that thing."

The girl didn't understand me, so Giuseppe translated for me. During this exchange, the winged lizard finally noticed us, and I was at a loss to understand why it had not heard us approach, when the girl had plainly done so. I aimed my pistol as she drew back, and the creature raised itself up to its full height, seeming to understand the weapon I used. Slowly, it began to retreat to the stairwell.

"I think it's got some smarts," I told Giuseppe. "It's bigger than any of us, yet it backed down when it saw my gun. What kind of lizard is that, anyway?"

"I have never seen one like it," Giuseppe said. "It does seem to respect a gun. Maybe I can talk to it."

He said something to it in Pellucidarian, but the creature, while looking right at Giuseppe, gave no sign that it comprehended him. Without warning, the blonde maiden gave an anguished cry, and sank to the floor moaning. I rushed to her side, still training my pistol on the monster. I helped her to a sitting position against the stone wall of the corridor, but she continued to hold one hand to her head. Giuseppe asked her some questions, then turned to me.

"Ee-lah-na says that she feels the creature's thoughts in her head," he explained. "They are cold and lizard-like. The strain on her is bad."

Ee-lah-na! So, this girl had a name. It sounded musical, and I said it aloud. She turned to me as I did so, and a wan smile flitted across her full, pale lips. Her skin, in fact, seemed whiter than the tanned exteriors of Giuseppe and Solame. I turned to the thing again, cudgeling my brain for a memory from Burroughs of this thing.

Of course! It was a Mahar, one of that reptilian species that had once dominated a part of Pellucidar. Evolved, according to Abner Perry, from the ramphorynchus, these creatures possessed agile minds to go with their ability to fly. I then recalled their total deafness, and that their only means of communication was through their ape-men allies, the Sagoths, who could pick up their telepathic commands. Evidently, this girl could also feel their thoughts, though she was far removed from the brutal ape-men described by Burroughs. She was far removed from any other woman I had ever seen before.

"What did it want?" I asked.

"It wants to be left alone," was the reply. "It has lived in the dark for many sleeps, working to attain its goals, and just wants to be left alone to complete its task."

"Which is?"

"To either re-create something called the Great Secret, or to create a male Mahar."

I seemed to remember that David Innes had hidden the Great Secret, the method that Mahars were able to reproduce without the male of their species. So, here, in the depths of one of its great cities, toiled one of the former dominant species of Pellucidar, working ceaselessly to regain what had been taken.

"Tell it we mean it no harm," I said. The thing was no threat to us, especially since I could easily dispatch it. I did not want it to make any rash decisions, however. Then, a thought came to me. If the creature was of an advanced race, especially one that could reproduce asexually, then it must have the equipment necessary to produce compounds and other items. If possible, I wondered if it could produce gasoline. I discussed this possibility with Giuseppe in English.

"Why not?" He shrugged. "I know something of the distillation of gasoline. If this thing has a laboratory, we could at least try. Would your plane hold us all?"

"I think that if we stripped it down of non-essential items, it could. I am hopeful that it could take us closer to the empire of Sari."

During this time, Lightning was whining in my improvised carrier. The musky odor of the Mahar was giving him a fit. I tickled him behind his ear while Giuseppe relayed our wishes to Ee-lah-na. She looked up at the Mahar intently, but did not get up. For a moment, both were motionless, then the Mahar turned its snout toward me, as if studying me with renewed interest. It turned again to the girl, who seemed to wilt as the reptile focused its gaze upon her. She stared at us with agonized eyes, and I confess that it broke my heart.

She spoke in the language of Pellucidar, and Giuseppe's eyes brightened.

"She says that the creature will help us in exchange for allowing it to accompany us to some place called Phutra," he reported.

"Another Mahar city, I believe," I stated. "I thought it was destroyed by David Innes during his campaign to liberate his part of Pellucidar from these soulless creatures, but perhaps this one believes that it may hold some key to its success. At any rate, it's a deal we can't afford to pass up. The other thing we have to do is develop some sort of sign language to communicate with it. The effect on this servant's mind must be tremendous. I think we might risk her very life if we continue to communicate with this reptile through her."

"Yes, yes, of course," Giuseppe agreed. "Solame tells me that the girl is very weak, that she allows her to serve her only out of pity."

"One last message," I said. "Tell the Mahar we accept these terms and that we must institute an alternative form of communication."

We conveyed this to the reptile, and it assented. After that came an intense period of work for us all, lasting for an unknown length of time. I could have counted sleeps, I supposed, which was the vague form of estimation that Solame used, but it seemed pointless. I would look up and it was noon, look up again, and it was still noon. It took some time to inventory the laboratory of the Mahars. Most of the equipment we found had been left to deteriorate. I speculated that the Mahars' view of evolution was to eventually become free of the need for sex. I found this amusing, since I had always regarded this need as being one of the more interesting aspects of reproduction.

Humans, at least those that swarmed over the surface, were always working on gadgets that made life easier, work simpler, or killing more efficient. Even in my short life, we had jumped from clumsy cars and airplanes to graceful engines of destruction. Tanks, flamethrowers, aircraft carriers, all these things had grown from fledglings in the last war to terrible death-dealers in this one. Of course, I saw things through the eyes of a soldier. Medicines, appliances, and other things had progressed as well.

These seemed to be the pinnacles for human achievement. I regarded what passed for a superior being in this hollow world with irony. While we scurried about in ever increasing complexity above, below this creature was attempting to simplify its existence by streamlining procreation. To what end, I wondered. Were males of the species vicious or repulsive? Or did the Mahars merely wish one sex to make their communal habitation easier and more regimented by being able to focus on the needs of a single sex? I felt incapable of delving too deep into these philosophical and scientific waters. Instead, I began to feel a certain pity for the thing. The joy of human intimacy was unknown to it, as foreign as the spoken word.

Though speechless, it possessed a logical, fertile mind, capable of grasping our intent as we attempted to find a simple sign language. I was saddled with a double duty, because I felt it necessary to learn the common language of Pellucidar, the language of the gilaks, as humans called themselves in conjunction with the sign language that Giuseppe and I developed to more readily communicate with our two female companions. While I found the larger Solame of little interest, the opposite was definitely the case for her handmaiden.

To be sure, the raven-haired Selenite kept her attendant busy gathering and preparing food, while Solame spent most of her time observing our work and stroking Giuseppe. I sometimes was a bit blushed by her attentions, but this was tempered by a sneaking distrust of her that had no real foundation. It was a hunch, but it nagged me. After initial success with our sign language, Giuseppe spent more time with the Mahar in the lab, and less talking with me. That left me more free time to work on my Pellucidarian vocabulary with Ee-lah-na. Since it became harder to forage for food near the Mahar city, I would accompany her as a body guard. Knowing that my supply of cartridges would run out, I used this time also to search out hardwoods that would make a sturdy bow and arrows. Lightning would usually ride along in my backpack, since he loathed the Mahar, but lately, he was almost too big to fit.

His rapid gain in size gave me pause. I again pondered a land without time. How fast would a saber-tooth tiger mature on the surface? Was the time period the same here? If so, did the tiger know how fast time passed? Of course, it probably didn't care. I was beginning to feel the same way. We might have been working on our projects for a few days, or a few months for all I knew. To worry about it would be maddening. I preferred to think about my lovely companion. She had a good eye for edible fruits and plants. I would be conservative and use my pistol only if I had a clear shot on something she assured me would be edible. During the trip out and back, we would talk. On one foray, we traveled to my P-38 and gathered the rest of my gear. I found the plane undisturbed, though the foliage I had used to conceal it was dried. I can only attribute it safety to some animal instinct to ignore man-made things that did not smell like food. As we returned, I heard a rustling in a thick patch of brush.

I swept Ee-lah-na behind me and leveled my carbine. Suddenly, an ungainly form scuttled forward out of the verdure. It was perhaps fifteen feet in length, with short, lizard-feet propelling it toward us as it hissed menacingly. I hurriedly noted a giant half-circle of spines projecting from its back that undulated beneath a layer of skin as it waddled out. The thing had a blunt lizard head full of sharp teeth. I aimed between the gaping jaws and fired two rounds, both penetrating the soft underside of its upper jaw.

I believed the thing to be a Dimetrodon, one of those strange pre-dinosaur lizards. The two shots caused its head to whip to one side in pain. I followed it with another shot behind its lower jaw at the base of the neck as its head turned. The low-power 30-caliber bullet punctured its scaly hide and caused the reptile to stumble in shock. A huge convulsion shook its greenish-black frame. The thing coughed up a quantity of blood and rolled onto its side, legs kicking feebly. At that point, I realized that I had not taken a breath since the thing erupted from its concealment and exhaled heavily.

Ee-lah-na clapped her small hands. I turned to find her looking up at me with the first smile I had even seen cross her lovely features. Before she had always seemed so sad. Now, I saw her differently. The smile seemed to suit her much better than her continual frown, enhancing her already considerable beauty. I was so entranced that for a moment, I couldn't speak. She took my silence for displeasure and her visage became downcast.

"You are displeased with Ee-lah-na," she said quietly.

"Why would you think that?" I blurted, coming out of my stupor.

"You said nothing after I was so happy you saved this unworthy slave," she said, not daring to look up at me. I slung my carbine and gently lifted her chin with my right hand until she was staring directly at my face.

"You did not displease me," I told her. "On the contrary, you threw me for a loop."

"I don't think so. I certainly could not lift you, let alone throw you."

I smiled at this, and she lost her sadness. "It's an expression. It means that I wasn't expecting you to be so happy, and when you were happy, you were even prettier than ever."

Her ivory features blushed at this. "I am only a slave. It is my mistress who is beautiful."

"Solame is pretty, that's true," I agreed. "However, you are beautiful."

Again she colored. "You must not say these things. Solame would beat me if she thought a man would think me lovelier than her."

"Not while I'm around. Where I come from we don't take to slavery and we sure don't take to bullies. My great-grandfather fought to free enslaved people back home. I'm not up on all the customs around here, but that's one I don't care for. As soon as we get clear of this mess, I'll see to it you're freed."

"Why, Byron? I am nobody, from nowhere. I have no friends or family here. Solame and Giuseppe are all I know. And," she added, coloring a bit more, "you, of course."

"First, you are not a nobody. You are a thinking, feeling, human being. You deserve to be free to do as you will. And everybody comes from somewhere. Where do you come from?"

We had continued back toward the great tower that would lead us below ground to the Mahar city. "I am not allowed by my mistress to discuss that," she said, unhappy once more. "I will definitely be beaten then."

"I told you nobody was going to beat you. Is she fleeing some sort of trouble? And what's this business about being from the moon?"

"I am not sure where she is from, but I am almost certain she is not from the moon."

"How can you be sure?"

She gripped my arm with her slender, strong fingers. "Promise me you will say nothing of this until we go to this place the Mahar wishes."

"Fine, I promise. That makes me more determined to get to this Phutra place. Sounds like something you say when you smell a rotten egg. And I sure smell one where this business of you and Solame come in. Okay, we're back anyway. Once we get enough gas to get to that place, then you'll come clean."

"I am clean, Byron Wells, I bathe daily in an area I found in a lower chamber. There is a pool there. It is very scary, though. There are skulls all about."

She looked so petulant when she said that, it was almost an effort to keep from laughing. "I am sure you are clean, Ee-lah-na. You smell great to me. It's just an expression from the surface. You say you found a pool? I've been washing in water dipped from a cistern I found."

"I will show you, Byron Wells, but you will not like it."