Haydn of Mars (8 page)

He stretched.
 
“Ah, well.
 
They are F'rar, so they are stupid.
 
And once we get to the middle lands, they will not dare follow.”
 
He grinned slyly.
 
“And you will be worth even more, the longer we keep you, eh?”

I said nothing, and he left.

Myra appeared with fearful eyes in the middle of the night and shook me awake.

“
Get up!
” she hissed, nearly pushing me out of bed.
 
“Get up or we will all die!”

Painfully, I climbed out of bed and the girl threw a heavy cloak around me.

“Follow!” she ordered.

She nearly dragged me out of the tent.
 
I could feel her fear.
 
I began to be afraid myself.
 
I stumbled out of the tent behind her and saw the sky full of lights, F'rar airships landing all around us.

“Come!”

I moved with her, keeping low to the ground, nearly on all fours, as she was.
 
Somewhere in the near distance a gunshot sounded, followed by the hiss of arrows.

We moved away from the camp, down a sandy slope and amongst a stand of bushes.

“Down!” she ordered and I threw myself flat on the ground as a spotlight stabbed down from above, skittering off to our right and away.

“Move!”

We scrambled on a fair distance, and then the girl suddenly ordered, “Get in!” I was shoved ahead of her into a dark opening.

Like a crab, she scuttled in after me and then reached up and pulled something flat and wide over the opening.
 
Huffing with the effort, she crouched down beside me and hissed into my ear, “Say nothing!”

I nodded in the darkness, and we sat and waited.

It was not a long wait.
 
Above there was a sound like thunder on wheels, and many barking voices.
 
The sounds became impossibly loud.

Suddenly I heard someone shout just over our heads: “Damn these sand rats!
 
Where in hell did they go?”

“I saw them from above, sir.
 
They were right here.”

“If they were right here where did they get to?
 
Did they melt into thin air?”

“We'll keep looking, sir.”

“You do that.
 
Did we get anything out of the prisoner?”

I felt my companion stiffen beside me.

“Nothing.
 
You know the way these creatures are.
 
She died without speaking.”

“Damn!”

The sounds, the figures, moved off.

My companion was shivering, weeping softly beside me.

In the dark, while we waited, without speaking, I put my arm around her, and pulled her close.

I must have slept.
 
Three taps on the trap door above us woke me.

My companion was already awake.
 
She sprung up, and instantly pulled the door away, revealing bright sun.

“They are gone,” the Mighty reported.
 
His face was grim.

“Ena!” my companion cried, climbing out of the hole and falling into the Mighty's arms.

Idly he held and petted her.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“She is being prepared for burial.
 
It is almost Noon.
 
Come, Myra.”

Myra collapsed.
 
“Ena!
 
Ena!”

The Mighty supported her, and looked down at me as I climbed from the hole.
 
“They caught her as she was making her way to her own hiding place,” he said. “Rather than reveal the spot, she let them take her.
 
They burned her, and then they put her eyes out.
 
And she said
nothing
.”
 
There was a mixture of grief and pride in his voice.
 

“Oh, Ena!” Myra cried.

I stood, and took the weight of Myra from the Mighty.
 
“Let me help her,” I said.

He nodded, and he looked at me in a new way.
 
“I am beginning to think that taking you was very bad luck for me,” he said.
 
“This is nothing against you, you must understand.
 
But there are bigger things going on on this world of ours than I imagined.”

“You are right,” I said.

“We will talk,” he said, and walked away, leaving the care of his harem girl to me.

Ena was buried at precisely noon, within the circle the remaining caravan members made.

I was not allowed to help form the circle, but stood just behind the Mighty, who explained everything to me.

“The body is purified by the Sun.
 
The Sun is a good god to be buried under.
 
He will protect her in the next world.
 
The Moons are not so favorable, because they can be tricksters.
 
It was a good omen for her to die when she did.”

The body lay sewn into a sack made of tent cloth next to a dug hole.
 
After prayers Myra left the circle and anointed the sack with oils and aromatic herbs.
 
Some of the odors wafted to my nostrils: jasmine and oleander, and the heavily rich perfume of cactus oil.

After Myra's ministrations, there followed what I at first thought was an extended moment of silence, but I saw that each of the members of the circle were mumbling under their breaths.

When it was finished, the Mighty, the last to stop speaking in a low voice, explained to me, “The announcing of her sins.”
 
I saw him give a slight, knowing smile.
 
“She had many.”

Then the members of the circle collapsed upon the body, and lowered it into the ground, covering it and smoothing the area so that it looked as though they had never been there.

“Ordinarily,” the Mighty explained to me after this was done, “we would leave a mound so that the Sun could find the spot, but since we are being followed this cannot be done.
 
For the next three days during Noon service we will remind the sun of her location.”
 
He looked up at the small golden yellow coin in the sky.
 
“He will not forget.
 
She had her faults, but she was a good woman.”

He looked at me curiously.

“What is it you believe, Ransom?”

“You mean my religion?”

“Yes.”

“That is a difficult question to answer.”

“On the contrary, it is the easiest question to answer.”

“I was brought up to believe in the One,” I replied.
 
“But sometimes it has been difficult to believe even in that.”

“Why so?”
 
He looked genuinely puzzled.

“Because of the way things are.”

“You mean the evil in the world?”

“Yes.”

“All the more reason to believe in something.
 
Even if it is only the silliness of one god.”

“Perhaps you are right.”

“We will speak of these things again, but now we will hide, and then tonight we will travel.
 
And we will continue to travel tonight, and hide by day, until we are out of danger.”

“I had no idea you had built hiding spots,” I said.

I saw for the first time since that morning a little of his humor return.
 
“Oh, I am full of surprises, Ransom.”

“Yes, you are,” I said to myself as he strode away, and I beheld the five bodies of F'rar he had captured and killed, then hung head down and naked on long poles on a distant hill to tell his enemy that he could not win.

A month passed.
 
Even though we approached the equator it grew colder, due to the changing of seasons.
 
In effect, the southern winter was overtaking us.

I learned to wear their clothes, out of necessity.
 
I became accustomed to their ways.
 
My back had healed, and Myra's ministrations were the cause.
 
I knew she was proud of her work.
 
A taut understanding, if not respect, had grown between us.
 
Occasionally I still saw daggers in her eyes – but I had yet to see one in her paw.

I puzzled over her relationship with the Mighty.
 
In the past weeks we had been joined by others of the Mighty's clan.
 
Often they appeared at night, like wraiths.
 
More than once I had awakened in the morning to find that our camp had doubled in size during darkness.
 
Among these newcomers were others of the Mighty's harem.
 
I awoke one morning to discover that one of the younger wives had managed to crawl into my bed undetected and slept beside me.
 
And she snored!
 
Which may have made it much more an indication of the ease I felt in this camp, that I would sleep so deeply.

My belly grew.
 
It grew inexorably, and I could feel the life within me.
 
By the movements and occasional kicks, I determined that there were at least two kits, possibly more.
 
I know I glowed, because those around me glowed when they looked at me.

The Mighty maintained his polite but intense interest in me.
 
I knew that he had sent spies hither in yon in search of my identity, but never did he reveal any of this, or what they might have found, to me.
 
He was a very shrewd card player, even if I had to explain to him what card games were.

“We have no need for this rubbish,” he said, throwing down his hand of Jakra the first time I tried to teach him.
 
It was a cool evening, and fires had been permitted.
 
We had seen no signs of the F'rar in nearly two weeks.
 
But I knew the Mighty had eyes out there, watching, listening.

I laughed, and showed him my own winning hand: three Vestas, the figure of a broad old feline with abundant whiskers staring seriously out of the face of the card.

“You have no need because you have no skill!” I teased.

He did not take this well, and turned back to the cards.

“Deal another...”

“Hand?” I offered, still teasing.

“Yes!
 
Hand!
 
Deal me out another!”

As I dealt he concentrated and spat, “We will see who has no skill.”

He won the next four hands.

“You see,” he explained as we took a break from the game, and sipped gemel tea which Hera, the latest, snoring member of his harem, brought.
 
I had grown a fondness for this tea, which was robust, by no means weak.
 
I noticed the young thing would not meet my eyes, since, I had been informed by the Mighty, she thought she was crawling into bed with
him
her first night in camp, “it is like this.
 
When I call this...card playing” – and here he waved his paw in dismissal at the pile of discards on the ground between us – “rubbish, I mean it in a literal sense.
 
Rubbish to my people is things that are irrelevant to survival, and the everyday.
 
Even our kits would not indulge themselves in games like this.
 
We draw our pleasure from constructing and preserving, not...” Again he waved his dismissive hand over the cards, “
that
.”

“But it's enjoyable!” I protested.

He shook his head.
 
“Enjoyment is in...” And wordlessly he spread his hands to take in the black sky overhead, the thousands of stars, the planets, the night air, the planet.

In my weeks with this man, I now knew what he meant.

“I must ask you,” he said, turning his attention back to the cards.
 
He flipped a few of them over, exposing the faces of the great Martian feline composers.
 
“These names you give to the faces...”

My eyes widened.
 
“You cannot read?”

I saw the beginnings of anger.
 
He stabbed at the cards with an outstretched clawed finger.
 
“No.”

“But why not?”

Before he answered I did it for him: “More rubbish?”

His anger immediately receded, and he pointed to the cards again.
 
“Who are all of these bum wipers?”

I riffled through them, and brought out a particular one: a tall proud feline with an abundant mane and kindly eyes.
 
I handed it to the Mighty.
 
“This is a composer named Haydn.
 
She was a musician, as were all of these.”