It

pleased Ras Thavas' scientific mind to milk me of all I knew in the hope that he

might derive some suggestion that would solve one of the Barsoomian scientific

riddles that still baffle their savants; but he was compelled to admit that in

this respect I was a total loss, not alone because I was densely ignorant upon

practically all scientific subjects, but because the learned sciences on Earth

have not advanced even to the swaddling-clothes stage as compared with the

remarkable progress of corresponding activities on Mars. Yet he kept me by him,

training me in many of the minor duties of his vast laboratory. I was entrusted

with the formula of the "embalming fluid" and taught how to withdraw a subject's

blood and replace it with this marvellous preservative that arrests decay

without altering in the minutest detail the nerve or tissue structure of the

body. I learned also the secret of the few drops of solution which, added to the

rewarmed blood before it is returned to the veins of the subject revitalizes the

latter and restores to normal and healthy activity each and every organ of the

body.

He told me once why he had permitted me to learn these things that he had kept a

secret from all others, and why he kept me with him at all times in preference

to any of the numerous individuals of his own race that served him and me in

lesser capacities both day and night.

"Vad Varo," he said, using the Barsoomian name that he had given me because he

insisted that my own name was meaningless and impractical, "for many years I

have needed an assistant, but heretofore I have never felt that I had discovered

one who might work here for me wholeheartedly and disinterestedly without ever

having reason to go elsewhere or to divulge my secrets to others. You, in all

Barsoom, are unique – you have no other friend or acquaintance than myself. Were

you to leave we you would find yourself in a world of enemies, for all are

suspicious of a stranger. You would not survive a dozen dawns and you would be

cold and hungry and miserable – a wretched outcast in a hostile world. Here you

have every luxury that the mind of man can devise or the hand of man produce,

and you are occupied with work of such engrossing interest that your every hour

must be fruitful of unparalleled satisfaction. There is no selfish reason,

therefore, why you should leave me and there is every reason why you should

remain. I expect no loyalty other than that which may be prompted by egoism. You

make an ideal assistant, not only for the reasons I have just given you, but

because you are intelligent and quick-witted, and now I have decided, after

observing you carefully for a sufficient time, that you can serve me in yet

another capacity – that of personal bodyguard.

"You may have noticed that I alone of all those connected with my laboratory am

armed. This is unusual upon Barsoom, where people of all classes, and all ages

and both sexes habitually go unarmed. But many of these people I could not trust

armed as they would slay me; and were I to give arms to those whom I might

trust, who knows but that the others would obtain possession of them and slay

me, or even those whom I had trusted turn against me, for there is not one who

might not wish to go forth from this place back among his own people – only you,

Vad Varo, for there is no other place for you to go. So I have decided to give

you weapons.

"You saved my life once. A similar opportunity might again present itself. I

know that being a reasoning and reasonable creature, you will not slay me, for

you have nothing to gain and everything to lose by my death, which would leave

you friendless and unprotected in a world of strangers where assassination is

the order of society and natural death one of the rarest of phenomena. Here are

your arms." He stepped to a cabinet which he unlocked, displaying an assortment

of weapons, and selected for me a long-sword, a shortsword, a pistol and a

dagger.

"You seem sure of my loyalty, Ras Thavas," I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. "I am only sure that I know perfectly where your

interests lie – sentimentalists have words: love, loyalty, friendship, enmity,

jealousy, hate, a thousand others; a waste of words – one word defines them all:

self-interest. All men of intelligence realize this. They analyse an individual

and by his predilections and his needs they classify him as friend or foe,

leaving to the weak-minded idiots who like to be deceived the drooling drivel of

sentiment."

I smiled as I buckled my weapons to my harness, but I held my peace. Nothing

could be gained by arguing with the man and, too, I felt quite sure that in any

purely academic controversy I should get the worst of it; but many of the

matters of which he had spoken had aroused my curiosity and one had reawakened

in my mind a matter to which I had given considerable thought. While partially

explained by some of his remarks I still wondered why the red-man from whom I

had rescued him had seemed so venomously bent upon slaying him the day of my

advent upon Barsoom, and so, as we sat chatting after our evening meal, I asked

him.

"A sentimentalist," he said. "A sentimentalist of the most pronounced type. Why

that fellow hated me with a venom absolutely unbelievable by any of the

reactions of a trained, analytical mind such as mine; but having witnessed his

reactions I become cognizant of a state of mind that I cannot of myself even

imagine. Consider the facts. He was the victim of assassination – a young

warrior in the prime of life, possessing a handsome face and a splendid

physique. One of my agents paid his relatives a satisfactory sum for the corpse

and brought it to me. It is thus that I obtain practically all of my material. I

treated it in the manner with which you are familiar. For a year the body lay in

the laboratory, there being no occasion during that time that I had use for it;

but eventually a rich client came, a not overly prepossessing man of

considerable years.