John Carter of Mars: Gods of the Forgotten by Geary Gravel

Author:Geary Gravel [Gravel, Geary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Amazon: B09CX57MQ2
Goodreads: 58914289
Publisher: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Published: 2020-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

21

Judgment

WHEN WE NEXT CLIMBED from our car, we were back in the Ninth Circle in the tunnel of my first awakening. A trio of newly arrived valued guests of the Oolscar awaited us on the pathway, along with a pair of the grotesque Long-arms. Tor-ov Ov-tor went to address the two women and one man in soothing tones; their unfocused gazes and muted responses suggested to me that they had partaken of a goodly amount of the calming food and drink I had been given upon my own arrival. I noticed they had not yet been awarded their tunics, and I was the only one among the four of us who had been gifted with a mark upon my palm.

Knowing now that they had been derived by scientific means from human stock, I could not resist casting sidelong glances at our brutish guards as they escorted us into the chamber Tor-ov Ov-tor and I had last visited in this Circle. Their wedge-shaped torsos were capped by massive shoulders from which arms knotted with muscle depended to the floor, causing them to brachiate as they walked, their shaggy heads and shoulders thrust forward in a manner that called to mind the great apes of Earth. Their faces were uniformly prognathous and more reminiscent of a bat than a man, fanged and terrible with eyes that glowed in the shifting light. I was by now convinced I had encountered their like long before I ever came here. More than once I had glimpsed red eyes burning atop hulking shapes in the darkness of the various dungeons in which I had been forced to spend time over the years. Tor-ov Ov-tor had told me when we visited the Sixth Circle of biological experimentation that a certain number of the Long-arms, both male and female, that had been sent forth over the centuries on retrieval missions had failed to make their way back to the Perfect World when the Masters’ hold on them had faded; it was believed these had multiplied and gone on to haunt the interconnected pits in many a city on the surface, where they preyed upon prisoner and jailer alike for their sustenance.

I saw with distaste that the nearest of the heretofore vacant depressions in the cavernous chamber was now crawling with a menagerie of verminous creatures, including three enormous sarovans, the largest I had yet seen. These wallowed near the pit’s edge, nearly covered by a constantly moving tide of slinking ulsios, hopping skeetans, skittish ollcos from the far north, and countless other crawling and skittering creatures. When we halted at this crater rather than continuing on to one of the other chambers, I wondered incredulously if the vermin had been deposited there so that they might be evaluated along with the rest of us—or, conversely, if those among us who failed to live up to expectations during the examination of our brain oscillations would simply be toppled over the rim and fed to them as entertainment for the watching Masters.

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