Lin Carter - Down to a Sunless Sea (20 page)

Brant and Will Harbin climbed into their protective, heated suits of nioflex. The natives, including Zuarra, resumed their long, loose robes. And they climbed up and up, while the air became more like the atmosphere they had known on the surface—cruelly dry, bitterly cold, depleted of all but vestiges of life-giving oxygen.

It was as difficult for their bodies and respiratory systems to readjust to these conditions as it had been earlier. They must pause to rest themselves many times, panting, starved for air, their flesh slick with greasy perspiration as their body-chemistry reverted to the conditions they had known before, on the surface.

In time, they returned to normal.

They spoke little between themselves, saving their breath for the ascent of the stone stair. But during the breaks between the intervals of the ascent, when they rested, drank frugally, ate sparingly of their scant supplies, a few words were exchanged.

Will Harbin's face was screwed into a doleful expression during one such rest period. Brant asked if he was feeling all right; it had occurred to him that the strain on the older man's heart, caused by the long and painful ascent of the stair, might very well prove injurious.

The other shook his head. "My ticker's strong as ever," he declared. "No, I was just mourning the loss to science of the information, the knowledge, the data we could have brought back from Zhah. If only I had brought along a camera! Or specimen-bottles. Incredible or not, my colleagues would have to pay some attention to tissue-samples from the mushroom-trees, or a segment of a dragonfly wing. ..."

He cast Brant a sour glance, and the big man grinned ruefully, knowing what was in Will Harbin's mind at that moment. He had mightily wished to fill his canteen with water from the luminous sea, but Brant had refused to permit this, on the grounds that they would become mighty thirsty on the stair, and every canteen was needed for nourishing fungus juices.

And, of course, he was quite right. Long before they reached the top of the stair, their supplies of drinkables gave out and their mouths and throats became parched with thirst. But knowing that Brant had been right in refusing him permission made it no easier for the scientist to do without the single water sample which would, if not exactly have proven beyond all doubt or question the existence of the subterranean world beneath the dunes of Mars, at least have surprised and interested the world of science.

He heaved a heavy sigh, and stopped thinking about the loss to human knowledge. Many and strange were the mysteries of Mars, and in all the generations since first the Earthsiders came hither to explore, to colonize, to exploit, few had been uncovered, and multitudes more remained hidden in the hostile wastes of the Red Planet.

Brant's physical powers were amazing to the outlaws, and won him their admiration and respect as nothing had before.

The fact of the matter was very simple. Mars has a gravity far less than that of Earth, where Brant was born and bred. His muscles were shaped to battle against a stronger pull of gravitation, whereas those of the Martian natives were adapted to the lighter gravity of their world.

Nevertheless, his stamina and endurance, his sheer strength alone, made him the object of their admiration. Fighting men from whatever world admire in others the same abilities which they respect in themselves. They found nothing to marvel at in his physical courage, his fighting skills, or his instinct for survival. But his strength and endurance were so far greater than their own—even those lean, tough, rangy desert hawks—that they strove, however in vain, to emulate him.

The grueling toil of the ascent, the bone-deep exhaustion they endured, the oppressive darkness and silence of the stair, was not alleviated by the monotony of the climb.

For there were no surprises on the way back to the surface, only a reversal of the strange—but by now, quite familiar— phenomena they had observed on the earlier journey down.

When there is nothing at all to look at, and even less to think about, boredom can become as wearisome to the mind as hard physical toil is to the body.

They were by now too parched to talk, or even to sing. There was nothing at all to do but to climb, and climb, and climb, until every muscle and nerve and sinew in their bodies ached beyond that caused by any exertion they had ever known before; and there was nothing to look forward to in hope and anticipation except the next rest stop, and the next morsel of food from their dwindling store.

They all knew that it would eventually end, of course, but when it did, it quite took them by surprise and for a few moments their benumbed minds could not quite register the fact.

Tuan uttered a harsh croaking cry, pointing ahead. They looked, to see the light of Will Harbin's fluoro mirrored in the dull reflective sheen of a huge rectangle of metal.

It was the door that had barred this passageway between two worlds for uncountable hundreds of millennia.

And they had come to the top of the stair at last.

"Thank God," groaned Harbin wearily.

Tuan and his outlaws muttered a ritual phrase in honor of the Timeless Ones—the strange, shadowy gods of the little-known native religion.

Brant said nothing, but relief was visible in his tired, sagging face. He put one arm about Zuarra, whom he had been helping for most of the last hundred steps, and she lay her head against his chest, and her arm crept about his waist.

The wan light of open day glimmered through the rectangle cut from blackness that was the door to the surface world.

29

Comrades

One by one they filed through the open door, wearily depositing the gear they had lugged all this way on the bare floor of the long, narrow cave which led to the cinnamon sands of the desertlands.

Here, heaped against one wall of the cavern, Brant and Harbin and Zuarra found the equipment they had abandoned at the beginning of the descent—the pressure-still, the tents, the bedrolls.

There was still fresh water in the pressure-still, and they all shared it—only a sip or two apiece, but more delicious than any wine they had ever tasted.

"What did you do with our beasts?" Brant asked of the outlaw chief.

"Tethered them with our own steeds in a deep gully not far to the south," Tuan replied. "The men of Tuan salvaged the protective fences that Brant and his comrades abandoned earlier, when they fled by night from their encampment. With these, we rigged a barrier which we hoped would hold at bay whatever predators may roam this far to the south of the world. The gully contained much fodder upon which the beasts could freely feed. With the favor of the Timeless Ones, they should all, or most of them, be strong and fit enough to bear us on the rest of the journey."

Brant nodded. It had come to his notice that Tuan and the other natives—including Zuarra—made more frequent mention of their mysterious gods in speech these past few days.

He grinned inwardly. Could it be that their weird and wonderful adventures in Zhah had given even the savage desert-bandits—religion?

When they were somewhat rested and refreshed, they went to the mouth of the cave and looked out on the familfar scene. Before, the desert wastes had seemed grim and bleak and desolate, but now, somehow, it was like a glimpse of home. They stood and stared for a long time at the gloomy, bruise-purple sky, the small, dull sun, the rolling stretches of the cinnamon sands.

None of them would really miss Zhah, Brant knew with a certainty he could not have explained, even to himself. Not its weird forests or gorgeous flying creatures; not the luminous sea with its shores strewn with opals and nameless gems; not the laughing, naked, golden children or their wonderful floating city.

In time their memories of the subterranean world under the dunes of Mars would lose their freshness and luster, would dim and fade, like half-forgotten dreams.

And in time, perhaps, they would all wonder if their experiences in Zhah had not, after all, been just that: a dream.

From which they must now awake to face the harsher realities of life in the waking world. . . .

Tuan dispatched half of his warriors to see to their riding-beasts, while the remainder searched the cliffside and its gullies and crevices for provender. They were heartily sick of mushroom-meat by now, and craved meat of another sort.

The men returned with the welcome word that the lopers seemingly had not been disturbed, and were all in apparent health and vigor. And before very much more time had passed, the others came back from their hunt, bearing fat lizards, and a good supply of the fat-leafed, bladder-like plants that the pressure-still would convert into fresh, clean water.

That night, under a blaze of unblinking stars, they feasted magnificently and drank their fill. The outlaws broke into a low, chanting song that Brant recognized as the victory song of returning heroes. He grinned somberly enough.

There were no real heroes, he knew. Only survivors.

They slept in the cave, but he and Zuarra shared one of the tents. It was long since last they had loved together, and he was as hungry for her body as he had been for meat and drink.

They woke at the first light of dawn and made ready for departure. The lopers they saddled, loading their gear and equipment on the pack-beasts. Brant and Harbin could not help noticing that none of their possessions had been harmed or tampered with or plundered. Tuan, when he swore brotherhood even with
f'yagha,
was, it seemed, the soul of honor.

He even returned to Harbin the two laser rifles with which the scientist and Agila had been armed when first Brant and the women had encountered them.

When they were in the saddle, Brant guided his beast near to Tuan's to exchange a few last words.

"Whither, now, will Tuan and his warriors wend their way?" he inquired, in the polite and formal dialect of the Tongue.

The outlaw pointed.

"Out into the dustlands, to the edges of that chasm Brant's people called the Erebus," said the chieftain. "There the remainder of the warriors of Tuan await his return—unless, perchance, they have long since given him up for dead, and wandered off to loot and plunder the fat merchant caravans farther north!"

They grinned at each other, and then their expressions sobered. For this was to be the final parting of the ways for them. And Brant said as much, a trifle awkwardly. The outlaw chief shrugged carelessly.

"Who knows, O Brant? The world is wide, true, but it is not wide enough to hold two friends apart for long. Mayhap we shall even meet again, to ride together, or to face further marvels. ..."

His voice trailed away, and he looked thoughtful.

"What is it, Tuan?"

"It is nothing," replied the other, slowly. "But . . . never did Tuan in this life expect to find himself naming one of the
f'yagha
with the name of 'friend.' It is curious how events and happenings can change the hearts of men."

"I know." Brant nodded. "First we were foes, although I knew not why. Then we became allies, facing a common peril. Then comrades. And now, as you say it, friends."

"Friends forever, my brother!" laughed Tuan. "And comrades again, it may come to pass, for who can read the dark and hidden face of future time!"

They sundered their paths, then, Tuan and his outlaws wheeling about and lifting their weapons in the air, raising a mighty shout, a salute to Brant and his party.

"Hai
-yah!"
they thundered, and then, in a storm of fine dust, whirled into the desert and were gone from sight among the sloping, shifting dunes.

Brant and his friends sat their saddles, watching them out of sight.

Will Harbin made a wry grimace. To Brant he observed:

"For a bandit-chief, a wild outlaw, that fellow has the heart of a prince. And with more courtesy and honor than I have observed very often in princes ..."

"Where do you plan to go now, Doc?" asked Brant, as they left the cave mouth behind and moved at an easy path northward along the base of the cliffs.

"Might as well get back to the trade city of Dakhshan, I guess," said Harbin. "The CA has a commo station there, and I can report to my department that I am alive and well. They'll send a skimmer to pick me up and take me back to Syrtis Port. How about yourself, Jim?"

"No reason why Zuarra and I shouldn't take the long road back to Sun Lake City," said the younger man with a shrug. "The trouble I ran away from has got to have blown over by now, and if the colonials don't like the idea of one of their own marrying a native woman, well, hell, we'll strike off to some place like Dakhshan, where our two races somehow manage to live together side by side without fighting. And I've had enough excitement to last me quite a while ... I'd like to settle down like ordinary people, and maybe raise some kids."

Zuarra demurely dropped her eyes, smiling in her heart.

And they rode on into the morning, side by side.