Free The Zanthodon MEGAPACK ™: The Complete 5-Book Series by Lin Carter Page B

contemporaneous to some extent; their respective eras overlapped a trifle.”
    The differences between the two were certainly distinct. The blond Cro-Magnons stood tall and straight, and walked with a lithe, limber step that was very unlike the bowlegged shamble of the apelike Neanderthal men. Also, they kept themselves cleaner and wore well-tanned hides and furs. They even sported something like boots: well, high-laced buskins, anyway. And whereas the Apemen wore seashells threaded on a bit of gut, the Cro-Magnons wore polished, colored pebbles and the fangs of beasts on thin leather thongs. More than a few of them had ornaments of hammered copper or bronze, which fascinated the Professor.
    “Obviously, time has not stood still for the higher orders, even here in Zanthodon,” he mused thoughtfully. “They were men of Stone Age back in Europe before the glaciers came down from the north…but here, they have already entered the Bronze Age…this is fascinating, my boy! What a book I shall be able to write, once we have returned to civilization!”
    I didn’t bother pointing out to him that our return to civilization was probably going to be postponed for a while, due to slavery.
    The Apemen—I’m going to call them that from now on, because “Neanderthal” is a bit of a jaw-breaker—led us along through the jungles at a rapid trot. They used scouts which fanned out to all sides of the slave column, which I thought was a rather sophisticated strategy for such primitives. And they seemed to know just where they were going, although how they managed to find their way home in this land of eternal and unaltering daylight puzzled me. They seemed to know where they were going, however, and from the speed at which they forced us to jog along, and the occasional, apprehensive backward glances they cast over their hulking, hairy shoulders, I got the distinct impression that they were in a hell of a hurry—as if someone were following them.
    I noticed that we were following the curve of the coastline, never penetrating too deeply into the jungle to lose track of the sea, which remained at our left hand. The reason for this I did not learn until much later.
    My fellow-captives were tethered to a long rope of tough, braided grasses that extended the length of the slave column, and whose ends were tied to the waists of One-Eye in front and Fatso behind. We all wore slave collars of leather and these were lashed by thongs to spaces along the length of the rope, one captive to either side. We moved along, then, in a column of twos at a rapid trot.
    I have never worn anything more galling and irksome than that slave collar, and I never hope to.
    The pace was grueling, and we were only given rest stops three times a “day” (I am going to start dividing time in this narrative between “days” and “sleeps,” since it was always day down here, and “night” is hardly an apt term); during those stops, which were of brief duration, water was passed back along the line in a hollow coconut shell pierced at one end: We had a chance at such times to lie down, rest a bit, catch our breath.
    The Professor and I—he was directly behind me in the column—used these opportunities to talk, while the other captives eavesdropped curiously. (I later came to understand that it was bewildering to them to hear men conversing in a language they had never before heard, since all of the human denizens of Zanthodon speak the same universal tongue.) You may be wondering why I had not as yet fought my way free. The answer is simple: after One-Eye had nearly brained me with that stone axe of his, he and his boys went through our clothing and possessions, taking anything they fancied. One-Eye now sported my wristwatch on one hairy arm, Fatso had taken the revolver, which he wore stuck through the hides wrapped about his middle, below his enormous paunch, and another one of the Apemen had taken my hunting-knife. As for my backpack, it had vanished