Edgar Burroughs: The Moon Men

“Bad times are coming, Elizabeth,” said father, after he had told her of the injustice. “They have been bad enough in the past; but now that the swine have put the king of swine in as Jemadar-”

“S-s-sh!” cautioned my mother, nodding her head toward the open window.

Father remained silent, listening. We heard footsteps passing around the house toward the front and a moment later the form of a man darkened the door. Father breathed a sigh of relief.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “it is only our good brother Johansen. Come in, Brother Peter and tell us the news.”

“And there is news enough,” exclaimed the visitor. “The old commandant has been replaced by a new one, a fellow by the name of Or-tis-one of Jarth’s cronies. What do you think of that?”

Brother Peter was standing between father and mother with his back toward the latter, so he did not see mother place her finger quickly to her lips in a sign to father to guard his speech. I saw a slight frown cross my father’s brow, as though he resented my mother’s warning; but when he spoke his words were such as those of our class have learned through suffering are the safest.

“It is not for me to think,” he said, “or to question in any way what the Twenty-Four does.”

“Nor for me,” spoke Johansen quickly; “but among friends-a man cannot help but think and sometimes it is good to speak your mind-eh?”

Father shrugged his shoulders and turned away. I could see that he was boiling over with a desire to unburden himself of some of his loathing for the degraded beasts that Fate had placed in power nearly a century before. His childhood had still been close enough to the glorious past of his country’s proudest days to have been impressed through the tales of his elders with a poignant realization of all that had been lost and of how it had been lost. This he and mother had tried to impart to me as others of the dying intellectuals attempted to nurse the spark of a waning culture in the breasts of their offspring against that always hoped for, yet seemingly hopeless, day when the world should start to emerge from the slough of slime and ignorance into which the cruelties of the Kalkars had dragged it.

“Now, Brother Peter,” said father, at last, “I must go and take my three goats to the tax collector, or he will charge me another one for a fine.” I saw that he tried to speak naturally; but he could not keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Peter pricked up his ears. “Yes,” he said, “I had heard of that piece of business. This new tax collector was laughing about it to Hoffmeyer. He thinks it a fine joke and Hoffmeyer says that now that you got the coal for so much less than it was worth he is going before the Twenty-Four and ask that you be compelled to pay him the other ninety-five goats that the tax collector says the coal is really worth.”

“Oh!” exclaimed mother, “they would not really do such a wicked thing-I am sure they would not.”

Peter shrugged. “Perhaps they only joked,” he said; “these Kalkars are great jokers.”

“Yes,” said father, “they are great jokers; but some day I shall have my little joke,” and he walked out toward the pens where the goats were kept when not on pasture.

Mother looked after him with a troubled light in her eyes and I saw her shoot a quick glance at Peter, who presently followed father from the house and went his way.

Father and I took the goats to the tax collector. He was a small man with a mass of red hair, a thin nose and two small, close-set eyes. His name was Soor. As soon as he saw father he commenced to fume.

“What is your name, man?” he demanded insolently.

“Julian 8th,” replied father. “Here are the three goats in payment of my income tax for this month-shall I put them in the pen?”

“What did you say your name is?” snapped the fellow.

“Julian 8th,” father repeated.

“Julian 8th!” shouted Soor. “Julian 8th!” I suppose you are too fine a gentleman to be brother to such as me, eh?”

“Brother Julian 8th,” said father sullenly.

“Go put your goats in the pen and hereafter remember that all men are brothers who are good citizens and loyal to our great Jemadar.”

When father had put the goats away we started for home; but as we were passing Soor he shouted: “Well?”

Father turned a questioning look toward him.

“Well?” repeated the man.

“I do not understand,” said father; “have I not done all that the law requires?”

“What’s the matter with you pigs out here?” Soor fairly screamed. “Back in the eastern Teivos a tax collector doesn’t have to starve to death on his miserable pay-his people bring him little presents.”

“Very well,” said father quietly, “I will bring you something next time I come to market.”

“See that you do,” snapped Soor.

Father did not speak all the way home, nor did he say a word until after we had finished our dinner of cheese, goat’s milk and corn cakes. I was so angry that I could scarce contain myself; but I had been brought up in an atmosphere of repression and terrorism that early taught me to keep a still tongue in my head.

When father had finished his meal he rose suddenly- so suddenly that his chair flew across the room to the opposite wall-and squaring his shoulders he struck his chest a terrible blow.

“Coward! Dog!” he cried. “My God! I cannot stand it. I shall go mad if I must submit longer to such humiliation. I am no longer a man. There are no men! We are worms that the swine grind into the earth with their polluted hoofs. And I dared say nothing. I stood there while that offspring of generations of menials and servants insulted me and spat upon me and I dared say nothing but meekly to propitiate him. It is disgusting.

“In a few generations they have sapped the manhood from American men. My ancestors fought at Bunker Hill, at Gettysburg, at San Juan, at Chateau Thierry. And I? I bend the knee to every degraded creature that wears the authority of the beasts at Washington-and not one of them is an American-scarce one of them an earth man. To the scum of the moon I bow my head-I who am one of the few survivors of the most powerful people the world ever knew.”

“Julian!” cried my mother, “be careful, dear. Some one may be listening.” I could see her tremble.

“And you are an American woman!” he growled.

“Julian, don’t!” she pleaded. “It is not on my account-you know that it is not-but for you and our boy. I do not care what becomes of me; but I cannot see you torn from us as we have seen others taken from their families, who dared speak their minds.”

“I know, dear heart,” he said after a brief silence. “I know-it is the way with each of us. I dare not on your account and Julian’s, you dare not on ours, and so it goes. Ah, if there were only more of us. If I could but find a thousand men who dared!”

“S-s-sh!” cautioned mother. “There are so many spies. One never knows. That is why I cautioned you when Brother Peter was here to-day. One never knows.”

“You suspect Peter?” asked father.

“I know nothing,” replied mother; “I am afraid of every one. It is a frightful existence and though I have lived it thus all my life, and my mother before me and her mother before that, I never became hardened to it.”

“The American spirit has been bent but not broken,” said father. “Let us hope that it will never break.”

“If we have the hearts to suffer always it will not break,” said mother, “but it is hard, so hard-when one even hates to bring a child into the world,” and she glanced at me, “because of the misery and suffering to which it is doomed for life. I yearned for children, always; but I feared to have them-mostly I feared that they might be girls. To be a girl in this world to-day-Oh, it is frightful!”