The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories (55 page)

“How long have they
been there?” I said.

“I put them out there yesterday afternoon. After Borchardt died.”

“You dug Howard up?” I said. Howard was lying nearest us. He did not look as bad as I had imagined he would. He had almost no honeycombs, and although his
skin looked waxy and soft like the skin over Evelyn’s cheekbones, he looked almost like I remembered him. The sun had done that. He was melting out there in the sun.

“Yes,” he said. “The Sandalman knows it’s a poison, but the rest of the suhundulim don’t. They’ll never cross that line of bodies. They’re afraid of catching the virus.”

“He’ll tell them,” I said.

“Would you believe him?” he said.
“Would you cross that line because he told you it wasn’t a virus?”

“It’s a good thing you left me in the cage,” I said. “I wouldn’t have helped you do this.”

Light flashed from the ridge. “Are they firing at us?” I said.

“No,” he said. “The Sandalman’s head bey has something shiny in her hand that’s reflecting the sunlight.”

It was the bey from the compound. She had my press card and was moving
it back and forth so it flashed sunlight.

“She wasn’t there before,” Lacau said. “The Sandalman must have brought her out to show his soldiers she hasn’t caught the virus and they won’t either.”

“What?” I said. “Why would she catch it? I thought Evelyn’s bey was the one who was with the team.”

He was frowning at me. “Evelyn’s bey never went anywhere near the Spine. She’s a maidservant the Sandalman
gave Evelyn. How did you get the idea she was the Sandalman’s representative?” He looked at me in disbelief. “You don’t think the Sandalman would let us anywhere near his bey after we’d negotiated for the extra days, do you? He wouldn’t have trusted us not to poison her like he poisoned the team. He locked her up tight in his compound before he went north,” he said bitterly.

“And Evelyn knew
that,” I said. “She knew the Sandalman had gone north. She knew he’d left his bey behind. Didn’t she?”

Lacau didn’t answer. He was watching the bey. The Sandalman offered her something, and she took it. It looked like a bucket. She had to stick the press card in her mouth to free both hands so she could lift it. The Sandalman said something to her, and she started down the ridge, spilling liquid
from the bucket as she went. The Sandalman had left his bey behind at the compound, locked
up, but the guards had run off like the guards at the dome, and a curious bey could open any lock.

“She doesn’t seem to be sick, does she?” Lacau said bitterly. “And our week is up. The team caught it in two days.”

“Two,” I said. “Did Evelyn know the Sandalman left his bey behind?”

“Yes,” Lacau said,
watching the ridge. “I told her.”

The little bey was down the ridge and onto the plain. The Sandalman yelled something at her, and she began to run. The bucket banged against her legs, and more liquid spilled out. As soon as she reached the line of bodies, she stopped and looked back at the ridge. The Sandalman yelled again. He was a long way away, but the ridge amplified his voice. I could hear
him quite clearly.

“Pour,” he said. “Pour fire,” and the little bey tipped the bucket and started down the row.

“Photosene,” Lacau said tonelessly. “The sunlight will ignite it.”

A lot had spilled out of the bucket on the way down, none of it on the bey, for which I was thankful. There were only a few drops left to shake over Howard. The bey dropped the bucket and danced back. At the other
end of the row, Callender’s shirt took fire. I shut my eyes.

“Two lousy days,” Lacau said. Callender’s mustache was on fire. Borchardt smouldered and then flared up yellowly like a candle. Lacau didn’t even see me leave.

I followed the electrical cords back to Evelyn’s room, half-running. The bey wasn’t there. I flipped on the translator and yanked the drape up and looked down at her. “What
was in the message, Evelyn?” I said.

The sound of her breathing was so loud nothing was going to get through on the translator. Her eyes were closed.

“You knew the Sandalman had already gone north when you sent me back to the compound, didn’t you?” The translator was picking up my own voice and echoing it back to me. “You knew I was lying when I told you I’d delivered the message to the Sandalman.
But you didn’t care. Because the message wasn’t for him. It was for his bey.”

She said something.
The translator couldn’t do anything with it, but it didn’t matter. I knew what it was. “Yes,” she said, and I felt a sudden desire to hit her; to watch the honeycombed cheeks cave in under the force of my hand and mash against bone.

“You knew she’d put it in her mouth, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said;
and opened her eyes. There was a dull roaring outside.

“You murdered her,” I said.

“Had to. To save the treasure,” she said. “Sorry. Curse.”

“There isn’t any curse,” I said, clenching my hands at my sides so I wouldn’t hit her. “That was just a story you made up to stall me till the poison could take effect, wasn’t it?”

She started to cough. The bey darted in front of me with the Coke bottle.
She put the straw in Evelyn’s mouth, propped Evelyn’s head up with her hand, and tilted her gently forward so she could drink.

“You’d have killed your own bey, too, if you had to, wouldn’t you?” I said. “For the treasure. For the goddamned treasure!”

“Curse,” Evelyn, said.

“The ship’s here,” Lacau said behind me, “but we’ll never make it. Howard’s the only one left. They’re sending the bey
down with more photosene.”

“We’ll make it,” I said, and switched the translator off. I took out my knife and slit the wall of the tent behind Evelyn’s hammock. Evelyn’s bey scampered to her feet and came over to where we were standing. The Sandalman’s bey was halfway across the plain with the bucket. She was moving more slowly this time, and none of the photosene was splashing out. Above, on
the ridge, the Sandalman’s soldiers edged forward.

“We can load the treasure,” I said. “Evelyn’s seen to that.”

The bey made it to the bodies. She started to tip the bucket onto Howard, then seemed to change her mind, and set the bucket down. The Sandalman yelled something at her. She took hold of the bucket, let go of it again, and fell over.

“You see,” I said. “It was a virus after all.”

There was a sound from above her like a stuttering sigh, and the Sandalman’s soldiers began to back away from the edge of the ridge.

A loading crew was there before
we even had the back of the tent sliced open. Lacau pointed them at the nearest boxes, and they didn’t even ask any questions. They just started carrying them out to the ship. Lacau and I picked up the refrigerator, gently, gently,
so as not to bang the princess’s shins, and carried her across the sand to the ship’s loading bay.

The captain took one look at her and yelled for the rest of his crew to come and help load. “Hurry,” he said after us. “They’re bringing up some kind of weapon on the ridge there.”

We hurried. We handed stuff out the back door, and the crew ran the boxes across the sand faster than Evelyn’s bey
getting a drink of water in a Coke bottle; and we still weren’t fast enough. There was a soft whoosh and splat on the roof overhead, and liquid trickled down the plastic mesh over our heads.

“He’s got a photosene cannon,” Lacau said. “Is the blue vase out?”

“Where’s Evelyn’s bey?” I said, and took off for Evelyn’s room. The mesh drape above the hammock was already melting, the fire slicing through
it like a knife. The little bey was flattened against the inner wall where I had seen her that first night, watching the fire. I grabbed her up under my arm and dived for the center area.

I couldn’t get through. The packing cases that lined the tent were a wall of roaring flame. I ducked back into Evelyn’s room. I saw immediately that we could not get out that way either, and just as immediately
I remembered the slit I’d made in the wall.

I clamped my hand over the bey’s mouth so she wouldn’t breathe in the fumes from the melting plastic, held my breath, and started past the hammock.

Evelyn was still alive.

I could not hear her wheezing above the fire, but I could see her chest rise and fall before it began to melt. She was lying with her face pressed against the side of the melting
hammock, and she turned her face toward me as I stopped as if she had heard me. The honeycombs on her face widened and flattened, and then smoothed out with the heat, and for a minute I saw her as she must have looked when Bradstreet saw her and said that she was beautiful, as she must have looked when the Sandalman gave her his own bey. The face she turned to me was the face that I had waited all
my life to see. And only saw too late.

She guttered out like a candle, and I stood there and watched her, and by the time she was dead the roof had caved in on Lacau and two of the crew. And the blue vase had already been broken in a mad dash to the ship with the last of the treasure.

But we saved the princess.
And I got my story.

It is the story of the century, At least that’s what Bradstreet’s
boss called it when he fired him. My boss is asking for forty columns a day. I give them to him.

They are great stories. In them Evelyn is a beautiful victim and Lacau is a hero. I am a hero, too. After all, I helped save the treasure. The stories I burn don’t tell how Lacau dug up Howard and built a fort with him or how I got the Lisii team killed. In the stories I burn there is only one villain.

I send forty columns a day out over the burner and try to put the blue vase back together and in what time is left I write this story, which I will not send anywhere. The bey fiddles with the lights.

Our cabin has a system of air-current-sensitive highlights that dim and brighten automatically as you move. The bey cannot get enough of them. She does not even mess with the blue vase or try to
put the pieces in her mouth.

I have figured out what the vase is, by the way. The etched lines on the silver straw that looks like a lily are scratches. I am piecing together a ten-thousand-year-old Coke bottle. Here. You must be thirsty. The beys may have had a wonderful civilization, but years before the Sandalman’s grandparents even showed up, they were busy poisoning princesses. They murdered
her; and she must have known it, and that’s why she leans her head against her hand so hopelessly. They murdered her for what? For a treasure? For a planet? For a story? And didn’t anybody try to save her?

The first thing Evelyn said to me was, “Help me.” What if I had? What if I had said the hell with the story and called Bradstreet, sent him over to get the Lisii team’s doctor and evacuate
the rest of the team? What if, while he was still on the way, I had burned a message to the Sandalman that said, “You can have the princess if you’ll let us off the planet?” and then plugged in that trachea respirator that wouldn’t let her talk but might have kept her alive till we could get her onto a ship?

I like to think that I would have done that if I had known her, if it had not been, as
she said, “Too late.” But I don’t know. The Sandalman, who was so enamoured of her that he gave her his own bey, stood in the tomb and offered her poison in a Coke bottle. And Lacau knew her, but what he went back for, what he died for, was not her but a blue vase.

“There was a
curse,” I say.

Evelyn’s bey drifts slowly across the room, and the lights brighten and then dim again as she passes.
“All,” she says, and sits down on the bunk. The reading light at the end of the bed goes on.

“What?” I say, and wish I still had the translator.

“Curse everybody,” she says. “You. Me. All.” She crosses her dirty-looking hands over her breast and lies down on the bed. The lights go out. It is just like old times.

In a minute she’ll get tired of it being dark and get up, and I’ll go back to labeling
the jigsawed pieces of the blue vase so a team of archaeologists who have not yet been killed by the curse can put it back together. But for now I have to sit in the dark.

“Curse everybody.” Even the Lisii team. Because of the relay in my tent, the Sandalman thought they were helping me get the treasure off Colchis. He buried them alive in the cave they were excavating. He couldn’t kill Bradstreet
because he was halfway to the Spine with a broken-down Swallow, and by the time he got it fixed the Commission had landed, and he’d been fired, and my boss had hired him to file stories on the hearings. They have the Sandalman in custody in a geodome like the one he burned down. The rest of the suhundulim sit in on the Commission’s hearings, but the beys, according to Bradstreet, don’t pay any
attention to them. They are more interested in the Commission’s judicial wigs. They have stolen four of them so far.

Evelyn’s bey gets up and then flops back down on the bunk, trying to make the highlights flicker. She is not at all curious about this story I am writing, this tale of murder and poison and other curses men fall victim to. Maybe her people got enough of that in the good old days.
Maybe Borchardt was wrong and the suhundulim didn’t take Colchis away from them at all. Maybe the minute they landed, the beys said, “Here. Take it. Hurry.”

She has fallen asleep. I can hear her quiet, even breathing. She is not under the curse, at least.

I saved her, and I saved the princess, even though I was a thousand years too late. So maybe I am not entirely in its clutches either. But
in a few minutes I will go turn on a light and finish this story, and when I’m done with it I’ll put it in a nice, safe place. Like a tomb. Or a refrigerator.

Why? Because having gotten
this story at such great cost I am determined to tell it? Or because the curse of kings stands all around me like a cage, hangs overhead like a tangle of electrical cords?

“The curse of kings and keepers,” I
say, and my bey scrambles off the bunk and tears out of the cabin to fetch me a drink of water in a Coke bottle she must have been carrying when I dragged her on board, as if I were her new patient and lay under a drape of plasticmesh, already dying.

The phone sang as I
was
looking over the defense’s motion to dismiss.