Down to a Sunless Sea

6 The Night

On their way back to the cliffwall, the two Earthsiders conversed further, getting to know each other. Brant was convinced that Will Harbin was no police marshal, hence he had given the older man his proper name. Marshals run to a younger breed, harder in the face, shrewder about the eyes.

Harbin cleared his throat at one point. “Ah, these women of yours … are they your—wives?”

Brant had to laugh. Then he explained how he had stumbled upon them, staked out to die in the ruined city on the plateau, Harbin nodded thoughtfully.

“That must have been Ythiom,” he murmured, “the best preserved of the ancient ruins atop the Ogygis Regio. I’d hoped to visit it on my return journey, for I’m planning to end up in Sun Lake City.”

They talked further, and, as they talked, Agila plodded along in the rear of the party, leading the pack-loper. More rested from its ordeal by now, the beast was spruce enough to bear plump little Suoli. Nor was Agila at all displeased by this turn of events.

He had been rather long without enjoying a woman, had Agila, and to happen upon two of them, both young and both, in different ways, desirable, seemed to him a stroke of luck. Perhaps the Timeless Ones were smiling upon his fortunes at last, he thought to himself—that being the People’s term for their mysterious gods.

The first woman, Zuarra, was too tall for his taste, and, with her close-cropped russet furcap, altogether too boyish.

But the second was a choice morsel, he thought to himself. He liked his women soft, plump, submissive.

Stealing a glance at her as she swayed listlessly in the saddle, clutching the saddle bow with both weak, ineffectual hands, he licked his thin cruel lips, dreaming of what might yet come of this chance meeting… .

When they reached the cliffwall, they unburdened the lopers and let the two women prepare the midday meal, for it was afternoon by now and they had long fasted and were hungry.

Squatting on his hams a few paces from the others, Agila studied the soft little woman narrowly, catching her startled gaze a time or two, on which occasion he gave her an admiring grin. Flustered, the girl blushed and looked hastily away; but, when she thought that the guide might not be observing, she stole a quick glance or two at him herself.

After the meal, Brant explained to the older man his intention of riding along the base of the cliffs until they discovered a large ravine in which to take shelter for the night. Harbin nodded, drew a microviewer from his gear, and flipped the dial for a brief time.

“There’s just the sort of place you’re looking for about two kilometers south of here,” he remarked. “That is, if the CA Air Reconnaissance photomaps can be trusted. At even a moderate pace, we should be able to reach it well before nightfall—that is, if you have no objections to our joining you?”

Brant shook his head. “Not at all; glad of some companionship,” he grunted. Always safety in number, he knew.

They mounted up and rode on, with Harbin mounted upon his own pack-loper and Zuarra taking her turn atop Brant’s steed. As they rode, the scientist studied the exposed rock-strata and the loose gravel which carpeted the sands at the base of the cliffwall. His sharp eyes discerned many interesting fossils, uniformly of marine life, left over from the time, eons before, when this had been the bottom of a long-forgotten ocean.

He eyed them a bit wistfully, but said nothing. True, he would very much have liked to take some samples, but in order to reach their destination and make camp before nightfall, they should keep moving. Besides, there would be many more fossils up ahead, he knew, and just as appetizing as these.

From time to time, Harbin studied the dials on the pack of instruments he wore slung about his chest, and made a small, neat notation on the pad he wore at his waist. The geographical relief map he would eventually create from these notes would comprise the most scrupulously detailed and accurate survey ever made of these uninhabited southern parts of the planet—the CA Survey maps having been put together in a photomontage of footage taken by one or another of the permanent satellite stations in close orbit about Mars.

The rest of the time, he studied Brant. He wondered who he truly was and what had brought him down to these inhospitable and desolate regions. He did not for one moment believe Brant to be a prospector as he had claimed to be: for one thing, he was completely ignorant of geology, as Harbin had shrewdly established during their earlier conversation with a few casual observations on the strata.

For another, he carried no geiger.

Well, he shrugged philosophically to himself, half the Earthsider denizens of Mars were exiled here for crimes or political offenses, or were at least the children of those earlier convict-settlers who had first established the domed Colonial cities. Brant could be anything from a gun-runner to a slaver, from a hunted thief or killer to a smuggler of archaeological treasures stolen from rifled tombs.

It didn’t much matter to Harbin. He rather liked the big, grim man with the hard face, rather admired the strength and toughness of him.

Time would tell if they were to be friends. For the moment, at least they were not enemies… .

As the sun was descending into the west, they reached a place where the massive plateau was deeply cleft by a wide ravine that might have been the bed of a primordial river. This was the spot Will Harbin had suggested, and, looking it over, Brant felt satisfied. It would afford them a safe haven against the night, and the strata here were not as loose and crumbling as was the cliff they had descended when they had been attacked by the rock dragon.

It did not look to him as if they would have to worry about rock dragons here. While Agila and the two women unsaddled the lopers and set up the tents, Harbin and Brant combined their one-strand protective fences into one which was, by a narrow margin, just large enough to encompass the double-sized camp.

This was a natural precaution to take, although it was unlikely that any sandcats were to be found this close to the cliffs, as the great predators generally made their lairs and hunting grounds in the deep dustlands.

There were four tents to be erected, one for each of them, with the lopers tethered to pegs driven in the loose shale in the center of the encampment. This done, and the beasts set to munching on their plant-fiber cakes, the women lit liquid fire in the metal pan and prepared the evening meal.

There was still a few cutlets left over from the fat lizard that Brant had slain on the plateau, as well as the remnants of the canned goods and concentrates which Brant had brought with him from Sun Lake City. To these were now added the fresh supplies which Harbin had purchased in the native marts of Dakhshan much more recently.

All in all, they made a good meal and turned in for the night. With the electric fence switched on there was no real need to take turns at sentry-go, Brant knew.

Still and all, he felt restless and decided to take a turn or two about the perimeter of the camp before seeking his rest.

Others, as well, were not ready for sleep. From the tent wherein the two women had retired for the night, one came forth to stare at the starblaze. And from the inky shadows of another tent, Agila glided into the open, stopping short as he observed the woman come forth.

In the dim almost-dark of the Martian night, Agila could not at once be certain which of the two women had emerged from the tent to share the darkness with him. But he assumed it to be the soft, plump one whom he fancied.

Gliding on soundless steps to where she stood, staring up at the glory of the stars, the cowl of her robes concealing her features from him, he laid a cajoling arm about her shoulders and reached with the other hand for her breasts.

Startled, she turned in his embrace, and as she did so the hood of her robes fell back upon her shoulders, revealing the face of Zuarra.

Well, it was not the one he preferred, but it was all one to Agila. Grinning wolfishly, he insinuated one hand into the opening of her robes to capture a firm, pointed breast, while his other arm tightened about her so that she should not writhe free and his thin lips bent to seek her own in a hungry kiss—

A kiss that was never quite consummated.

A hand clamped his lean shoulder in a grip of iron; another closed about his throat, tearing him from the woman. Then a balled fist sank into his belly and he fell gagging to the sand, clutching for the long knife that slept in its dragonskin scabbard at his thigh, under his kilt.

But Brant kicked him in the face, knocking most of the fight out of the guide, who fell sprawling on his back and lay there gasping and spitting like a beached flounder.

Zuarra had fallen to her knees. Now Brant bent to help her to her feet, nor did she repulse his gesture.

For a moment, he held her against his chest as she clung to him, panting.

For a moment, her eyes, lustrous as wet dark jewels in the dim light, stared up into his own.

Then—

“This is the third time you have rescued me, O Brant,” she whispered. “First, when my own people had staked me out to die, and you, a stranger and a f’yagh, cut my bonds and gave me to drink of your own water. Then, when I swooned under the stare of the rock dragon, and my own ‘sister’ forbore to come to my aid. And now, when this hungry dog of the Outlands would have laid his hands and his mouth upon me against my will. Why do you do these things, O Brant?”

“Because I am a man, and you are a woman,” he said. To his own ears, the words sounded absurd and foolish, savoring of outmoded chivalry. But he could think of nothing else to say.

She stared at him.

“Am I truly a woman, then, O Brant?” she asked.

“Woman enough for me or any other man,” he said in thick tones.

She turned away without speaking and re-entered the tent she shared with the other woman. Brant looked around. While these few words had been exchanged, Agila had scuttled to the safety of his tent, avoiding further punishment.

Brant shrugged, and went to bed. But not to sleep. For the memory of huge eyes like lustrous, wet jewels haunted his restless thoughts almost till dawn… .