Free Under the Moons of Mars by John Joseph Adams

his bare shoulders the fur cloak that Princess Dejah Thoris had tossed to him off her own back against the cold of the Martian night—and to recall the look that John Carter had thrown him with it. Smiling to himself, he strolled toward the deserted-looking building that crouched at the end of the street in the brilliant shadows cast by the Martian moons.
For someone who habitually slept curled up in the fork of a jungle tree, or stretched out along a branch like Sheeta the leopard, the ape-man took a serious interest in architecture. The structures he had seen so far looked so much beyond the conception of any of the Tharks he had met so far that he desired to prowl for clues to their original creators: perhaps the extinct race that had once dwelled therein, when the empty Martian seas were full and high, and teeming with life. They couldn’t have built all this. They can’t even build furniture. . . .
    He was halfway crouched, examining the unusual configuration of some broken steps plainly never made for Thark feet, when all his jungle-trained senses suddenly had him off his own feet and rolling to the side, so that the creature silently dropping on him from above missed him almost entirely. Coming instantly erect, Tarzan gaped in amazement at the beast facing him. It stood as tall as any Thark he had yet encountered, and seemed equally as firm on its hind legs—but it was an ape, beyond any possible doubt, for all that it looked more like a hairless gorilla than a Thark, and even more, to Tarzan’s eyes, like a being from Earth, six arms or no. With a scream like that of a leopard that has just made a kill, the thing rushed upon the ape-man, hands reaching out to clutch and strangle and rend.
    Tarzan met it with his ancient war cry of “Kreegahh!” which, to his great surprise, momentarily stopped the creature in its tracks. Then it came on again, but with a certain air of puzzlement, which allowed the ape-man to sidestep the crushing sweep of its four upper arms, all muscled to shame Bolgani, the gorilla. The white ape wheeled and came at him again, but Tarzan, taking full advantage of his new Martian agility, leapt over its head and came down behind it, striving for the full-Nelson hold with which he had more than once conquered Numa the lion. He was still having difficulty in learning to land correctly, however, and when he slipped and fell on his back, the ape was at him with a roar, two hands closing on his throat, another pair of arms encircling his chest and squeezing far more powerfully than he himself could have done. Desperately Tarzan struck out wildly with his mighty fists, but his hardest blow seemed to make no impression on the thick, bald hide or the gorilla features. The Martian moonlight was swimming before the ape-man’s eyes, when the creature suddenly eased its grip on his throat, stared into his face, and growled, with a distinct questioning lilt at the end, “Kreegahh?”
Almost as bewildered as he was grateful to be alive, Tarzan indicated that he wanted to sit up, and the white ape—again to his amazement—released him and moved warily back from him. Struggling for both air and coherence, Tarzan inquired hoarsely in Mangani, “Speak?”
    The white ape shook its head . . . but its reply, while hardly up to the linguistic standards of the tribe of Kerchak, was perfectly comprehensible to Tarzan. “Speak not now. Lost.”
    “You used to speak Mangani,” the ape-man whispered. “Here, on Mars . . . Barsoom. How can that be . . . ?” He repeated the question in the tongue he had first spoken himself, and the white ape blinked blankly, and then made a gesture that was almost a shrug, while pointing indiscriminately at the heavens—to the stars and the two moons—and the Earth, dim on a far corner of the horizon . . .
    Tarzan’s own slow nod turned into a bow of wonder. “Why should transmigration only be one-way,” he muttered aloud. “Why should it be limited to humans?”