Lin Carter - Down to a Sunless Sea Read online

  Brant shrugged irritably, and devoured his meat. Let them have their secrets, he thought to himself.

  The sky darkened and became ablaze with stars. These were bright, hard, unwinking, unlike the stars that shone in earthly skies, because the air of Mars is thin.

  It became distinctly colder, and the women donned their borrowed robes.

  Before long, they sought their tents, but not to sleep, as it chanced.

  Brant tossed and turned in his bedroll. Although the long day’s journey had wearied him, his mind was too active for him to fall asleep easily.

  After a time, feeling the need to relieve himself, he rose, unseamed the tent, and crawled out under the stars.

  Seeking a crevice into which to urinate, he chanced to pass the tent wherein the women lay. And as he approached he heard odd sounds from within���whispers, moans, gasping sighs.

  Curious, he peered through the transparent panel, and the sight that met his eyes made his mouth twist in a cold, wolfish grin. The nude limbs mingling, the hands searching, the wet mouths hungrily feasting, the warm bodies intertwined. …

  Now he knew the crime for which the two had been staked out to die in such a cruel manner. The sin, rather: for to the

  High Law the love they shared was deemed unnatural and perverse.

  Now he understood the peculiar emphasis which Zuarra placed on the word “sister.” He should have guessed it before, but had thought little of it. Well, returning to his tent, now at least he knew exactly why neither of the two wished to “open their thighs” to him.

  Oddly enough, he fell asleep instantly, and slept a deep and dreamless sleep till dawn.

  The Dragon

  They broke their fast that next morning with a frugal meal, for Brant was anxious to conserve the food supplies that remained to them. He could not know when he next would make a kill, for the plateau was bleak and inhospitable to life in any form.

  They moved on, ever south, then angling east, for it seemed to Brant that there was a greater chance of finding game on the crumbling edges of the ancient continent, where plants and lizards thrived in the crevices of the cliff.

  The women made no objection to this plan, so they went on as they had done the day before, with weak little Suoli riding in the saddle while Brant and Zuarra walked afoot.

  Very few words were exchanged between them. Brant was in a surly mood, and neither of the women felt overly communicative. From time to time, as they walked together, Zuarra stole a sidewise glance out of her emerald eyes at the tall Earthsider, but sensed his dour mood, and addressed him seldom.

  From time to time, during rest halts, Brant consulted the Survey map. He heartily disliked a journey like this, that had no clear or definite destination. “The farther they wandered into the south, the colder and more barren the land would become. They would have ever increasing difficulty in finding the fat-leafed, knee-high plants that, cooked in the pressure still, would provide them with water and with fodder for the beast.

  There was no colony between here and the pole, he knew, and even if they were to chance upon an encampment of the People, they would be as hostile to one of the accursed f’yagh as they would to the two outlawed women who rode with him.

  A cave in the cliffside, however, would afford them shelter and a certain measure of security. With such a place as their base of operations, he and the women could venture forth to forage for water-plants and for game.

  They rode on, into the east.

  It was like riding to the edge of the world, the emptiness, the vast and cloudless sky above, where no birds flew. The rocky plateau was sterile and featureless, scoured by the fine sand the wind stirred. There were no vivid colors to break the eye-aching monotony of dull purple sky, dark stone, cinnamon sand. There were no sounds to speak of to relieve the dead silence, just the creak of saddle leather, the padding of the loper’s splayed feet, the faint, far moaning of a weary wind.

  The women felt it too, and grew restless and uneasy at the silence and the dead land over which they plodded. After a time, little Suoli whimpered plaintively that she was weary of riding in the saddle and that its hard leather was chafing her raw.

  “I would rather walk for a time,” she whined. Brant shrugged and helped her down. When he offered the seat to the tall woman, she refused it curtly, so Brant climbed astride the beast himself and rode awhile, watching the two women narrowly as they walked along together, side by side, whispering to each other in tones too faint for him to distinguish.

  It was a relief to ride in relative comfort after so long afoot. The muscles of calf and thigh ached with fatigue, and the swaying gait of the reptile was comforting. After a little while, Brant dozed, retaining his seat with the automatic responses of one who has spent years in the saddle. The women did not disturb his brief rest, talking in low voices to each other.

  Suddenly, Suoli shrilled, pointing into the east, and Brant snapped out of his doze, clawing his power gun from its worn holster. Then he relaxed, muttering a curse, for it was only one of the moons that the little woman had spied low in the sky near the horizon.

  He grinned, though. In truth, the twin moons of Mars were a rare sight to see and you could go a year or more without ever glimpsing Deimos or Phobos. The reason for this was simple, for, although both moons ride closer to the surface of their primary than does Earth’s satellite, they have a very low albedo���so low as to render them virtually invisible to the eye most of the time. You have to know precisely where to look���and when���in order to see them at all, except by accident.

  Now that Suoli’s cry of delight and surprise had roused him from his rest, he offered the saddle to Zuarra, but she dismissed the gesture impatiently.

  “Ride on and rest further, O Brant,” she said in clipped tones. “You are weary, but I am young and strong.” Was there a trace of scorn in her voice? Brant shrugged, caring little.

  Both women walked wrapped in the burnous-like robes, he noticed, for the air was chill here at the edges of the plateau, bitterly cold, from the air currents which came across the antarctic barrens from the southern pole. Brant thumbed the dial of his heated suit to a higher setting.

  In another hour they had come to the very edge of the ancient continent. Here the dry rock was cloven asunder by a thousand narrow crevices, and the footing was treacherous with loose rock. He dismounted and led the loper forward cautiously, testing his footing every few steps.

  The problem was, simply, how to get down to the dead sea bottom? They were a hundred yards above the level plains of the dustlands, and a loper is bad at climbing. For a time they skirted the brink, looking for safe ways of descent, and at length they discovered that for which Brant had been watchful���a series of crumbling ledges of rock strata, like a great stair.

  They began going down, taking great care, guiding the loper, who hissed and squealed with alarm, not liking the descent very much.

  Zuarra clambered down on lithe and limber legs, with the agility of an acrobat, assisting the nervous Suoli from ledge to ledge, while Brant and the loper took up the rear.

  He led the restive beast down, cautious step after cautious step, wary of the treacherous ground under his boot heels. Once, eons before, this had been the continental shelf, washed by the waves of one of the lost, age-forgotten oceans of primal Mars. Here and there, between the mineral outcroppings, the Earthsider spied fossil shells, strange and unearthly in their shapings, but unmistakable.

  He wondered briefly if, a billion years from now, the seas of his distant homeworld would dry to sterile deserts, and the shores of Europe and Africa and the two Americas would resemble this crumbling, time-eroded cliff. …

  Shortly thereafter, Suoli screamed. There was stark terror in her tones, that were very unlike the cry of pleasure with which she had greeted her rare glimpse of the hurtling moon.

  Brant had his back turned to the dustlands and was trying to urge the reluctant reptile down from one broken ledge to another, when th
at shrill cry rang out. Growling a startled curse, he tried to turn, but thin plates of rock broke beneath him and he came down on his backside and would have perhaps fallen farther had not his hand been tangled in the loper’s reins.

  The stubborn reptile planted its forefeet firmly, and in so doing, broke Brant’s impending tumble into the abyss.

  Struggling to free his gun-hand from the tight reins, Brant looked beneath him … and the marrow froze in his bones at the sight that met his gaze.

  Wriggling from its hidden lair between two ledges of rock strata, a hideous form emerged to their view.

  It was the dreaded rock dragon; he should have known this tier of crumbling ledges made a perfect hiding place for the deadly reptiles.

  It must have measured fifteen feet from fanged, gaping maw to wriggling, barbed tail. Its scaly length���the middle parts as big around as the Earthsider’s upper thigh���was mailed in thick, overlapping scales of the same dull, liver-color as the rocks amidst which it made its home.

  Zuarra was directly in its path.

  As for Suoli, the frightened girl cowered on the far corner of the ledge, uttering piercing squeals, fluttering her plump little hands foolishly at the serpent, as if hoping to shoo it away.

  It was not a true serpent, the rock dragon, for while its slithering length was serpentine, three sets of short, bowed legs, armed with birdlike claws, sprouted at even intervals down its length.

  Zuarra was frozen, facing the deadly thing. And her hands were empty of weapons.

  Sharp claws clutching and closing upon the thin ledge, squealing under its fierce clench, the dragon reared above her, jaws agape. Its jaws bore retractable fangs, hollow like hypodermic needles, and as the dragon extruded them into view, all three of the travelers saw the oily, colorless fluid that dribbled out.

  The bite of a rock dragon contains no poisonous venom, true; but those fangs inject into living flesh a substance that causes instantaneous paralysis. Once those fangs closed upon Zuarra, she would be helpless to resist while the mud-colored thing wound a loop of its scaly length about her torso, to drag her down into its hole to be devoured at leisure.

  And Brant could not free his wrist from the entangling reins.

  The Gun

  While Brant straggled to free his wrist from the reins, Zuarra cast a quick glance about her in desperation, seeking some weapon wherewith to defend herself. But nothing met her gaze that could help battle against the rock dragon.

  She turned an imploring look at her “sister,” who cowered whimpering in the far corner of the ledge, and cried out to her for help. But the soft little woman only buried her face in her hands, ignoring Zuarra’s plea for assistance.

  The six-legged serpent had crawled entirely out of its burrow by this time, and reared above the helpless woman, fanged and drooling jaws agape, seeming to savor the feast of warm flesh that stood so temptingly near. One set of clawed feet clutched the rocky ledge, the two other sets opened and closed on empty air, claws clashing together with a rasping, ugly sound that made both women shudder.

  Then it bent its hideous head down toward its fear-frozen victim, its lithe and serpentine body curving into the shape of the letter “S.”

  The dripping fangs were fully extruded from the gums by now. Within more moments, those clutching claws would close upon Zuarra���the huge serpent would whip one coil of its long, wriggling body about her, and the fangs would sink into her throat or breast. Then there would be nothingness for the tall woman, a rapidly spreading numbness sucking her down into a bottomless well of darkness… .

  The horrible jaws bent nearer and nearer to her face. Time seemed to slow down to an agonizing crawl. The limits of the world shrank until only she and the rock dragon existed. Oddly, Zuarra had never felt so thoroughly alive before: the blood sang through her veins, the cinnamon expanse of the desert bore an indescribably gorgeous coloration, the air was sweet and cool in her nostrils.

  It seemed to the woman that she was simultaneously aware of every muscle and sinew and tendon in her body. Every cell and nerve and tissue of her body tingled with vitality. Her heart beat desperately against her ribs like a trapped bird fighting against the bars of its narrow cage.

  What thoughts or memories flashed through her seething brain in that endless infinity of a moment, she could never afterward recall.

  Brant strove, but could not free his gun hand. But with the left hand he clawed free the second pistol from its holster at his other hip and tossed it to where Suoli cowered whimpering.

  “Catch, girl���!” he bawled.

  But she only flinched and squealed, burying her frightened face in her hands as the power gun skidded across the ledge and went clattering over the brink, well out of reach.

  Zuarra saw it all with that total clarity of vision that comes in the moments of greatest peril. But she could not move, frozen with fear.

  Time slowed to a stop. The world hung breathless, as if waiting.

  Then���

  “Down on your face, girl!”

  The hoarse shout seemed to come to her ears from an immense distance. She puzzled slowly over the meaning of the words, and then, her will frozen into a mindless state like a tranced dream, she complied, kneeling on the edge of the shelf of strata, like an acolyte prostrating herself before a monstrous idol.

  The dim shadows that veiled this portion of the cliff split apart���cloven asunder by a fierce spear of intolerable fire.

  Suoli squeaked fearfully, and tried to crawl into the solid rock of the cliff to hide herself.

  The bolt caught the dragon directly between its open jaws.

  Its ugly head literally exploded in a flying splatter of burnt - bone and crisped gobbets of meat.

  Oily black gore fountained into the air from the stump of its neck. Claws clutched spasmodically on the lip of the ledge, the hard stone squeaking under their pressure.

  Slowly the serpentine body bent backwards over the abyss. The claws lost their hold, and the twitching body, coiling and uncoiling slowly, toppled from the ledge to thud into the loose rocks at the bottom of the cliff.

  And it was all over… .

  Unable to free his wrist from the twisted reins of the loper, Brant had awkwardly fumbled his second power gun from its holster, aimed it clumsily with his left hand, and fired, snapping off a shot aimed by sheer instinct alone, as time was running out.

  The dial which adjusted the width of the beam was still set to the narrowest aperture���the needle-beam setting to which he had adjusted the weapon when he had used it yesterday, hunting lizards for meat.

  This meant, of course, that the shot would have to be a direct hit, which was risky. But the urgency of the situation was such that there was certainly no time for him to try to thumb the dial to a wider beam setting.

  Fortunately���for Zuarra���he was a dead shot, even with his left hand.

  The woman knelt, stunned and shaking, where she had crouched in mindless obedience to his shouted command. She seemed oblivious to her surroundings.

  Eventually, Brant got his hand free, returned the power gun to its holster, and clambered down to the ledge where the two native women were.

  He put his arm around Zuarra and raised her to her feet. She cowered against him, hiding her face against his breast. He patted her trembling shoulder, speaking gently to her as one comforts a frightened child.

  Erelong, the whiteness left her face and her eyes took on an expression of awareness. Still in his arms, and clinging to him for support, since her knees were rubbery and her legs

  seemed nerveless, she looked at Suoli with an expression of icy contempt.

  Before that scathing expression, the soft little woman flushed, dropped her own gaze, and bit her full lower lip in vexation.

  “Are you all right, girl?” asked Brant urgently.

  The Martian woman met his searching gaze.

  “I am unharmed, O Brant,” she whispered tonelessly. And then, a moment
later, she added:

  “It was well for Zuarra that you fired your f’yagha weapon when you did.”

  He nodded, with a rare smile lightening his usually dour, grim expression. Then, half carrying and half dragging her, he took her to a place of safety at the back of the ledge, and helped her to sit, offering her water, which she drank greedily.

  They rested for a time, saying nothing. Eventually, little Suoli came to join them. She reached out one timid hand to touch Zuarra, but the other woman jerked her arm away, not even looking at her friend.

  Brant said nothing, but observed it all narrowly.

  The harsh, whistling cry of the loper still stranded on the ledge above them roused the Earthsider to a remembrance of their situation.

  Night would soon be upon the world, and the cliffside was dangerous enough by day; it would be perilous to attempt to negotiate it under conditions of darkness. And there might well be other rock dragons coiled waiting in their lairs beneath the shelves of stony strata.

  “Do you feel steady enough to continue climbing down?” he inquired. Zuarra got to her feet and made that Martian gesture which was the native equivalent of a nod.

  Leaving the women to climb down by themselves, Brant went back up to the ledge where the loper stood, crying plaintively, and began again to guide it down the stairlike shelves of stone.

  Night had long since come down, dark-winged, over the world by the time the three of them and the beast reached the bottom of the cliff at last, and Brant searched for and retrieved the pistol that he had tossed toward Suoli.

  Fastidiously avoiding the cadaver of the rock dragon���which still writhed in the slow undulations of its death-spasms, the two women gathered fat, water-bearing leaves from the plants which grew thickly in the shelter of the cliff and fed them into the pressure still, while Brant erected the two tents and fed the loper its dinner of plant fiber.

  They lit a fire in the flat pan and shared the remaining meat from yesterday’s kill between them. The women did not speak and Brant remained silent. From time to time, Suoli stole a shy glance at her companion, who ignored her presence as if she did not even exist.