Mara knew, because she had gone through the process herself, that all present were wrestling in their minds with immensities. Yet, at the same time, with smallness. They looked at Ifrik, and knew with their minds that it was vast because they could see the dot called Chelops; looked at a little triangular projection beneath the white that Candace said was Ind, a large country, full of people – so it was believed, or it had been in the past – and then at Chelops again, which was their world, and the centre of Hadron, which Candace outlined with her finger: just a little shape there in the middle of that immensity, Ifrik.
‘These have never had ice,’ said Candace, pointing. ‘Ifrik has never known ice. South Imrik has never known ice. The climate has changed for us, many times, but never ice. Or so we believe. Nor Ind. Nor…’ And she pointed to the east of Ind where thick fringes of colour hung below the white, and dots and splodges of colour spread out. ‘Islands,’ said Candace. ‘None of us has seen the sea, and probably won’t ever see it. I know some of you have not heard of it. It is water. Salt water. Most of the surface of the world is water.’ And she turned the big gourd so that they could see how much blue there was.
‘How do you know all this?’ asked one of the girls, and could not conceal her resentment. Mara knew this resentment well: it was what people feel when being asked to take in too much that threatens their idea of themselves, or their world.
‘It was all in the sand libraries,’ said Candace. ‘Our Memories knew it.’ And now she said to Mara, ‘You want to say something, I think.’
Mara went to the wall and from there looked back at the faces which, every one, showed something like anger, or reluctance. They did not want to know all this. She said, ‘All this happened quickly – so Candace told me. This…’ – and she indicated the globe, with its tiny caps of ice top and bottom – ‘was how things were for fifteen thousand years. And then the ice came down, quite fast, in a hundred years.’
‘Fast?’ jeered one of the girls. She was seventeen. To her the hundreds, and the thousands, and the tens of thousands, meant no more than the kind of talk children overhear: grown-ups conversing above their heads using words they do not know.
‘It began,’ said Mara, ‘when these lands here…’ – and she pointed to the north of the globe – ‘which had people and towns and plenty to eat, had to empty because it got so cold, and they knew the ice was coming. And that took…’ – she looked at the girl who had spoken – ‘not much more than twice seventeen years.’
The girl burst into tears.
‘These things can happen quickly,’ Mara pleaded, imploring them, begging them. ‘Just imagine: all of this, all…’ – and she made the globe spin slowly – ‘all of it here, the top half, beautiful and good to live in, and then the ice came down over it.’
The people were restless, their eyes evasive and gloomy, and they sighed, and wanted to leave.
Juba said, ‘Mara is concerned for us all. She wants us to leave Chelops.’
‘Where to?’…‘When?’…‘How, move?’ – came from various people
‘North. Move North now before you have to. Up there they say there is water and plenty of food.’
But it was too much for them, even those who knew what Mara thought, and had heard her pleas before, and they were leaving the room, not looking at her, exchanging little smiles.
Dann said to Mara, as if they were alone and all the others irrelevant, that she must be awake very early, and he would come to pack with her. He apparently did not notice that the Kin ignored him as they left. Only Orphne embraced him, told him to be careful and remember that poppy did not suit him.
Meryx and Mara did not sleep.
While Mara and Dann packed their sacks, Meryx watched. He was pale and seemed ill.
Into the very bottom of Mara’s sack went the ancient robes she and Meryx had worn last night: ‘wedding robes’ – she said she would remember them like that. Then the one brown garment they had left. A green house dress and a blue one: Meryx would not let her leave them behind. Light shoes. Trousers and tunic – Meryx’s – that she had been wearing outside. A clean slave’s robe. Matches. Soap. A comb. Salt. Flaps of flat bread. Dried fruit. A small skin of water, in case she and Dann were separated.
In Dann’s sack was a spare slave’s robe. Loin cloths. The same provisions. The top of his sack was filled with the old can, which held clean water from a good well. The robe he wore was the one he had arrived in, and he said it was a good thing it was stained and old. He had his eleven gold coins pushed well down into the bottom of his knife pocket. Mara too had on the robe she had come in. Orphne had sewn into it a new knife pocket: she had wept doing it. In that was a knife in a leather sheath. Mara had on her head a little woollen cap.
Meryx said angrily that if he had met her like this in the fields, he would have ordered her never to wear that disgraceful old rag again. His voice was thick with tears.
A message came from Candace that she wanted to see Mara before she left.
Mara found her staring at the map whose upper parts were all white – the Ice.
Candace said, ‘Mara, you are an obstinate woman. And you don’t seem to realise you have put me in a position where I must either keep you here by force or let you go off into such terrible dangers.’
Mara was silent. She saw, to her surprise, that Candace was not far off tears. She was thinking, Then I suppose she does care for me.
‘And you are unfeeling. You don’t mind that Meryx will be unhappy and that we shall miss you.’
‘I know that I shall be thinking of you all.’
Candace’s laugh was a sad little sound. ‘You may think of us, because you know us and how we live. But we will not be able to think about you – where will you be? And how will you be?’
And now she was weeping. Mara dared to approach her, and take her in her arms. A frail thing, she was, this formidable old woman, who ruled her tribe with such authority.
‘It is a terrible thing,’ whispered Candace, ‘you can’t imagine how terrible, watching your family get less, slowly disappear.’ She recovered herself, pushed Mara away and said, very bitter, very angry, ‘People risked their lives for you. Gorda – the others. The two precious children…And you don’t care about that.’ And on her face was clear to see how her words, her thoughts, were betrayed by what she was seeing: Mara in her travelling clothes, and Dann, as she thought of him.
‘Well,’ said Mara, ‘no one has yet explained why we are so precious. And who thinks so? – you do.’ She knew this was brutal: Candace’s face showed it. ‘You are the Hadrons’ slaves. And whatever Dann and I were once – then all that is under the sand in Rustam. And if we are so precious, then the important thing is that we survive. And we are not going to agree about that, Candace, are we?’
Candace sat silent. The distance between them was very great. Mara thought wildly that she should again put her arms around the old woman, to make up for what she had said; but what she saw on Candace’s face was too bad to be softened by hugs, kisses – even tears.
Candace reached out for a leather bag that lay near on a table. She gave it to Mara. It had in it some light coins, easy to change. Candace said, ‘And now go. And if you know of someone coming our way, send news of yourself, tell us how you are.’
Mara said, ‘Candace, no one travels south, no one. Don’t you understand?’
On the verandah Meryx and Mara stood in each other’s arms, feeling how the wet of their tears tried to glue their cheeks together, and not knowing if the trembling was their own or the other’s. Dann leaned against a pillar and looked out into the early light: the sun was rising behind the house and throwing great shadows westwards.
Yesterday Dann had gone to find the depot where Felice, who had brought them to the cliff above Chelops, was to be found – or they hoped she was, for there were rumours she was leaving Chelops to go North. Mara let Dann go alone: she did not dare to be seen by the Hadrons, who must know by now that she had told them a lie
, and would be looking out for her, to take her for their harem.
Dann had found Felice working on her machine. ‘It’s you,’ she said. ‘So you don’t like being a slave. And the other one, your sister?’ Because of his surprise she said, ‘Not many secrets now in Chelops – not enough people left to absorb secrets. But I must confess it took me some time to connect that poor little lad with the new boss woman in the Mahondi quarter.’
‘We want to go North. How much?’
‘How far?’
‘The River Towns.’
‘If you stop there you’ll have to move on again. They aren’t doing too well either. You’ll see for yourself, because I have to make a landing to refuel. If you give me two gold coins for each of you I’ll take you to where you can get on to the big river. You can go a good long way on that. But you’ll have to be here just after sunrise tomorrow.’
Dann agreed.
‘This is my last trip. There’s nothing for me here, and Majab is finished.’
When he returned to tell Mara, she said, ‘When Felice picked us up – when she landed on the road because she saw us down there – it was because her orders were to collect any stray travellers, by themselves, and tell them some lie, and then take them to the Hadrons. Why do you think she won’t cheat us now?’
‘Four gold coins,’ said Dann. ‘Besides, she didn’t cheat us last time.’
‘She might take the four and sell us to somebody else.’
‘But she didn’t bring us right into Chelops, did she? And she told us to avoid it. She warned us.’
‘We don’t have any choice, I suppose.’
9
In the running chair, Mara held her sack, Dann his, and each clutched two coins. Their knives lay beside them on the seat.
They reached the depot as the sun did. Felice was standing in a pose that surprised them, because she was rigid, staring at something on the ground, as if she had seen a snake and was afraid a movement might provoke it to strike. Mara was thinking, When I first saw Felice she seemed to me a wonder in her blue working suit, with her clean face and nice hair. But now compared with the Mahondi women she seems shabby and tired. Then she saw what Felice was staring at but could not at first understand.
Under the skimmer and around it were a dozen or so yellow balls, the size of sour fruits, or Mara’s fist, and they glistened and were fresh and without dust, because they were inside a webbing or net of thick slime, like saliva. They were vital and alive, these balls: they seemed to pulse, and as the three watched, one cracked open and out crawled a pincer beetle, and it sat in the mess of its egg and slime resting from the effort of getting out. These were eggs, the eggs of a pincer beetle. And then they saw the beetle itself, half concealed by a wheel of the skimmer, its yellow body, the colour of its eggs, vibrating as out of its back end emerged slowly, one by one, more of its eggs. The great black pincers, the size of its body, stretched in front of it, and its black eyes stared at the three. The newly hatched beetle was crawling up a wheel; other eggs were cracking open, and a swarm of baby beetles were struggling free of the slime. Another reached a wheel.
‘Quick,’ said Felice and, straddling the mess of eggs and new beetles, pulled herself up into the machine, and then hauled first Mara and then Dann in by the other door. Felice started the engine and the machine rolled away from the beetle and her progeny. The creature was still laying eggs and, unable to attack this machine, was clacking her pincers like knives, in warning.
Half a dozen soldiers came in sight, and when they saw the machine, began to run towards it.
‘They don’t want to let you go,’ said Felice, shouting over her shoulder at them. The machine rose out of reach of the soldiers, who went to the beetle, to attack it with clubs and knives. One slipped in the slime, and vomited, with disgust. Meanwhile the beetle, with incredible speed, had scuttled off and disappeared behind houses. And then the machine had risen too high for the three to see more than that there were soldiers standing gazing up after them. Felice slid back a shutter in the floor of the machine and peered down at the wheels: where were the beetles that had climbed up? Two were there, obstinately clinging to a wheel with their six claw-like legs. ‘They’ll be blown off,’ said Felice, and slid back the shutter.
They were flying low along the big road north, which shone below them like water. It was empty, but beside it on a parallel dust track were groups of travellers, hundreds of them. From up here it was easy to see that Chelops was dying. Over in the east were little dots in the fields and streets that meant people were about, but the central areas seemed deserted. The reservoirs were low, and did not shine, because there was dust on the water. And now there was the Kin’s central house, just visible, a tiny thing, and in the courtyard they were assembling for the early meal, and perhaps missing her. It seemed to Mara that her heart was all a bruise, a painfulness, that was making it hard for her to breathe. She sighed, she suffered, and yet her eyes were dry. She thought that quite soon the Kin, and Meryx, and all the loving and the kindness, all that would seem a dream and her heart would become cold again.
Soon Chelops’ Towers were a little black hand of sticking up fingers, and then they, and the town, and the eastern fields – the Kin, Meryx – had gone; and not long after that they were leaving Hadron the country, because the big road was ending, and now they were flying over scrubby bushland.
Dann opened the floor shutter, and exclaimed that the beetles had fallen off: they could see a tiny speck falling into the scrub. Mara was wondering how the Kin, and the Hadrons, would deal with an invasion of these creatures, whose pincers could sever a limb or cut a child in half…But she felt she couldn’t bear it, those monstrous beasts anywhere near the Kin: it was as if those giant pincers threatened her own heart, but it was all too bad to think about. She knew her feelings were becoming numbed, and she was glad.
An hour of flying over scrub and semi-desert, and scrub again, and the yellowish brown became infused with green, and below was a little, thin river, edged with bright green. There was a town ahead, and Felice said she must stop here for the sugar-oil fuel, and they must stay in the machine and remain calm. This town had people in it who all looked alike, and the first time you saw them it was a shock, and sometimes there were hysterics and even panic. ‘But it won’t be the first time for us,’ shouted Mara, remembering how that band of people, all alike, had come to the Rock Village, and how Dann had scared them away because of his fascinated, horrified staring.
‘Do you remember?’ she urgently shouted at Dann. ‘Their faces – exactly the same.’
Dann smiled, and took her hands, and said, ‘Mara, you worry about me too much. Thank you, but it’s all right. I’ve seen these people when I was travelling, when I was away from you. I saw a whole town of them, in the East.’
This was certainly not little Dann speaking, and Mara felt her heart ease and the worry lift.
The machine landed in a big square. At once a heavy, warm air enveloped them, and they felt the sweat start all over their bodies. Felice took cans from beside her, and said again, ‘Don’t get out.’ She walked quickly off, ignoring the people who were crowding in to see the machine.
They were the same as Mara remembered: large, solid, heavy…But no, their eyes were different, not pale but brownish. Their skins were not greyish but dull brown. Their hair was not a mass of light frizz but a mass of brownish frizz. Their faces were all the same, with lumpy noses and low foreheads made lower because of the frizzy bush above. Their clothes were all of the same colour: it seemed that these creatures had been dipped into the same dye tub, fully dressed, so that everything was an ugly, lightless brown.
Dann took her hand. ‘They are stupid,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t do anything to surprise them. I think they have only one mind between them. They are like animals.’
It was like being surrounded by animals that were being drawn into a centre by curiosity: wary, ready to take fright and break away in a run. Those staring faces, those eyes! – an
d how did they tell each other apart? What could it be like, being one of a people exactly alike, every tiny detail the same, so that you turned your gaze from one face to the next, but it was as if you were still staring at the first? They were coming in slowly from everywhere, all the surrounding streets and lanes, a big crowd of them, and the skimmer seemed a frail thing in the middle of that crush and press. What big, solid people they were, and their hands so big, and their bare feet splayed out into the dust on great pads of flesh, and their toes continually curling and moving like an insect’s antennae sensing the air. One lifted an enormous hand and felt Mara’s hair. ‘Careful,’ she heard from Dann. ‘Don’t move.’ Another poked her cheek. Was this one a man? Were they male, all of them? They seemed so. On the other side of the machine one was peering into the empty seat beside the pilot’s, and was trying the handle, but the door was locked. The machine began to rock. Feeling it rock, they all put their hands to it and pushed; both sides pushed. They were not co-ordinating, and so for a moment the machine shook and seemed to jump about, but was not in danger of falling over. And then Dann let out a shout of alarm, which caused the creatures to jump back and glare, mouthing and muttering. One of the pincer beetles had survived the flight, and was trying to scuttle away from the machine between the big feet towards the houses. Dann shouted, ‘Kill it, kill it,’ but they were slow in turning, and then in seeing it; and then they turned to stare at him, not understanding; and then, at last understanding, went after it, all jostling together like a herd of beasts. Then, having lost it, because it scuttled away somewhere, they were slow in turning and resuming their slow pressure in on the machine. Felice appeared, running, with a can in each hand, shouting to scare them away so she could pass, and when a gap appeared as they turned to stare, she jumped in and at once started the machine, and it began to rise. As it did, the enormous hands were reaching up to bring it down, and could have done, had they been a moment sooner. The skimmer flew off, and the three looked down at those upturned dull faces, a multitudinous unity, a nightmare.
Mara and Dann Page 27
