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Title: The road to Sinharat

Author: Leigh Brackett

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay

Release date: December 17, 2023 [eBook #72439]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROAD TO SINHARAT ***





              _The people of Mars were perverse. They did
          not want Earth's proffered gift of rich land, much
             water, new power. They fought Rehabilitation.
             And with them fought Carey, the Earthman, who
          wanted only the secret that lay at the end of ..._

                         THE ROAD TO SINHARAT

                           By LEIGH BRACKETT

                         Illustrated by FINLAY

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                       Amazing Stories May 1963.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The door was low, deep-sunk into the thickness of the wall. Carey
knocked and then he waited, stooped a bit under the lintel-stone,
fitting his body to the meagre shadow as though he could really hide it
there. A few yards away, beyond cracked and tilted paving-blocks, the
Jekkara Low-Canal showed its still black water to the still black sky,
and both were full of stars.

Nothing moved along the canal-site. The town was closed tight, and
this in itself was so unnatural that it made Carey shiver. He had been
here before and he knew how it ought to be. The chief industry of the
Low-Canal towns is sinning of one sort or another, and they work at
it right around the clock. One might have thought that all the people
had gone away, but Carey knew they hadn't. He knew that he had not
taken a single step unwatched. He had not really believed that they
would let him come this far, and he wondered why they had not killed
him. Perhaps they remembered him.

There was a sound on the other side of the door.

Carey said in the antique High Martian, "Here is one who claims the
guest-right." In Low Martian, the vernacular that fitted more easily on
his tongue, he said, "Let me in, Derech. You owe me blood."

The door opened narrowly and Carey slid through it, into lamp-light and
relative warmth. Derech closed the door and barred it, saying,

"Damn you, Carey. I knew you were going to turn up here babbling about
blood-debts. I swore I wouldn't let you in."

He was a Low-Canaller, lean and small and dark and predatory. He
wore a red jewel in his left ear-lobe and a totally incongruous but
comfortable suit of Terran synthetics, insulated against heat and cold.
Carey smiled.

"Sixteen years ago," he said, "you'd have perished before you'd have
worn that."

"Corruption. Nothing corrupts like comfort, unless it's kindness."
Derech sighed. "I knew it was a mistake to let you save my neck that
time. Sooner or later you'd claim payment. Well, now that I have let
you in, you might as well sit down." He poured wine into a cup of
alabaster worn thin as an eggshell and handed it to Carey. They drank,
sombrely, in silence. The flickering lamp-light showed the shadows and
the deep lines in Carey's face.

Derech said, "How long since you've slept?"

"I can sleep on the way," said Carey, and Derech looked at him with
amber eyes as coldly speculative as a cat's.

       *       *       *       *       *

Carey did not press him. The room was large, richly furnished with
the bare, spare, faded richness of a world that had very little left
to give in the way of luxury. Some of the things were fairly new,
made in the traditional manner by Martian craftsmen. They were almost
indistinguishable from the things that had been old when the Reed Kings
and the Bee Kings were little boys along the Nile-bank.

"What will happen," Derech asked, "if they catch you?"

"Oh," said Carey, "they'll deport me first. Then the United Worlds
Court will try me, and they can't do anything but find me guilty.
They'll hand me over to Earth for punishment, and there will be
further investigations and penalties and fines and I'll be a thoroughly
broken man when they've finished, and sorry enough for it. Though I
think they'll be sorrier in the long run."

"That won't help matters any," said Derech.

"No."

"Why," asked Derech, "why is it that they will not listen?"

"Because they know that they are right."

Derech said an evil word.

"But they do. I've sabotaged the Rehabilitation Project as much as
I possibly could. I've rechanneled funds and misdirected orders so
they're almost two years behind schedule. These are the things they'll
try me for. But my real crime is that I have questioned Goodness and
the works thereof. Murder they might forgive me, but not that."

He added wearily, "You'll have to decide quickly. The UW boys are
working closely with the Council of City-States, and Jekkara is no
longer untouchable. It's also the first place they'll look for me."

"I wondered if that had occurred to you." Derech frowned. "That doesn't
bother me. What does bother me is that I know where you want to go.
We tried it once, remember? We ran for our lives across that damned
desert. Four solid days and nights." He shivered.

"Send me as far as Barrakesh. I can disappear there, join a southbound
caravan. I intend to go alone."

"If you intend to kill yourself, why not do it here in comfort and
among friends? Let me think," Derech said. "Let me count my years and
my treasure and weigh them against a probable yard of sand."

Flames hissed softly around the coals in the brazier. Outside, the wind
got up and started its ancient work, rubbing the house walls with tiny
grains of dust, rounding off the corners, hollowing the window places.
All over Mars the wind did this, to huts and palaces, to mountains and
the small burrow-heaps of animals, laboring patiently toward a city
when the whole face of the planet should be one smooth level sea of
dust. Only lately new structures of metal and plastic had appeared
beside some of the old stone cities. They resisted the wearing sand.
They seemed prepared to stay forever. And Carey fancied that he could
hear the old wind laughing as it went.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a scratching against the closed shutter in the back wall,
followed by a rapid drumming of fingertips. Derech rose, his face
suddenly alert. He rapped twice on the shutter to say that he
understood and then turned to Carey. "Finish your wine."

He took the cup and went into another room with it. Carey stood up.
Mingling with the sound of the wind outside, the gentle throb of motors
became audible, low in the sky and very near.

Derech returned and gave Carey a shove toward an inner wall. Carey
remembered the pivoted stone that was there, and the space behind it.
He crawled through the opening. "Don't sneeze or thrash about," said
Derech. "The stonework is loose, and they'd hear you."

He swung the stone shut. Carey huddled as comfortably as possible in
the uneven hole, worn smooth with the hiding of illegal things for
countless generations. Air and a few faint gleams of light seeped
through between the stone blocks, which were set without mortar as in
most Martian construction. He could even see a thin vertical segment of
the room.

When the sharp knock came at the door, he discovered that he could hear
quite clearly.

Derech moved across his field of vision. The door opened. A man's voice
demanded entrance in the name of the United Worlds and the Council of
Martian City-States.

"Please enter," said Derech.

Carey saw, more or less fragmentarily, four men. Three were Martians in
the undistinguished cosmopolitan garb of the City-States. They were the
equivalent of the FBI. The fourth was an Earthman, and Carey smiled to
see the measure of his own importance. The spare, blond, good-looking
man with the sunburn and the friendly blue eyes might have been an
actor, a tennis-player, or a junior executive on holiday. He was Howard
Wales, Earth's best man in Interpol.

Wales let the Martians do the talking, and while they did it he drifted
unobtrusively about, peering through doorways, listening, touching,
_feeling_. Carey became fascinated by him, in an unpleasant sort of
way. Once he came and stood directly in front of Carey's crevice in the
wall. Carey was afraid to breathe, and he had a dreadful notion that
Wales would suddenly turn about and look straight in at him through the
crack.

The senior Martian, a middle-aged man with an able look about him,
was giving Derech a briefing on the penalties that awaited him if he
harbored a fugitive or withheld information. Carey thought that he was
being too heavy about it. Even five years ago he would not have dared
to show his face in Jekkara. He could picture Derech listening amiably,
lounging against something and playing with the jewel in his ear.
Finally Derech got bored with it and said without heat,

"Because of our geographical position, we have been exposed to the New
Culture." The capitals were his. "We have made adjustments to it. But
this is still Jekkara and you're here on sufference, no more. Please
don't forget it."

Wales spoke, deftly forestalling any comment from the City-Stater.
"You've been Carey's friend for many years, haven't you?"

"We robbed tombs together in the old days."

"'Archeological research' is a nicer term, I should think."

"My very ancient and perfectly honorable guild never used it. But I'm
an honest trader now, and Carey doesn't come here."

He might have added a qualifying "often," but he did not.

The City-Stater said derisively, "He has or will come here now."

"Why?" asked Derech.

"He needs help. Where else could he go for it?"

"Anywhere. He has many friends. And he knows Mars better than most
Martians, probably a damn sight better than you do."

"But," said Wales quietly, "outside of the City-States all Earthmen are
being hunted down like rabbits, if they're foolish enough to stay. For
Carey's sake, if you know where he is, tell us. Otherwise he is almost
certain to die."

"He's a grown man," Derech said. "He must carry his own load."

       *       *       *       *       *

"He's carrying too much ..." Wales said, and then broke off. There was
a sudden gabble of talk, both in the room and outside. Everybody moved
toward the door, out of Carey's vision, except Derech who moved into
it, relaxed and languid and infuriatingly self-assured. Carey could not
hear the sound that had drawn the others but he judged that another
flier was landing. In a few minutes Wales and the others came back, and
now there were some new people with them. Carey squirmed and craned,
getting closer to the crack, and he saw Alan Woodthorpe, his superior,
Administrator of the Rehabilitation Project for Mars, and probably the
most influential man on the planet. Carey knew that he must have rushed
across a thousand miles of desert from his headquarters at Kahora, just
to be here at this moment.

Carey was flattered and deeply moved.

Woodthorpe introduced himself to Derech. He was disarmingly simple
and friendly in his approach, a man driven and wearied by many vital
matters but never forgetting to be warm, gracious, and human. And the
devil of it was that he was exactly what he appeared to be. That was
what made dealing with him so impossibly difficult.

Derech said, smiling a little, "Don't stray away from your guards."

"Why is it?" Woodthorpe asked. "Why this hostility? If only your people
would understand that we're trying to help them."

"They understand that perfectly," Derech said. "What they can't
understand is why, when they have thanked you politely and explained
that they neither need nor want your help, you still refuse to leave
them alone."

"Because we know what we can do for them! They're destitute now. We
can make them rich, in water, in arable land, in power--we can change
their whole way of life. Primitive people are notoriously resistant to
change, but in time they'll realize...."

"Primitive?" said Derech.

"Oh, not the Low-Canallers," said Woodthorpe quickly. "Your
civilization was flourishing, I know, when Proconsul was still
wondering whether or not to climb down out of his tree. For that very
reason I cannot understand why you side with the Drylanders."

Derech said, "Mars is an old, cranky, dried-up world, but we understand
her. We've made a bargain with her. We don't ask too much of her, and
she gives us sufficient for our needs. We can depend on her. We do not
want to be made dependent on other men."

"But this is a new age," said Woodthorpe. "Advanced technology makes
anything possible. The old prejudices, the parochial viewpoints, are no
longer...."

"You were saying something about primitives."

"I was thinking of the Dryland tribes. We had counted on Dr. Carey,
because of his unique knowledge, to help them understand us. Instead,
he seems bent on stirring them up to war. Our survey parties have been
set upon with the most shocking violence. If Carey succeeds in reaching
the Drylands there's no telling what he may do. Surely you don't
want...."

"Primitive," Derech said, with a ring of cruel impatience in his voice.
"Parochial. The gods send me a wicked man before a well-meaning fool.
Mr. Woodthorpe, the Drylanders do not need Dr. Carey to stir them up
to war. Neither do we. We do not want our wells and our water-courses
rearranged. We do not want to be resettled. We do not want our
population expanded. We do not want the resources that will last us
for thousands of years yet, if they're not tampered with, pumped out
and used up in a few centuries. We are in balance with our environment,
we want to stay that way. And we will fight, Mr. Woodthorpe. You're not
dealing with theories now. You're dealing with our lives. We are not
going to place them in your hands."

He turned to Wales and the Martians. "Search the house. If you want to
search the town, that's up to you. But I wouldn't be too long about any
of it."

       *       *       *       *       *

Looking pained and hurt, Woodthorpe stood for a moment and then went
out, shaking his head. The Martians began to go through the house.
Carey heard Derech's voice say, "Why don't you join them, Mr. Wales?"

Wales answered pleasantly, "I don't like wasting my time." He bade
Derech good night and left, and Carey was thankful.

After a while the Martians left too. Derech bolted the door and sat
down again to drink his interrupted glass of wine. He made no move to
let Carey out, and Carey conquered a very strong desire to yell at him.
He was getting just a touch claustrophobic now. Derech sipped his wine
slowly, emptied the cup and filled it again. When it was half empty for
the second time a girl came in from the back.

She wore the traditional dress of the Low-Canals, which Carey was glad
to see because some of the women were changing it for the cosmopolitan
and featureless styles that made all women look alike, and he thought
the old style was charming. Her skirt was a length of heavy orange silk
caught at the waist with a broad girdle. Above that she wore nothing
but a necklace and her body was slim and graceful as a bending reed.
Twisted around her ankles and braided in her dark hair were strings of
tiny bells, so that she chimed as she walked with a faint elfin music,
very sweet and wicked.

"They're all gone now," she told Derech, and Derech rose and came
quickly toward Carey's hiding place.

"Someone was watching through the chinks in the shutters," he said as
he helped Carey out. "Hoping I'd betray myself when I thought they were
gone." He asked the girl, "It wasn't the Earthman, was it?"

"No." She had poured herself some wine and curled up with it in the
silks and warm furs that covered the guest-bench on the west wall.
Carey saw that her eyes were green as emerald, slightly tilted, bright,
curious and without mercy. He became suddenly very conscious of his
unshaven chin and the gray that was beginning to be noticeable at his
temples, and his general soiled and weary condition.

"I don't like that man Wales," Derech was saying. "He's almost as good
as I am. We'll have him to reckon with yet."

"We," said Carey. "You've weighed your yard of sand?"

Derech shrugged ruefully. "You must have heard me talking myself into
it. Well, I've been getting a little bored with the peaceful life."
He smiled, the smile Carey remembered from the times they had gone
robbing tombs together in places where murder would have been a safer
occupation. "And it's always irked me that we were stopped that time.
I'd like to try again. By the way, this is Arrin. She'll be going with
us as far as Barrakesh."

"Oh." Carey bowed, and she smiled at him from her nest in the soft
furs. Then she looked at Derech. "What is there beyond Barrakesh?"

"Kesh," said Derech. "And Shun."

"But you don't trade in the Drylands," she said impatiently. "And if
you did, why should I be left behind?"

"We're going to Sinharat," Derech said. "The Ever-living."

"Sinharat?" Arrin whispered. There was a long silence, and then she
turned her gaze on Carey. "If I had known that, I would have told them
where you were. I would have let them take you." She shivered and bent
her head.

"That would have been foolish," Derech said, fondling her. "You'd have
thrown away your chance to be the lady of one of the two saviors of
Mars."

"If you live," she said.

"But my dear child," said Derech, "can you, sitting there, guarantee to
me that you will be alive tomorrow?"

"You will have to admit," said Carey slowly, "that her odds are
somewhat better than ours."




                                  II


The barge was long and narrow, buoyed on pontoon-like floats so that
it rode high even with a full cargo. Pontoons, hull, and deck were
metal. There had not been any trees for ship-building for a very long
time. In the center of the deck was a low cabin where several people
might sleep, and forward toward the blunt bow was a fire-pit where the
cooking was done. The motive power was animal, four of the scaly-hided,
bad-tempered, hissing beasts of Martian burden plodding along the canal
bank with a tow-cable.

The pace was slow. Carey had wanted to go across country direct to
Barrakesh, but Derech had forbidden it.

"I can't take a caravan. All my business goes by the canal, and
everyone knows it. So you and I would have to go alone, riding by night
and hiding by day, and saving no time at all." He jabbed his thumb at
the sky. "Wales will come when you least expect him and least want him.
On the barge you'll have a place to hide, and I'll have enough men to
discourage him if he should be rash enough to interfere with a trader
going about his normal and lawful business."

"He wouldn't be above it," Carey said gloomily.

"But only when he's desperate. That will be later."

So the barge went gliding gently on its way southward along the thread
of dark water that was the last open artery of what had once been an
ocean. It ran snow-water now, melt from the polar cap. There were
villages beside the canal, and areas of cultivation where long fields
showed a startling green against the reddish-yellow desolation. Again
there were places where the sand had moved like an army, overwhelming
the fields and occupying the houses, so that only mounded heaps would
show where a village had been. There were bridges, some of them sound
and serving the living, others springing out of nowhere and standing
like broken rainbows against the sky. By day there was the stinging
sunlight that hid nothing, and by night the two moons laid a shifting
loveliness on the land. And if Carey had not been goaded by a terrible
impatience he would have been happy.

But all this, if Woodthorpe and the Rehabilitation Project had their
way, would go. The waters of the canals would be impounded behind
great dams far to the north, and the sparse populations would be
moved and settled on new land. Deep-pumping operations, tapping the
underground sources that fed the wells, would make up the winter
deficit when the cap was frozen. The desert would be transformed, for
a space anyway, into a flowering garden. Who would not prefer it to
this bitter marginal existence? Who could deny that this was Bad and
the Rehabilitation Project Good? No one but the people and Dr. Matthew
Carey. And no one would listen to them.

At Sinharat lay the only possible hope of making them listen.

       *       *       *       *       *

The sky remained empty. Arrin spent most of her time on deck, sitting
among the heaped-up bales. Carey knew that she watched him a great deal
but he was not flattered. He thought that she hated him because he was
putting Derech in danger of his life. He wished that Derech had left
her behind.

On the fourth day at dawn the wind dropped to a flat calm. The sun
burned hot, setting sand and rock to shimmering. The water of the canal
showed a surface like polished glass, and in the east the sharp line
of the horizon thickened and blurred and was lost in a yellow haze.
Derech stood sniffing like a hound at the still air, and around noon he
gave the order to tie up. The crew, ten of them, ceased to lounge on
the bales and got to work, driving steel anchor pins for the cables,
rigging a shelter for the beasts, checking the lashings of the deck
cargo. Carey and Derech worked beside them, and when he looked up
briefly from his labors Carey saw Arrin crouched over the fire-pit in
the midst of a great smoke, cooking furiously. The eastern sky became
a wall, a wave curling toward the zenith, sooty ochre below, a blazing
brass-color at its crest. It rushed across the land, roared, and broke
upon them.

They helped each other to the cabin and crouched knee to knee in
the tight space, the twelve men and Arrin, while the barge kicked
and rolled, sank down deep and shot upward, struggling like a live
thing under the blows of the wind. Dust and sand sifted through every
vent-hole, tainting the air with a bitter taste. There was a sulphurous
darkness, and the ear was deafened. Carey had been through sand-storms
before, and he wished that he was out in the open where he was used to
it, and where he did not have to worry about the barge turning turtle
and drowning him idiotically on the dryest world in the System. And
while all this was going on, Arrin was grimly guarding her pot.

The wind stopped its wild gusting and settled to a steady gale. When it
appeared that the barge was going to remain upright after all, the men
ate from Arrin's pot and were glad of the food. After that most of them
went down into the hold to sleep because there was more room there.
Arrin put the lid back on the pot and weighted it to keep the sand out,
and then she said quietly to Derech,

"Why is it that you have to go--where you're going?"

"Because Dr. Carey believes that there are records there that may
convince the Rehabilitation people that our "primitives" know what they
are talking about."

Carey could not see her face clearly in the gloom, but he thought she
was frowning, thinking hard.

"You believe," she said to Carey. "Do you know?"

"I know that there were records, once. They're referred to in other
records. Whether they still exist or not is another matter. But
because of the peculiar nature of the place, and of the people who made
them, I think it is possible."

He could feel her shiver. "But the Ramas were so long ago."

       *       *       *       *       *

She barely whispered the name. It meant Immortal, and it had been a
word of terror for so long that no amount of time could erase the
memory. The Ramas had achieved their immortality by a system of
induction that might have been liked to the pouring of old wine into
new bottles, and though the principle behind the transplanting of a
consciousness from one host to another was purely scientific, the
reactions of the people from among whom they requisitioned their supply
of hosts was one of simple emotional horror. The Ramas were regarded as
vampires. Their ancient island city of Sinharat lay far and forgotten
now in the remotest desolation of Shun, and the Drylanders held it
holy, and forbidden. They had broken their own tabu just once, when
Kynon of Shun raised his banner, claiming to have rediscovered the lost
secret of the Ramas and promising the tribesmen and the Low-Canallers
both eternal life, and all the plunder they could carry. He had given
them only death and since then the tabu was more fanatically enforced
than ever.

[Illustration: _Rama meant Immortal, and it had been a word of terror
for so long that no amount of time could erase the meaning._]

"Their city has not been looted," Carey said. "That is why I have hope."

"But," said Arrin, "they weren't human. They were only evil."

"On the contrary. They were completely human. And at one time they made
a very great effort to atone."

She turned again to Derech. "The Shunni will kill you."

"That is perfectly possible."

"But you must go." She added shrewdly, "If only to see whether you can."

Derech laughed. "Yes."

"Then I'll go with you. I'd rather see what happens to you than wait
and wait and never know." As though that settled it, she curled up in
her bunk and went to sleep.

Carey slept too, uneasily, dreaming shadowed dreams of Sinharat and
waking from them in the dusty claustrophobic dark to feel hopelessly
that he would never see it.

By mid-morning the storm had blown itself out, but now there was a
sandbar forty feet long blocking the channel. The beasts were hitched
to scoops brought up from the hold and put to dredging, and every man
aboard stripped and went in with a shovel.

Carey dug in the wet sand, his taller stature and lighter skin
perfectly separating him from the smaller, darker Low-Canallers.
He felt obvious and naked, and he kept a wary eye cocked toward the
heavens. Once he got among the Drylanders, Wales would have to look
very hard indeed to spot him. At Valkis, where there was some trade
with the desert men, Derech would be able to get him the proper
clothing and Carey would arrive at the Gateway, Barrakesh, already
in the guise of a wandering tribesman. Until then he would have to
be careful, both of Wales and the local canal-dwellers, who had very
little to choose between Earthmen and the Drylanders who occasionally
raided this far north, stripping their fields and stealing their women.

In spite of Carey's watchfulness, it was Derech who gave the alarm.
About the middle of the afternoon he suddenly shouted Carey's name.
Carey, laboring now in a haze of sweat and weariness, looked up and saw
Derech pointing at the sky. Carey dropped his shovel and dived for the
water.

       *       *       *       *       *

The barge was close by, but the flier came so fast that by the time
he had reached the ladder he knew he could not possibly climb aboard
without being seen. Arrin's voice said calmly from overhead,

"Dive under. There's room."

Carey caught a breath and dived. The water was cold, and the sunlight
slanting through it showed it thick and roiled from the storm. The
shadow of the barge made a total darkness into which Carey plunged.
When he thought he was clear of the broad pontoons he surfaced, hoping
Arrin had told the truth. She had. There was space to breathe, and
between the pontoons he could watch the flier come in low and hover
on its rotors above the canal, watching. Then it landed. There were
several men in it, but only Howard Wales got out.

Derech went to talk to him. The rest of the men kept on working, and
Carey saw that the extra shovel had vanished into the water. Wales
kept looking at the barge. Derech was playing with him, and Carey
cursed. The icy chill of the water was biting him to the bone. Finally,
to Wales' evident surprise, Derech invited him aboard. Carey swam
carefully back and forth in the dark space under the hull, trying to
keep his blood moving. After a long long time, a year or two, he saw
Wales walking back to the flier. It seemed another year before the
flier took off. Carey fought his way out from under the barge and into
the sunlight again, but he was too stiff and numb to climb the ladder.
Arrin and Derech had to pull him up.

"Anyone else," said Derech, "would be convinced. But this one--he gives
his opponent credit for all the brains and deceitfulness he needs."

He poured liquor between Carey's chattering teeth and wrapped him in
thick blankets and put him in a bunk. Then he said, "Could Wales have
any way of guessing where we're going?"

Carey frowned. "I suppose he could, if he bothered to go through all my
monographs and papers."

"I'm sure he's bothered."

"It's all there," Carey said dismally. "How we tried it once
and failed--and what I hoped to find, though the Rehabilitation
Act hadn't come along then, and it was pure archeological
interest. And I have, I know, mentioned the Ramas to Woodthorpe
when I was arguing with him about the advisability of all these
earth-shattering--mars-shattering--changes. Why? Did Wales say
something?"

"He said, 'Barrakesh will tell the story.'"

"He did, did he?" said Carey viciously. "Give me the bottle." He took a
long pull and the liquor went into him like fire into glacial ice. "I
wish to heaven I'd been able to steal a flier."

Derech shook his head. "You're lucky you didn't. They'd have had you
out of the sky in an hour."

"Of course you're right. It's just that I'm in a hurry." He drank again
and then he smiled, a very unscholarly smile. "If the gods are good to
me, someday I'll have Mr. Wales between my hands."

       *       *       *       *       *

The local men came along that evening, about a hundred of them with
teams and implements. They had already worked all day clearing other
blocks, but they worked without question all that night and into the
next day, each man choosing his own time to fall out and sleep when
he could no longer stand up. The canal was their life, and their law
said that the canal came first, before wife, child, brother, parent,
or self, and it was a hanging matter. Carey stayed out of sight in the
cabin, feeling guilty about not helping but not too guilty. It was
backbreaking work. They had the channel clear by the middle of the
morning, and the barge moved on southward.

Three days later a line of cliffs appeared in the east, far away at
first but closing gradually until they marched beside the canal. They
were high and steep, colored softly in shades of red and gold. The
faces of the rock were fantastically eroded by a million years of water
and ten millennia of wind. These were the rim of the sea-basin, and
presently Carey saw in the distance ahead a shimmering line of mist on
the desert where another canal cut through it. They were approaching
Valkis.

It was sunset when they reached it. The low light struck in level
shafts against the cliffs. Where the angle was right, it shone through
the empty doors and window holes of the five cities that sprawled
downward over the ledges of red-gold rock. It seemed as though
hearthfires burned there, and warm lamp-light to welcome home men weary
from the sea. But in the streets and squares and on the long flights
of rock-cut steps only slow shadows moved with the sinking sun. The
ancient quays stood stark as tombstones, marking the levels where new
harbors had been built and then abandoned as the water left them, and
the high towers that had flown the banners of the Sea-Kings were bare
and broken.

Only the lowest city lived, and only a part of that, but it lived
fiercely, defiant of the cold centuries towering over it. From the
barge deck Carey watched the torches flare out like yellow stars in the
twilight, and he heard voices, and the wild and lovely music of the
double-banked harps. The dry wind had a smell in it of dusty spices
and strange exotic things. The New Culture had not penetrated here,
and Carey was glad, though he did think that Valkis could stand being
cleaned up just a little without hurting it any. They had two or three
vices for sale there that were quite unbelievable.

"Stay out of sight," Derech told him, "till I get back."

It was full dark when they reached their mooring, at an ancient stone
dock beside a broad square with worn old buildings on three sides of
it. Derech went into the town and so did the crew, but for different
reasons. Arrin stayed on deck, lying on the bales with her chin on her
wrists, staring at the lights and listening to the noises like a sulky
child forbidden to play some dangerous but fascinating game. Derech did
not allow her in the streets alone.

Out of sheer boredom, Carey went to sleep.

He did not know how long he had slept, a few minutes or a few hours,
when he was wakened sharply by Arrin's wildcat scream.




                                  III


There were men on the deck outside. Carey could hear them scrambling
around and cursing the woman, and someone was saying something about
an Earthman. He rolled out of his bunk. He was still wearing the
Earth-made coverall that was all the clothing he had until Derech
came back. He stripped it off in a wild panic and shoved it far down
under the tumbled furs. Arrin did not scream again but he thought he
could hear muffled sounds as though she was trying to. He shivered,
naked in the chill dark.

Footsteps came light and swift across the deck. Carey reached out and
lifted from its place on the cabin wall a long-handled axe that was
used to cut loose the deck cargo lashings in case of emergency. And as
though the axe had spoken to him, Carey knew what he was going to do.

The shapes of men appeared in the doorway, dark and huddled against the
glow of the deck lights.

Carey gave a Dryland war-cry that split the night. He leaped forward,
swinging the axe.

The men disappeared out of the doorway as though they had been jerked
on strings. Carey emerged from the cabin onto the deck, where the
torchlight showed him clearly, and he whirled the axe around his
head as he had learned to do years ago when he first understood both
the possibility and the immense value of being able to go Martian.
Inevitably he had got himself embroiled in unscholarly, unarcheological
matters like tribal wars and raiding, and he had acquired some odd
skills. Now he drove the dark, small, startled men ahead of the
axe-blade. Yelling, he drove them over the low rail and onto the dock,
and he stood above them in the torchlight while they stared at him,
five astonished men with silver rings in their ears and very sharp
knives in their belts.

Carey quoted some Dryland sayings about Low-Canallers that brought
the blood flushing into their cheeks. Then he asked them what their
business was.

One of them, who wore a kilt of vivid yellow, said, "We were told there
was an Earthman hiding."

And who told you? Carey wondered. Mr. Wales, through some Martian spy?
Of course, Mr. Wales--who else? He was beginning to hate Mr. Wales. But
he laughed and said, "Do I look like an Earthman?"

He made the axe-blade flicker in the light. He had let his hair grow
long and ragged, and it was a good desert color, tawny brown. His naked
body was lean and long-muscled like a desert man's, and he had kept it
hard. Arrin came up to him rubbing her bruised mouth and staring at him
as surprised as the Valkisians.

The man in the yellow kilt said again, "We were told...."

Other people had begun to gather in the dockside square, both men and
women, idle, curious, and cruel.

"My name is Marah," Carey said. "I left the Wells of Tamboina with a
price on my head for murder." The Wells were far enough away that he
need not fear a fellow-tribesman rising to dispute his story. "Does
anybody here want to collect it?"

       *       *       *       *       *

The people watched him. The torch-flames blew in the dry wind,
scattering the light across their upturned faces. Carey began to be
afraid.

Close beside him Arrin whispered, "Will you be recognized?"

"No." He had been here three times with Dryland bands but it was hardly
likely that anyone would remember one specific tribesman out of the
numbers that floated through.

"Then stand steady," Arrin said.

He stood. The people watched him, whispering and smiling among
themselves. Then the man in the yellow kilt said,

"Earthman or Drylander, I don't like your face."

The crowd laughed, and a forward movement began. Carey could hear the
sweet small chiming of the bells the women wore. He gripped the axe and
told Arrin to get away from him. "If you know where Derech's gone, go
after him. I'll hold them as long as I can."

He did not know whether she left him or not. He was watching the crowd,
seeing the sharp blades flash. It seemed ridiculous, in this age of
space flight and atomic power, to be fighting with axe and knife. But
Mars had had nothing better for a long time, and the UW Peace and
Disarmament people hoped to take even those away from them some day. On
Earth, Carey remembered, there were still peoples who hardened their
wooden spears in the fire and ate their enemies. The knives, in any
case, could kill efficiently enough. He stepped back a little from the
rail to give the axe free play, and he was not cold any longer, but
warm with a heat that stung his nerve-ends.

Derech's voice shouted across the square.

The crowd paused. Carey could see over their heads to where Derech,
with about half his crew around him, was forcing his way through. He
looked and sounded furious.

"I'll kill the first man that touches him!" he yelled.

The man in the yellow kilt asked politely, "What is he to you?"

"He's money, you fool! Passage money that I won't collect till I reach
Barrakesh, and not then unless he's alive and able to get it for me.
And if he doesn't, I'll see to him myself." Derech sprang up onto the
barge deck. "Now clear off. Or you'll have more killing to do than
you'll take pleasure in."

His men were lined up with him now along the rail, and the rest of the
crew were coming. Twelve tough armed men did not look like much fun.
The crowd began to drift away, and the original five went reluctantly
with them. Derech posted a watch and took Carey into the cabin.

"Get into these," he said, throwing down a bundle he had taken from one
of the men. Carey laid aside his axe. He was shaking now with relief
and his fingers stumbled over the knots. The outer wrapping was a thick
desert cloak. Inside was a leather kilt, well worn and adorned with
clanking bronze bosses, a wide bronze collar for the neck and a leather
harness for weapons that was black with use.

"They came off a dead man," Derech said. "There are sandals
underneath." He took a long desert knife from his girdle and tossed it
to Carey. "And this. And now, my friend, we are in trouble."

"I thought I did rather well," Carey said, buckling kilt and harness.
They felt good. Perhaps some day, if he lived, he would settle down to
being the good gray Dr. Carey, archeologist emeritus, but the day was
not yet. "Someone told them there was an Earthman here."

       *       *       *       *       *

Derech nodded. "I have friends here, men who trust me, men I trust.
They warned me. That's why I routed my crew out of the brothels, and
unhappy they were about it, too."

Carey laughed. "I'm grateful to them." Arrin had come in and was
sitting on the edge of her bunk, watching Carey. He swung the cloak
around him and hooked the bronze catch at the throat. The rough warmth
of the cloth was welcome. "Wales will know now that I'm with you. This
was his way of finding out for sure."

"You might have been killed," Arrin said.

Carey shrugged. "It wouldn't be a calamity. They'd rather have me dead
than lose me, though of course none of them would dream of saying so.
Point is, he won't be fooled by the masquerade, and he won't wait for
Barrakesh. He'll be on board as soon as you're well clear of Valkis and
he'll have enough force with him to make it good."

"All true," said Derech. "So. Let him have the barge." He turned to
Arrin. "If you're still hell-bent to come with us, get ready. And
remember, you'll be riding for a long time."

To Carey he said, "Better keep clear of the town. I'll have mounts and
supplies by the time Phobos rises. Where shall we meet?"

"By the lighthouse," Carey said. Derech nodded and went out. Carey went
out too and waited on the deck while Arrin changed her clothes. A few
minutes later she joined him, wrapped in a long cloak. She had taken
the bells from her hair and around her ankles, and she moved quietly
now, light and lithe as a boy. She grinned at him. "Come, desert man.
What did you say your name was?"

"Marah."

"Don't forget your axe."

They left the barge. Only one torch burned now on the deck. Some of
the lights had died around the square. This was deserted, but there
was still sound and movement in plenty along the streets that led into
it. Carey guided Arrin to the left along the canal bank. He did not
see anyone watching them, or following them. The sounds and the lights
grew fainter. The buildings they passed now were empty, their doors
and windows open to the wind. Deimos was in the sky, and some of the
roofs showed moonlight through them, shafts of pale silver touching the
drifted dust that covered the floors. Carey stopped several times to
listen, but he heard nothing except the wind. He began to feel better.
He hurried Arrin with long strides, and now they moved away from the
canal and up a broken street that led toward the cliffs.

       *       *       *       *       *

The street became a flight of steps cut in the rock. There were
roofless stone houses on either side, clinging to the cliffs row on
ragged row like the abandoned nests of sea-birds. Carey's imagination,
as always, peopled them, hung them with nets and gear, livened them
with lights and voices and appropriate smells. At the top of the steps
he paused to let Arrin get her breath, and he looked down across the
centuries at the torches of Valkis burning by the canal.

"What are you thinking?" Arrin asked.

"I'm thinking that nothing, not people nor oceans, should ever die."

"The Ramas lived forever."

"Too long, anyway. And that wasn't good, I know. But still it makes me
sad to think of men building these houses and working and raising their
families, looking forward to the future."

"You're an odd one," Arrin said. "When I first met you I couldn't
understand what it was that made Derech love you. You were so--quiet.
Tonight I could see. But now you've gone all broody and soft again. Why
do you care so much about dust and old bones?"

"Curiosity. I'll never know the end of the story, but I can at least
know the beginning."

They moved on again, and now they were walking across the basin of a
harbor, with the great stone quays towering above them, gnawed and
rounded by the wind. Ahead on a crumbling promontory the shaft of a
broken tower pointed skyward. They came beneath it, where ships had
used to come, and presently Carey heard the jingling and padding of
animals coming toward them. Before the rise of Phobos they were mounted
and on their way.

"This is your territory," said Derech. "I will merely ride."

"Then you and Arrin can handle the pack animals." Carey took the lead.
They left the city behind, climbing to the top of the cliffs. The canal
showed like a ribbon of steel in the moonlight far below, and then was
gone. A range of mountains had come down here to the sea, forming a
long curving peninsula. Only their bare bones were left, and through
that skeletal mass of rock Carey took his little band by a trail he had
followed once and hoped that he remembered.

They travelled all that way by night, lying in the shelter of the rocks
by day, and three times a flier passed over them like a wheeling hawk,
searching. Carey thought more than once that he had lost the way,
though he never said so, and he was pleasantly surprised when they
found the sea-bottom again just where it should be on the other side of
the range, with the ford he remembered across the canal. They crossed
it by moonlight, stopping only to fill up their water-bags. At dawn
they were on a ridge above Barrakesh.

They looked down, and Derech said, "I think we can forget our
southbound caravan."

Trade was for times of peace, and now the men of Kesh and Shun were
gathering for war, even as Derech had said, without need of any Dr.
Carey to stir them to it.

They filled the streets. They filled the _serais_. They camped in
masses by the gates and along the banks of the canal and around the
swampy lake that was its terminus. The vast herds of animals broke down
the dikes, trampled the irrigation ditches and devoured the fields.
And across the desert more riders were coming, long files of them with
pennons waving and lances glinting in the morning light. Wild and far
away, Carey heard the skirling of the desert pipes.

"The minute we go down there," he said, "we are part of the army. Any
man that turns his back on Barrakesh now will get a spear through it
for cowardice."

       *       *       *       *       *

His face became hard and cruel with a great rage. Presently this horde
would roll northward, sweeping up more men from the Low-Canal towns as
it passed, joining ultimately with other hordes pouring in through the
easterly gates of the Drylands. The people of the City-States would
fall like butchered sheep, and perhaps even the dome of Kahora would
come shattering down. But sooner or later the guns would be brought up,
and then the Drylanders would do the falling, all because of good men
like Woodthorpe who only wanted to help.

Carey said, "I am going to Sinharat. But you know how much chance a
small party has, away from the caravan track and the wells."

"I know," said Derech.

"You know how much chance we have of evading Wales, without the
protection of a caravan."

"You tell me how I can go quietly home, and I'll do it."

"You can wait for your barge and go back to Valkis."

"I couldn't do that," Derech said seriously. "My men would laugh at me.
I suggest we stop wasting time. Here in the desert, time is water."

"Speaking of water," Arrin said, "how about when we get there? And how
about getting back?"

Derech said, "Dr. Carey has heard that there is a splendid well at
Sinharat."

"He's heard," said Arrin, "but he doesn't know. Same as the records."
She gave Carey a look, only half scornful.

Carey smiled briefly. "The well I have on pretty good authority.
It's in the coral deep under the city, so it can be used without
actually breaking the tabu. The Shunni don't go near it unless they're
desperate, but I talked to a man who had."

He led them down off the ridge and away from Barrakesh. And Derech cast
an uneasy glance at the sky.

"I hope Wales did set a trap for us there. And I hope he'll sit a while
waiting for us to spring it."

There was a strict law against the use of fliers over tribal lands
without special permission, which would be unprocurable now. But they
both knew that Wales would not let that stop him.

"The time could come," Carey said grimly, "that we'd be glad to see
him."

He led them a long circle northward to avoid the war parties coming
in to Barrakesh. Then he struck out across the deadly waste of the
sea-bottom, straight for Sinharat.

       *       *       *       *       *

He lost track of time very quickly. The days blurred together into
one endless hell wherein they three and the staggering animals toiled
across vast slopes of rock up-tilted to the sun, or crept under reefs
of rotten coral with sand around them as smooth and bright as a
burning-glass. At night there was moonlight and bitter cold, but the
cold did nothing to alleviate their thirst. There was only one good
thing about the journey, and that was the thing that worried Carey the
most. In all that cruel and empty sky, no flier ever appeared.

"The desert is a big place," Arrin said, looking at it with loathing.
"Perhaps he couldn't find us. Perhaps he's given up."

"Not him," said Carey.

Derech said, "Maybe he thinks we're dead anyway, and why bother."

Maybe, Carey thought. Maybe. But sometimes as he rode or walked he
would curse at Wales out loud and glare at the sky, demanding to know
what he was up to. There was never any answer.

The last carefully-hoarded drop of water went. And Carey forgot about
Wales and thought only of the well of Sinharat, cold and clear in the
coral.

He was thinking of it as he plodded along, leading the beast that
was now almost as weak as he. The vision of the well so occupied him
that it was some little time before the message from his bleared and
sun-struck eyes got through it and registered on his brain. Then he
halted in sudden wild alarm.

He was walking, not on smooth sand, but in the trampled marks of many
riders.




                                  IV


The others came out of their stupor as he pointed, warning them to
silence. The broad track curved ahead and vanished out of sight beyond
a great reef of white coral. The wind had not had time to do more than
blur the edges of the individual prints.

Mounting and whipping their beasts unmercifully, Carey and the others
fled the track. The reef stood high above them like a wall. Along its
base were cavernous holes, and they found one big enough to hold them
all. Carey went on alone and on foot to the shoulder of the reef, where
the riders had turned it, and the wind went with him, piping and crying
in the vast honeycomb of the coral.

He crept around the shoulder and then he saw where he was.

On the other side of the reef was a dry lagoon, stretching perhaps
half a mile to a coral island that stood up tall in the hard clear
sunlight, its naked cliffs beautifully striated with deep rose and
white and delicate pink. A noble stairway went up from the desert to
a city of walls and towers so perfectly built from many-shaded marble
and so softly sculptured by time that it was difficult to tell where
the work of men began and ended. Carey saw it through a shimmering haze
of exhaustion and wonder, and knew that he looked at Sinharat, the
Ever-Living.

The trampled track of the Shunni warriors went out across the lagoon.
It swept furiously around what had been a parked flier, and then passed
on, leaving behind it battered wreckage and two dark sprawled shapes.
It ended at the foot of the cliffs, where Carey could see a sort of
orderly turmoil of men and animals. There were between twenty-five and
thirty warriors, as nearly as he could guess. They were making camp.

Carey knew what that meant. There was someone in the city.

Carey did not move for some time. He stared at the beautiful marble
city shimmering on its lovely pedestal of coral. He wanted to weep,
but there was not enough moisture left in him to make tears, and his
despair was gradually replaced by a feeble anger. All right, you
bastards, he thought. All right!

He went back to Derech and Arrin and told them what he had seen.

"Wales just came ahead of us and waited. Why bother to search a whole
desert when he knew where we were going? This time he'd have us for
sure. Water. We couldn't run away." Carey grinned horribly with his
cracked lips and swollen tongue. "Only the Shunni found him first.
War party. They must have seen the flier go over--came to check if it
landed here. Caught two men in it. But the rest are in Sinharat."

"How do you know?" asked Derech.

"The Shunni won't go into the city except as a last resort. If they
catch a trespasser there they just hold the well and wait. Sooner or
later he comes down."

Arrin said, "How long can we wait? We've had no water for two days."

"Wait, hell," said Carey. "We can't wait. I'm going in."

Now, while they still had a shred of strength. Another day would be too
late.

Derech said, "I suppose a quick spear is easier than thirst."

"We may escape both," said Carey, "if we're very careful. And very
lucky."

He told them what to do.

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour or so later Carey followed the warriors' track out across the
dry lagoon. He walked, or rather staggered, leading the animals. Arrin
rode on one, her cloak pulled over her head and her face covered in
sign of mourning. Between two of the beasts, on an improvised litter
made of blankets and pack lashings, Derech lay wrapped from head to
foot in his cloak, a too-convincing imitation of a corpse. Carey heard
the shouts and saw the distant riders start toward them, and he was
frightened. The smallest slip, the most minor mistake, could give them
away, and then he did not think that anything on Mars could save them.
But thirst was more imperative than fear.

There was something more. Carey passed the two bodies in the sand
beside the wrecked flier. He saw that they were both dark-haired
Martians, and he looked at the towers of Sinharat with wolfish eyes.
Wales was up there, still alive, still between him and what he wanted.
Carey's hand tightened on the axe. He was no longer entirely sane on
the subject of Howard Wales and the records of the Ramas.

When the riders were within spear-range he halted and rested the
axe-head in the sand, as a token. He waited, saying softly, "For God's
sake now, be careful."

The riders reined in, sending the sand flying. Carey said to them, "I
claim the death right."

He stood swaying over his axe while they looked at him, and at the
muffled woman, and at the dusty corpse. They were six, tall hard
fierce-eyed men with their long spears held ready. Finally one of them
said, "How did you come here?"

"My sister's husband," said Carey, indicating Derech, "died on the
march to Barrakesh. Our tribal law says he must rest in his own place.
But there are no caravans now. We had to come alone, and in a great
sandstorm we lost the track. We wandered for many days until we crossed
your trail."

"Do you know where you are?" asked the Drylander.

Carey averted his eyes from the city. "I know now. But if a man is
dying it is permitted to use the well. We are dying."

"Use it, then," said the Drylander. "But keep your ill-omen away from
our camp. We are going to the war as soon as we finish our business
here. We want no corpse-shadow on us."

"Outlanders?" Carey asked, a rhetorical question in view of the flier
and the un-Dryland bodies.

"Outlanders. Who else is foolish enough to wake the ghosts in the
Forbidden City?"

Carey shook his head. "Not I. I do not wish even to see it."

The riders left them, returning to the camp. Carey moved on slowly
toward the cliffs. It became apparent where the well must be. A
great arching cave-mouth showed in the rose-pink coral and men were
coming and going there, watering their animals. Carey approached it
and began the monotonous chant that etiquette required, asking that
way be made for the dead, so that warriors and pregnant women and
persons undergoing ritual purifications would be warned to go aside.
The warriors made way. Carey passed out of the cruel sunlight into
the shadow of an irregular vaulted passage, quite high and wide, with
a floor that sloped upward, at first gently and then steeply, until
suddenly the passage ended in an echoing cathedral room dim-lit by
torches that picked out here and there the shape of a fantastic flying
buttress of coral. In the center of the room, in a kind of broad basin,
was the well.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now for the first time Arrin broke her silence with a soft anguished
cry. There were seven or eight warriors guarding the well, as Carey had
known there would be, but they drew away and let Carey's party severely
alone. Several men were in the act of watering their mounts, and as
though in deference to tabu Carey circled around to get as far away
from them as possible. In the gloom he made out the foot of an age-worn
stairway leading upward through the coral. Here he stopped.

He helped Arrin down and made her sit, and then dragged Derech from the
litter and laid him on the hard coral. The animals bolted for the well
and he made no effort to hold them. He filled one of the bags for Arrin
and then he flung himself alongside the beasts and drank and soaked
himself in the beautiful cold clear water. After that he crouched still
for a few moments, in a kind of daze, until he remembered that Derech
too needed water.

He filled two more bags and took them to Arrin, kneeling beside her as
though in tender concern as she sat beside her dead. His spread cloak
covered what she was doing, holding the water-bag to Derech's mouth so
that he could drink. Carey spoke softly and quickly. Then he went back
to the animals. He began to fight them away from the water so that they
should not founder themselves. The activity covered what was going on
in the shadows behind them. Carey led them, hissing and stamping, to
where Arrin and Derech had been, still using them as a shield in case
the guards were watching. He snatched up his axe and the remaining
water-bag and let the animals go and ran as fast as he could up the
stairway. It spiralled, and he was stumbling in pitch darkness around
the second curve before the guards below let out a great angry cry.

He did not know whether they would follow or not. Somebody fumbled for
him in the blackness and Derech's voice muttered something urgent.
He could hear Arrin panting like a spent hound. His own knees shook
with weakness and he thought what a fine militant crew they were to
be taking on Wales and his men and thirty angry Shunni. Torchlight
flickered against the turn of the wall below and there was a confusion
of voices. They fled upward, pulling each other along, and it seemed
that the Shunni reached a point beyond which they did not care to go.
The torchlight and the voices vanished. Carey and the others climbed a
little farther and then dropped exhausted on the worn treads.

Arrin asked, "Why didn't they follow us?"

"Why should they? Our water won't last long. They can wait."

"Yes," said Arrin. And then, "How _are_ we going to get away?"

Carey answered, "That depends on Wales."

"I don't understand."

"On whether, and how soon, somebody sends a flier out here to see what
happened to him." He patted the water-bags. "That's why these are so
important. They give us time."

They started up the stair again, treading in the worn hollows made by
other feet. The Ramas must have come this way for water for a very long
time. Presently a weak daylight filtered down to them. And then a man's
voice, tight with panic, cried out somewhere above them, "I hear them!
They're coming...."

The voice of Howard Wales answered sharply. "Wait!" Then in English it
called down, "Carey. Dr. Carey. Is that you?"

"It is," Carey shouted back.

"Thank Heaven," said Wales. "I saw you, but I wasn't sure.... Come up,
man, come up, and welcome. We're all in the same trap now."




                                   V


Sinharat was a city without people, but it was not dead. It had a
memory and a voice. The wind gave it breath, and it sang, from the
countless tiny organ-pipes of the coral, from the hollow mouths of
marble doorways and the narrow throats of streets. The slender towers
were like tall flutes, and the wind was never still. Sometimes the
voice of Sinharat was soft and gentle, murmuring about everlasting
youth and the pleasures thereof. Again it was strong and fierce with
pride, crying _You die, but I do not!_ Sometimes it was mad, laughing
and hateful. But always the song was evil.

Carey could understand now why Sinharat was tabu. It was not only
because of an ancient dread. It was the city itself, now, in the sharp
sunlight or under the gliding moons. It was a small city. There had
never been more than perhaps three thousand Ramas, and this remote
little island had given them safety and room enough. But they had built
close, and high. The streets ran like topless tunnels between the walls
and the towers reached impossibly thin and tall into the sky. Some of
them had lost their upper storeys and some had fallen entirely, but in
the main they were still beautiful. The colors of the marble were still
lovely. Many of the buildings were perfect and sound, except that wind
and time had erased the carvings on their walls so that only in certain
angles of light did a shadowy face leap suddenly into being, prideful
and mocking with smiling lips, or a procession pass solemnly toward
some obliterated worship.

Perhaps it was only the wind and the half-seen watchers that gave
Sinharat its feeling of eerie wickedness. Carey did not think so. The
Ramas had built something of themselves into their city, and it was
rather, he imagined, as one of the Rama women might have been had one
met her, graceful and lovely but with something wrong about the eyes.
Even the matter-of-fact Howard Wales was uncomfortable in the city, and
the three surviving City-State men who were with him went about like
dogs with their tails tight to their bellies. Even Derech lost some of
his cheerful arrogance, and Arrin never left his side.

The feeling was worse inside the buildings. Here were the halls and
chambers where the Ramas had lived. Here were the possessions they
had handled, the carvings and faded frescoes they had looked at.
The ever-young, the Ever-living immortals, the stealers of others'
lives, had walked these corridors and seen themselves reflected in
the surfaces of polished marble, and Carey's nerves quivered with the
nearness of them after all this long time.

There were traces of a day when Sinharat had had an advanced technology
equal to, if not greater, than any Carey had yet seen on Mars. The
inevitable reversion to the primitive had come with the exhaustion of
resources. There was one rather small room where much wrecked equipment
lay in crystal shards and dust, and Carey knew that this was the place
where the Ramas had exchanged their old bodies for new. From some
of the frescoes, done with brilliantly sadistic humor, he knew that
the victims were generally killed soon, but not too soon, after the
exchange was completed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Still he could not find the place where the archives had been kept.
Outside, Wales and his men, generally with Derech's help and Arrin
as a lookout, were sweating to clear away rubble from the one square
that was barely large enough for a flier to land in. Wales had been in
contact with Kahora before the unexpected attack. They knew where he
was, and when there had been too long a time without a report from him
they would certainly come looking. If they had a landing place cleared
by then, and the scanty water supply, severely rationed, kept them
alive, and the Shunni did not become impatient, they would be all right.

"Only," Carey told them, "if that flier does come, be ready to jump
quick. Because the Shunni will attack then."

He had not had any trouble with Howard Wales. He had expected it. He
had come up the last of the stairway with his axe ready. Wales shook
his head. "I have a heavy-duty shocker," he said. "Even so, I wouldn't
care to take you on. You can put down the axe, Dr. Carey."

The Martians were armed too. Carey knew they could have taken him
easily. Perhaps they were saving their charges against the Shunni, who
played the game of war for keeps.

Carey said, "I will do what I came here to do."

Wales shrugged. "My assignment was to bring you in. I take it there
won't be any more trouble about that now--if any of us get out of here.
Incidentally, I saw what was happening at Barrakesh, and I can testify
that you could not possibly have had any part in it. I'm positive that
some of my superiors are thundering asses, but that's nothing new,
either. So go ahead. I won't hinder you."

       *       *       *       *       *

Carey had gone ahead, on a minimum of water, sleep, and the dry desert
rations he had in his belt-pouch. Two and a half days were gone, and
the taste of defeat was getting stronger in his mouth by the hour. Time
was getting short, no one could say how short. And then almost casually
he crawled over a great fallen block of marble into a long room with
rows of vault doors on either side, and a hot wave of excitement burned
away his weariness. The bars of beautiful rustless alloy slid easily
under his hands. And he was dazed at the treasure of knowledge that
he had found, tortured by the realization that he could only take a
fraction of it with him and might well never see the rest of it again.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Ramas had arranged their massive archives according to a simple and
orderly dating system. It did not take him long to find the records he
wanted, but even that little time was almost too much.

Derech came shouting after him. Carey closed the vault he was in and
scrambled back over the fallen block, clutching the precious spools.
"Flier!" Derech kept saying. "Hurry!" Carey could hear the distant
cries of the Shunni.

He ran with Derech and the cries came closer. The warriors had seen the
flier too and now they knew that they must come into the city. Carey
raced through the narrow twisting street that led to the square. When
he came into it he could see the flier hanging on its rotors about
thirty feet overhead, very ginger about coming down in that cramped
space. Wales and the Martians were frantically waving. The Shunni came
in two waves, one from the well-stair and one up the cliffs. Carey
picked up his axe. The shockers began to crackle.

He hoped they would hold the Drylanders off because he did not want to
have to kill anyone, and he particularly did not want to get killed,
not right now. "Get to the flier!" Wales yelled at him, and he saw
that it was just settling down, making a great wind and dust. The
warriors in the forefront of the attack were dropping or staggering as
the stunning charges hit them, sparking off their metal ornaments and
the tips of their spears. The first charge was broken up, but no one
wanted to stay for the second. Derech had Arrin and was lifting her
bodily into the flier. Hands reached out and voices shouted unnecessary
pleas for haste. Carey threw away his axe and jumped for the hatch.
The Martians crowded in on top of him and then Wales, and the pilot
took off so abruptly that Wales' legs were left dangling outside. Carey
caught him and pulled him in. Wales laughed, in an odd wild way, and
the flier rose up among the towers of Sinharat in a rattle of flung
spears.

       *       *       *       *       *

The technicians had had trouble regearing their equipment to the
Rama microtapes. The results were still far from perfect, but the
United Worlds Planetary Assistance Committee, hastily assembled at
Kahora, were not interested in perfection. They were Alan Woodthorpe's
superiors, and they had a decision to make, and little time in which
to make it. The great tide was beginning to roll north out of the
Drylands, moving at the steady marching pace of the desert beasts. And
Woodthorpe could no longer blame this all on Carey.

Looking subdued and rather frightened, Woodthorpe sat beside Carey
in the chamber where the hearing was being held. Derech was there,
and Wales, and some high brass from the City-States who were getting
afraid for their borders, and two Dryland chiefs who knew Carey as
Carey, not as a tribesman, and trusted him enough to come in. Carey
thought bitterly that this hearing should have been held long ago.
Only the Committee had not understood the potential seriousness of
the situation. They had been told, plainly and often. But they had
preferred to believe experts like Woodthorpe rather than men like
Carey, who had some specialized knowledge but were not trained to
evaluate the undertaking as a whole.

Now in a more chastened mood they watched as Carey's tapes went
whispering through the projectors.

They saw an island city in a blue sea. People moved in its streets.
There were ships in its harbors and the sounds of life. Only the sea
had shrunk down from the tops of the coral cliffs. The lagoon was a
shallow lake wide-rimmed with beaches, and the outer reef stood bare
above a feeble surf. A man's voice spoke in the ancient High Martian,
somewhat distorted by the reproduction and blurred by the voice of a
translator speaking Esperanto. Carey shut his ears to everything but
the voice, the man, who spoke across the years.

"Nature grins at us these days, reminding us that even planets die. We
who have loved life so much that we have taken the lives of countless
others in order to retain it, can now see the beginning of our own
inevitable end. Even though this may yet be thousands of years in
the future, the thought of it has had strange effects. For the first
time some of our people are voluntarily choosing death. Others demand
younger and younger hosts, and change them constantly. Most of us have
come to have some feeling of remorse, not for our immortality but for
the method by which we achieved it.

"One murder can be remembered and regretted. Ten thousand murders
become as meaningless as ten thousand love affairs or ten thousand
games of chess. Time and repetition grind them all to the same dust.
Yet now we do regret, and a naive passion has come to us, a passion to
be forgiven, if not by our victims then perhaps by ourselves.

"Thus our great project is undertaken. The people of Kharif, because
their coasts are accessible and their young people exceptionally
handsome and sturdy, have suffered more from us than any other single
nation. We will try now to make some restitution."

       *       *       *       *       *

The scene shifted from Sinharat to a desolate stretch of desert
coastline beside the shrunken sea. The land had once been populous.
There were the remains of cities and town, connected by paved roads.
There had been factories and power stations, all the appurtenances of
an advanced technology. These were now rusting away, and the wind blew
ochre dust to bury them.

"For a hundred years," said the Rama voice, "it has not rained."

There was an oasis, with wells of good water. Tall brown-haired men and
women worked the well-sweeps, irrigating fields of considerable extent.
There was a village of neat huts, housing perhaps a thousand people.

"Mother Mars has killed far more of her children than we. The fortunate
survivors live in 'cities' like these. The less fortunate...."

A long line of beasts and hooded human shapes moved across a bitter
wasteland. And the Dryland chiefs cried out, "Our people!"

"We will give them water again," said the Rama voice.

The spool ended. In the brief interval before the next one began,
Woodthorpe coughed uneasily and muttered, "This was all long ago,
Carey. The winds of change...."

"Are blowing up a real storm, Woodthorpe. You'll see why."

The tapes began again. A huge plant now stood at the edge of the sea,
distilling fresh water from the salt. A settlement had sprung up beside
it, with fields and plantations of young trees.

"It has gone well," said the Rama voice. "It will go better with time,
for their short generations move quickly."

The settlement became a city. The population grew, spread, built more
cities, planted more crops. The land flourished.

"Many thousands live," the Rama said, "who would otherwise not have
been born. We have repaid our murders."

The spool ended.

Woodthorpe said, "But we're not trying to atone for anything. We...."

"If my house burns down," said Carey, "I do not greatly care whether it
was by a stroke of lightning, deliberate arson, or a child playing with
matches. The end result is the same."

The third spool began.

A different voice spoke now. Carey wondered if the owner of the first
had chosen death himself, or simply lacked the heart to go on with the
record. The distilling plant was wearing out and metals for repair were
poor and difficult to find. The solar batteries could not be replaced.
The stream of water dwindled. Crops died. There was famine and panic,
and then the pumps stopped altogether and the cities were stranded like
the hulks of ships in dry harbors.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Rama voice said, "These are the consequences of the one kind act
we have ever done. Now these thousands that we called into life must
die as their forebears did. The cruel laws of survival that we caused
them to forget are all to be learned again. They had suffered once, and
mastered it, and were content. Now there is nothing we can do to help.
We can only stand and watch."

"Shut it off," said Woodthorpe.

"No," said Carey, "see it out."

They saw it out.

"Now," said Carey, "I will remind you that Kharif was the homeland
from which most of the Drylands were settled." He was speaking to the
Committee more than to Woodthorpe. "These so-called primitives have
been through all this before, and they have long memories. Their tribal
legends are explicit about what happened to them the last time they put
their trust in the transitory works of men. Now can you understand why
they're so determined to fight?"

Woodthorpe looked at the disturbed and frowning faces of the Committee.
"But," he said, "it wouldn't be like that now. Our resources...."

"Are millions of miles away on other planets. How long can you
guarantee to keep _your_ pumps working? And the Ramas at least had left
the natural water sources for the survivors to go back to. You want to
destroy those so they would have nothing." Carey glanced at the men
from the City-States. "The City-States would pay the price for that.
They have the best of what there is, and with a large population about
to die of famine and thirst...." He shrugged, and then went on,

"There are other ways to help. Food and medicines. Education, to enable
the young people to look for greener pastures in other places, if they
wish to. In the meantime, there is an army on the move. You have the
power to stop it. You've heard all there is to be said. Now the chiefs
are waiting to hear what you will say."

The Chairman of the Committee conferred with the members. The
conference was quite brief.

"Tell the chiefs," the Chairman said, "that it is not our intent to
create wars. Tell them to go in peace. Tell them the Rehabilitation
Project for Mars is cancelled."

       *       *       *       *       *

The great tide rolled slowly back into the Drylands and dispersed.
Carey went through a perfunctory hearing on his activities, took his
reprimand and dismissal with a light heart, shook hands with Howard
Wales, and went back to Jekkara, to drink with Derech and walk beside
the Low-Canal that would be there now for whatever ages were left to it
in the slow course of a planet's dying.

And this was good. But at the end of the canal was Barrakesh, and the
southward-moving caravans, and the long road to Sinharat. Carey thought
of the vaults beyond the fallen block of marble, and he knew that
someday he would walk that road again.


                                THE END






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