"09 - Synthetic Men of Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

word as to you, Vor Daj. Beyond us three there is none we may trust; so be
careful with whom you become friendly and what you say in the hearing of others.
You will–––"
Here he was interrupted by a veritable pandemonium that suddenly broke out in
another part of the building. It seemed a horrific medley of screams and
bellowings and groans and grunts, as though a horde of wild beasts had suddenly
gone berserk.
"Come," said Ras Thavas, "to the spawning of the monsters. We may be needed."
CHAPTER VII
THE VATS OF LIFE
RAS THAVAS LED us to an enormous room where we beheld such a spectacle as
probably never had been enacted elsewhere in the entire universe. In the center
of the room was a huge tank about four feet high from which were emerging
hideous monstrosities almost beyond the powers of human imagination to conceive;
and surrounding the tank were a great number of hormad warriors with their
officers, rushing upon the terrible creatures, overpowering and binding them, or
destroying them if they were too malformed to function successfully as fighting
men. At least fifty per centum of them had to be thus destroyed – fearful
caricatures of life that were neither beast nor man. One was only a great mass
of living flesh with an eye somewhere and a single hand. Another had developed
with its arms and legs transposed, so that when it walked it was upside down
with its head between its legs. The features of many were grotesquely misplaced.
Noses, ears, eyes, mouths might be scattered indiscriminately anywhere over the
surfaces of torso or limbs. These were all destroyed; only those were preserved
which had two arms and legs and the facial features of which were somewhere upon
the head. The nose might be under an ear and the mouth above the eyes, but if
they could function appearance was of no importance.
Ras Thavas viewed them with evident pride. "What do you think of them?" he asked
The Warlord.
"Quite horrible," replied John Carter.
Ras Thavas appeared hurt. "I have made no attempt as yet to attain beauty," he
said; "and I shall have to admit that so far even symmetry has eluded me, but
both will come. I have created human beings. Some day I shall create the perfect
man, and a new race of supermen will inhabit Barsoom – beautiful, intelligent,
deathless."
"And in the meantime these creatures will have spread all over the world and
conquered it. They will destroy your supermen. You have created a
Frankensteinian host that will not only destroy you but the civilization of a
world. Hasn't that possibility ever occurred to you?"
"Yes, it has; but I never intended to create these creatures in any such
numbers. That is the idea of the seven jeds. I purposed developing only enough
to form a small army with which to conquer Toonol, that I might regain my island
and my old laboratory."
The din in the room had now risen to such proportions that further conversation
was impossible. Screaming heads rolled upon the floor. Hormad warriors dragged
away the newly created creatures that were considered fit to live and fresh
warriors swarmed into the chamber to replace them. New hormads emerged
constantly from the culture tank which swarmed with writhing life like an
enormous witch's pot. And this same scene was being duplicated in forty similar
rooms throughout the city of Morbus, while a stream of new hormads was pouring