Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs by Mike Resnick, Robert T. Garcia Page B

she gasped, clutching my arm and pulling me to the far side of the clearing. “Carson, it is a fearmharr arrachtach ! We can’t stay here. It means sudden death!”
    “What do you mean?” I queried. “What is a fearmharr arrachtach ?” Again I asked, “What is happening?”
    “Never mind,” she urged. “We must get away from here. Please, my beloved, our very lives are at stake!”
    She pulled me toward the surrounding forest even as the grassy area beneath began to rise up in ridges and mounds that rippled and flowed together, forming erections as tall at first as a common house cat, then as high as our knees, then as our waists, rippling and shifting until, to my astonishment and horror, I saw one of them shaping itself into a perfect simulacrum of Duare and another into a duplicate of myself.
    “Are they alive?” I shouted.
    Duare shook her head. “They have the semblance of life but are mere simulacra of you and of me, O my Carson. They are dangerous. Do not trust them. Quick, we must get away.”
    “But the woods are full of hunting Andaks and deadly nathair culebra snakes!”
    There we stood, trapped between the deadly advancing simulacra, which moment by moment seemed to be perfecting their resemblance of us. If you have never seen a perfect duplicate of yourself suddenly appear from the very ground beneath your feet and advance toward you with murder in its eyes, you can only imagine the horror that Duare and I felt at that moment.
    Trapped between our murderous doppelgangers, the hunting scorpion-men, and the incredibly deadly nathair culebras , Duare and I stood, ready to meet our fates together. At that moment whatever gods there may be had at least granted us the final boon of permitting us to die together.
    I took Duare in my arms and drew her lush, pulsing body against my own.
    “My princess,” I murmured, “I die happy for having found you and won your love!”
    “O my Carson,” she replied, pressing her lips upon my own, “my champion from a distant world, I will go anywhere with you, even unto the great beyond from which none return!”
    At this moment a light flashed from above, and together Duare and I turned our faces upward to behold the most amazing sight of all the amazing sights I had beheld since my arrival upon Venus.
    A giant dragonfly was circling above us. Its gossamer wings caught the diffuse gray daylight that the twin cloud covers of Venus permit to reach the surface of that planet. A beam of light of an intense ultramarine hue flashed down, brilliantly illuminating one of the simulacra that had mere seconds before threatened the lives of my glorious beloved and myself.
    The fearmharr arrachtach threw its arms upward as if trying to reach the dragonfly and draw it down to the ground, then slumped and lay briefly at my feet. I gazed down into a perfect copy of myself, from my thick blond hair to my muscular arms and powerful torso to my heavy jungle boots.
    The beast writhed once, twitched, tremored briefly, then subsided back into the grassy covering of the clearing. I stood, thunderstruck, as a simulacrum of the splendid Duare was caught in the ultramarine ray, duplicating the agony and ultimate demise of my own duplicate.
    The process continued until the clearing had returned to its original innocent-seeming appearance. I looked skyward at the dragonfly and saw the ultramarine ray pointing at myself. There was no time to avoid its brilliance. As it struck my body, I felt an icy tingling, from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. I looked down and saw myself bathed in a brilliant blue glow, but other than the frigid tingling I was unharmed.
    The ray was withdrawn from my body and aimed at Duare.
    “Do not be afraid, my princess. It will not harm you!”
    Nor did it.
    With a whirring of its mighty wings, the giant dragonfly circled lower and lower, finally settling to the grass.
    Side by side, Duare and I advanced toward it. Duare reached to touch the creature’s