Sebastian of Mars (15 page)

Miklos shook his head. “Shall I trap
him?”

“No. If he wants to come with us he will show
up on his own. Otherwise we will leave him be.”

At Radion’s insistence
I gave up my explorations, and returned to the others. Miklos
searched the rest of the buildings, but found nothing.

A
t dinnertime, after
my cooking lesson with Tyron, I saw the little one, at the edge of
our camp.

The two scouts had not returned from upriver,
so it was decided that we would stay the night. The cook fires were
smaller, less conspicuous, now, but the stew that was prepared was
just as delicious, and the aroma wafted out over the camp.

Near the first building I had explored the
young cat’s face appeared, like a ghostly apparition, looking our
way. I had just taken my meal and stood with my steaming bowl when
I saw him. He looked sad and lonely and hungry.

I walked a few feet toward him and his head
disappeared.

When I stood still it appeared again.

I called, “Are you hungry?”

Again he was gone.

I walked halfway to the building and set the
bowl down in the street.

“It’s there if you want it!” I shouted. I
added, “And it’s not cat!”

I went back to camp and then turned around to
look. The bowl was still there, untouched.

I drew another meal for myself, and returned
to my original spot, a good thirty feet away from the bowl. I sat
on the ground, ate, and waited. I felt like a fisherman, patiently
letting his bait do the work.

“It’s delicious!” I called out, but there was
no response, and the face had not reappeared.

Phobos overhead caught my eye, and I studied
its silent, grim passage for a few moments, and remembered Radion’s
spy glass.

When I looked back, the bowl was gone.

Some fisherman I was! I’d lost the bait
and
the catch.

I knew it was useless to look for him, and
that Radion would not allow me to leave the camp, so I returned
with my own empty bowl and asked him for use of his glass to study
the night sky.

He gave it up readily, shrugging at my
enthusiasm for astronomy. “Who has time for such foolishness?” he
said. “The stars are to guide you at night, not to dream over.”

He handed over the instrument and I hurried
back to my spot.

The bowl was back, and when I retrieved it,
it was empty.

I looked to the corner of the building, and
there was faint movement in the shadows.

“You can come out if you like – I’m not a
gypsy myself but I can tell you they’re not cannibals.”

He stepped out into the faint light of
Phobos, but did not take a step toward me.

“Would you like more to eat?”

“Yes. I’m very hungry.”

“When was the last time you had a proper
meal?”

There was momentary silence. “Three weeks.
Before the F’rar marched through.”

I filled his bowl and returned.

Again there was no one there, but this time I
just marched forward, put the bowl down, and went back to my spot.
As I studied the sky with Radion’s instrument, a very poor one for
nighttime use, I discovered, though I did discern a few craters on
Phobos’ surface, I heard shuffling in the darkness but ignored
it.

When I put down the instrument the little
fellow was standing there with his empty bowl regarding me with
curiosity. There was still ten feet between us.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Studying the stars. Would you like to
look?”

He shook his head, and I proceeded to ignore
him, training the glass on Earth, which grew from a tiny blue dot
to a slightly larger one – I did see, to my delight, that there
were patches of brown and white mixed in with the blue tint.

There was a tug on my sleeve.

“I want to look.”

I looked down and there he was, nearly white
as an albino, and dusty from head to foot.

“When was the last time you bathed?”

His solemn eyes softened for a moment with
amusement. “The last time anyone told me to.”

“Well, if you want to look through this
glass, I’m telling you to. You smell, and your appearance is not
appropriate in the presence of someone like me.”

“Let me look through the glass first,” he
bargained.

“You promise to bathe?”

He considered it, putting his paws behind his
back, and then nodded. “I promise.”

“You’re not crossing your fingers?”

He became suddenly flustered, and drew his
crossed fingers out, uncrossing them. “I promise,” he said
solemnly.

“Very well.”

I showed him Phobos, which he found
impressive, and then Earth, which he did not. “So small!” he
said.

“Yes, but did you know that it’s actually a
planet in space, just like Mars, and that it’s bigger than
Mars?”

He took his eye from the spy scope, and
looked at me as if I were mad.

“It’s true,” I continued. “And the blueness
is all water, we think.”

Eagerly, he looked through the glass
again.

“I see the water!” he said. “And the brown
patches?”

“Most likely deserts and mountains.”

“And the white?”

“Ice caps, like our own.”

“Mars has ice caps?”

I tried to get the instrument away from him,
but he was swinging it wildly this way and that now, trying to find
more planets, no doubt.

I gently removed it from his grasp. “Give it
to me before you break it. Do you mean to tell me you didn’t know
that your own planet has ice caps?”

He shook his head.

“Didn’t they teach you anything in
school?”

“I never went to school,” he said.

“That’s shameful. It’s time for your
bath.”

He drew back, and I could tell he was
thinking of running away again so I began to walk away from
him.

In a moment he was beside me. “Can we look at
Earth again after my bath?”

“Certainly,” I answered.

“How did you know I had my fingers
crossed?”

I looked down at him.

“Because I used to be
your age,” I said, and for the first time he smiled.

H
e hadn’t been
taught geography, and he obviously had not been taught to bathe,
either.

Soap was a foreign concept to him. He showed
me a little safe pool naturally formed by a land cut in the river,
and when I handed him soap he looked at it and frowned.

“What’s this?”

I showed him, washing my own paws in the
water. “It makes you clean.”

He shrugged, and took the soap, for the next
thirty minutes I waited patiently while he learned to bathe
himself. When I handed him a towel he again frowned, but quickly
caught on.

“What did you used to do?” I asked with a
short laugh. “Shake yourself dry?”

“Something like that, in the sun” he
answered, and I walked away to find him some clean clothing,
admonishing him to wash his own in the river while I was gone.

When I returned I thought he was gone. The
soap and towel were neatly laid out on the bank, along with his
cleaned clothes. It occurred to me that I didn’t even know his name
to call him.

But his head appeared as if by magic, just to
my left, behind a low, wide rock.

“Another of your hiding places?” I asked, in
jest.

“Yes,” he answered seriously, and after I
handed him his new tunic and he emerged dressed in the overlarge
garment I saw that there was indeed a hollow which had been carved
out behind the rock, and that once entrenched he would be nearly
invisible.

“How many hiding places do you have?”

“Hundreds,” he answered, without smiling.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I needed them.”

And then he would say
no more, but pestered me to show him more of the sky.

N
eedless to say,
when we mobilized to move the next day the little fellow, whose
name was Darwin, was with us. The two scouts, Vilmos and Takrok,
had returned during the night, and their report was not good. The
bridge upriver had been destroyed, and there was no hope of
crossing there. Also, they reported, there was now a F’rar outpost
on the far side of the river, which regularly patrolled the banks,
and that it was the vanguard of a larger army.

“Then we must travel down river, and take our
chances,” Miklos reasoned.

Radion shook his head. “I don’t like it.
We’re likely to meet Baldies, at best.”

Darwin had been standing close by me during
this conversation, listening to it carefully. He seemed to have
lost all of his fear of gypsies, and had even allowed Miklos to
scoop him up, swing him high into the air and catch him, shouting,
“Up with you, little fish! Down with you then! Ha!”

Radion and his brother went back and forth
about strategy and possible crossing points, where the river was
most narrow (but likely guarded by either F’rar or pirates) or
wider (but certainly without boat or bridge).

Darwin suddenly spoke up, his voice sure and
strong. “I know a way across.”

The two gypsy leaders stopped their
discussion and turned to him.

“And how is that, little fish?” asked Miklos,
kindly. “Do you mean for us to swim across?”

“Better than that. There’s a tunnel under the
river, about a mile from here. The F’rar don’t know about it, so it
hasn’t been blocked.” He pointed at Miklos. “
You
might have
trouble getting through, though.”

“That still leaves the problem of the wagons
and horses,” Radion said.

“There is a hidden pontoon boat on the other
side. I know where it is,” Darwin said, matter-of-factly. “The
F’rar are stupid, and missed many things.”

“They missed you,
mountains be praised!” Miklos shouted, and scooped the little man
up again, tossing him into the air and making him laugh.

D
arwin was right.
After a preliminary trip, made only by Radion, Darwin and myself,
during which the boy and the gypsy king negotiated the tunnel while
I waited for them to emerge on the other side, which they did, the
entire camp prepared. It was early afternoon by the time we moved,
and mid-afternoon by the time the crossing began.

Soon most of us had crossed, leaving a
contingent on the other side with the wagons to wait for the
promised pontoon craft. The tunnel was barely high enough to crawl
through, but it was wide and well constructed. Radion’s only worry
was that the crossing would not be made by nightfall.

“Then we will make the crossing at night!”
Miklos, who was in a very good mood, boomed.

Darwin showed us the hidden pontoon,
camouflaged in a stand of brush not forty feet from the water, and
soon the rigging for the pull-boat had been strung across the water
and the first crossing was made. The boat was not large, and one
wagon at a time could cross, so it was indeed nearly dark by the
time the last horse had been ferried over the deep water.

“I don’t want to stay here tonight,” Radion
announced. He had been increasingly unhappy as the day went on.

Miklos laughed. “What are you worried about?
Our King here has been getting progressively better with the sword.
He will protect us all by himself!”

“Tamlos did not return from the west when he
should have.”

“You know these scouts! They find something
interesting, and they follow it!”

“I don’t like it,” Radion said, and his
brother lost his smile. “You are never wrong with these
feelings.”

“No.”

“Then we will travel by night.”

Radion nodded.

At that moment one of the other scouts, who
had been one of the first to make his way through the tunnel,
returned and spoke in a low, urgent voice to Radion, who
nodded.

“It is already too late. Tamlos was captured
by a F’rar patrol. He is dead. I’m sure he told them nothing. But
the F’rar are coming this way, in force.”

“We can’t outrun them. Not with wagons,”
Miklos observed.

“Even if we destroy the wagons, there are not
enough horses.”

“No.”

Radion looked at me. “The King is our first
priority. He will ride with the boy and you, Miklos.”

I started to open my mouth but Radion said,
“You have no say in this. You are the most important thing.” The
resolution in his voice quieted me.

Darwin looked at me strangely, but then he
looked at Miklos and said, “I can hide all of us.”

Miklos looked down at him. “This is no time
for jest, boy. You have helped us once but I doubt you can help us
again.”

“We can hide, I tell you.”

“Where?” Miklos held his arms out, sweeping
over the darkening plain we were on. Outside of a few stands of
brush and high grass, there was nothing but prairie for miles.

Darwin turned to me. “Remember I told you I
had hundreds of hiding places?”

“Yes.”

“Many of them are here. Some are big enough
to hide a wagon, or a horse. If we scatter everything, then
everything can be hidden.”

Another scout arrived, whispered frantically
in Radion’s ear.

“We have two hours at most,” he
announced.

“Then we should start
now,” Darwin said evenly.

T
he boy was right.
One of the largest hiding holes was not five yards from where we
had stood discussing our fate. Some had trap doors covered with dry
grass and dust; others were like the pontoon hiding place (which
itself held one wagon and one horse, side by side) which were so
well camouflaged that a man could walk within their confines and
still not be discovered. Radion was at first skeptical, but when he
saw the well-measured placement and sophistication of these hiding
places he quickly assented, and we were hidden. At his insistence,
the horses were muzzled, and placed with trusted companions who
could handle them. All traces of our travel from the other side of
the river were obliterated. It was as if we had never been
there.