I was an exotic curio!
I assumed at this time that all of Thanator was inhabited only by these nomadic tribes of arthropods, and that I was unique. It was not until much later that I discovered that the Yathoon Horde shared their world with at least three other distinctly different races of intelligent human beings, and that it was the peculiar hues of my yellow hair and blue eyes that rendered me valuable―a "collector's item."
My first impressions of these ungainly, stalking insect creatures was, I think naturally, one of revulsion and horror. I have never had a neurotic terror of crawling insects, but the weird, gaunt, faceless arthropods were so completely unlike anything I had ever encountered that my initial reaction was to find them repulsive and loathsome.
My reaction during these opening days of my enslavement was due in part to a fear that I was in imminent danger of being served up as the main course in some sort of disgusting cannibal feast―or at least that I was soon to be tortured to death on the altars of some alien divinity. But no such fate ensued, and in time I learned that I was in no danger of either cannibalism or torment, and would receive decent treatment from my captors.
My first reaction to the arthropods was, as I have said, one of revulsion at what I deemed their hideous and inhuman aspect. Inhuman they certainly were, but "hideous" is a matter of open question. The fact that they differed enormously from Homo sapiens was no reason to find their appearance automatically loathsome. Very soon I found myself admiring them. Slim, stalking figures, they were not without a certain grace ―even a certain cold inhuman beauty. With their attenuated limbs and extreme height they came, with familiarity, to assume something of the dignity and impressiveness of the lean gaunt statues of Giacometti or Henry Moore's weird stone figures.
Indeed, they had also something of the sleek, economical efficiency of a well-designed machine. Almost I could picture those stalking, multijointed limbs as smoothly machined pistons. Something of the passionless beauty of the machine was theirs, and something of the grandeur of sculpture.
In short, I no longer found them frightening, having no reason to fear my fate at their hands.
I found that they treated me well, or at least did not mistreat me overtly. They seemed, if anything, to pay very little attention to me, wrapped up as they were in their own unimaginable inner lives and busied with their own affairs.
Indeed, the retinue of Koja's slaves―captive arthropods won in battle with rival clans―fed and cared for me solicitously, if coldly. The arthropods do not know the human emotions―love, kindness, mercy, and friendship are completely alien to their mentality. This is a mixed blessing, at best. But, at least, if they know no kindness they are equally ignorant of cruelty. They neither torture nor mistreat their captives. Ignorant of the nobler sentiments, they are devoid of the more bestial.
Koja interrogated me at length upon our return to the vast war camp of the Horde. He seemed baffled at my inability to understand his harsh metallic language. And he seemed equally puzzled as the sounds of English words came from my lips. I tried Spanish and Portuguese, with which I was intimately familiar from my childhood, and a few phrases of French, German, and Vietnamese. He was equally unfamiliar with all of these. Eventually he stalked out, leaving me in the care of one of his servitors, an arthropod named Sujat. Sujat was personally in charge of caring for my needs, which he did with cold efficiency.
A row of uncouth symbols was painted across my chest―symbols whose meanings I was not to discover until somewhat later. As for the rest of my person, I went as naked as when I had first appeared on this world. The Yathoon, of course, with their chitinous exoskeleton which protects their soft inner parts from harm and from extremes of temperature, have no need of clothing. Lacking external sexual organs, they are devoid of the very concept of bodily modesty, as they are of ornament or fashion.
Their only garment, if it can be dignified with such a term, is a leather strap worn across the thorax like a baldric, and to which is affixed the long supple length of the whip-sword, held thus scabbarded across what would be their shoulders if they had shoulders, which they do not. The five-foot length of this blade would make it impractical to be worn at the hip. This baldric, and a row of painted symbols across the front of the upper thorax, constitutes their entire raiment. These symbols are not unlike those painted upon my own chest, and I was shortly to learn their meaning.
Although Sujat was in charge of me, it was Koja himself who served as my instructor in the Thanatorian tongue. This was, I suppose, a signal honor, but I think it was prompted purely by Koja's curiosity about his new toy. At any rate, Koja taught me his language with enormous patience and an unswerving sense of purpose that I would have thought highly admirable in a human being. But I could not, at least at this early date, think of my "owner" in terms of human attributes. His gaunt, alien person still, to some degree at least, seemed repellent to me.
This language was very interesting and, in many aspects, unique. I later discovered that the four races who inhabit Thanator have―incredible as it may seem, in mind of their enormous differences―a common tongue which is identical in all respects save, perhaps, in vocabulary. For the arthropods have not, or at least do not use, any words for such purely human conceptions as "love," "friendship," "mother," "father," "wife," or "son."
Such concepts do have a place, I later learned, in the universal language of this planet, but as the arthropods have no use or need for such terms, they are ignorant of them.
No other language than this single universal tongue has ever been known on the jungle moon; indeed, it was with the very greatest difficulty that, in the early days of my captivity, I made my captors grasp the notion that I was totally ignorant of their tongue and required patient instruction therein. The very concept of an intelligent being unfamiliar with the common tongue=to say nothing of the idea of a being who spoke "another" language―seemed incomprehensible to them. I am convinced that, at the beginning at least, Koja believed me mentally deficient; an idiot or at least a low-grade moron. But with some effort I managed to get across the idea that I wished to learn their language, and he taught me with great efficiency.
Since I have spent the greater part of my life knocking about the odd corners of the globe, I have developed an ear for languages and have a nodding acquaintance with a dozen earthly tongues. Hence I really did not find it difficult to master the basics of Thanatorian. At the beginning it was easy. I would point to objects, to parts of the body or of the landscape, to tools, weapons, articles of furniture, and receive from the expressionless Koja the relevant Thanatorian term. To assist in memorizing these words I wrote them down in English letters, a process that seemed greatly to mystify my tutor. Among the jackdaw's nest of curiosities that formed the wealth of Koja, I found an enameled box containing writing implements, rather like a Japanese writing case. This was, by the way, my first inkling that the Yathoon warriors shared their world with a higher civilization. For the arthropods were completely ignorant of writing, and when I suggested with appropriate gestures to Sujat that I would like to use these instruments he stalked from the tent to fetch his master, who came to stand, impassively watching as I displayed the uses to which I wished to put the writing case.