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Page 24
"The Temple of Issus is, I take it, a heaven within a heaven," I
said. "Let us hope that there it will be meted to the therns as
they have meted it here unto others."
"Who knows?" the girl murmured.
"The therns, I judge from what you have said, are no less mortal
than we; and yet have I always heard them spoken of with the utmost
awe and reverence by the people of Barsoom, as one might speak of
the gods themselves."
"The therns are mortal," she replied. "They die from the same
causes as you or I might: those who do not live their allotted span
of life, one thousand years, when by the authority of custom they
may take their way in happiness through the long tunnel that leads
to Issus.
"Those who die before are supposed to spend the balance of their
allotted time in the image of a plant man, and it is for this
reason that the plant men are held sacred by the therns, since they
believe that each of these hideous creatures was formerly a thern."
"And should a plant man die?" I asked.
"Should he die before the expiration of the thousand years from
the birth of the thern whose immortality abides within him then the
soul passes into a great white ape, but should the ape die short
of the exact hour that terminates the thousand years the soul is
for ever lost and passes for all eternity into the carcass of the
slimy and fearsome silian whose wriggling thousands seethe the
silent sea beneath the hurtling moons when the sun has gone and
strange shapes walk through the Valley Dor."
"We sent several Holy Therns to the silians to-day, then," said
Tars Tarkas, laughing.
"And so will your death be the more terrible when it comes," said
the maiden. "And come it will--you cannot escape."
"One has escaped, centuries ago," I reminded her, "and what has
been done may be done again."
"It is useless even to try," she answered hopelessly.
"But try we shall," I cried, "and you shall go with us, if you wish."
"To be put to death by mine own people, and render my memory
a disgrace to my family and my nation? A Prince of the House of
Tardos Mors should know better than to suggest such a thing."
Tars Tarkas listened in silence, but I could feel his eyes riveted
upon me and I knew that he awaited my answer as one might listen
to the reading of his sentence by the foreman of a jury.
What I advised the girl to do would seal our fate as well, since if
I bowed to the inevitable decree of age-old superstition we must
all remain and meet our fate in some horrible form within this
awful abode of horror and cruelty.
"We have the right to escape if we can," I answered. "Our own
moral senses will not be offended if we succeed, for we know that
the fabled life of love and peace in the blessed Valley of Dor is
a rank and wicked deception. We know that the valley is not sacred;
we know that the Holy Therns are not holy; that they are a race of
cruel and heartless mortals, knowing no more of the real life to
come than we do.
"Not only is it our right to bend every effort to escape--it is
a solemn duty from which we should not shrink even though we know
that we should be reviled and tortured by our own peoples when we
returned to them.
"Only thus may we carry the truth to those without, and though the
likelihood of our narrative being given credence is, I grant you,
remote, so wedded are mortals to their stupid infatuation for
impossible superstitions, we should be craven cowards indeed were
we to shirk the plain duty which confronts us.
"Again there is a chance that with the weight of the testimony of
several of us the truth of our statements may be accepted, and at
least a compromise effected which will result in the dispatching
of an expedition of investigation to this hideous mockery of heaven."
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