Down to a Sunless Sea

27 Expelled from Eden

The voyage was a dreamlike thing, and ever after they found it difficult to recall aught that occurred during this time. The silent children gave them food and drink; at intervals they slept; when rested, they woke. The children did not address them and left them strictly to themselves.

After a time, the jewel-strewn shore came into view on the horizon, but whether they had been brought back to the same place or not they could not at once discern.

They were put ashore, and the bodies of Suoli and Agila went with them. As he was about to leave the ship, Brant turned and his gaze sought out the face of the boy.

“Kirin,” he said awkwardly, but he said no more. For tears welled into the amber eyes of the lad and fell slowly, one by one, down his cheeks. Brant bowed his head and turned away and left.

Once they were all ashore, the ship was turned about and began the voyage back to Zhah. Brant felt a pang go through him as it receded into the haze of the distance.

Will Harbin stood beside him, and they both gazed, rather wistfully, as the ship vanished.

“Can we ever return here again?” murmured the scientist. “The knowledge we could gain, the wisdom, the value to science—!”

Brant said nothing. They both knew that this Eden was forbidden to them, and to all men from the surface world forever. They did not need the vision of the angel with the flaming sword to tell them they were expelled from Eden… .

“You have your memories, your notes,” Brant said, almost roughly. The old scientist screwed up his face into a rueful expression.

“I do, Jim; but who would ever believe the story, even if he heard it from our own lips?”

Zuarra came toward them, excitement in her face.

“They have returned us to the very place where they found us,” she informed them breathlessly. “See? There—our gear and garments—and there! The strange forest where we fed.”

She was right, of course. The fungus forest stood as it had always stood, and Brant could even spot the growth from which they had first eaten. Everything was as it had been then … the azure moss, with its tiny white star-flowers, the nodding fungi in their rich and varied hues … but everything was different.

The weird underground cavern-world had turned against them as swiftly as it had once warmly and innocently welcomed them. And they must soon begone from this enchanted place where they were no longer wanted.

But first there was a grim and melancholy duty to be performed. From his gear, Brant removed an entrenching tool and began to dig the twin graves. When he was winded, one of Tuan’s warriors replaced him. They dug the graves shallowly enough, for there were no wolves in this faerie world, no predators who would disturb the peaceful slumbers of the dead.

And they laid to rest Agila and Suoli, wrapped in each other’s arms, under the azure moss.

No words were spoken over the dead, for the Martian natives have little in the way of religious ceremonies, as Earthsiders understand the term. If, any of them prayed to the Timeless Ones to watch over the slumber of the twain, it was silently and inwardly.

Brant and Zuarra stood side by side, hand clasped in hand, as Tuan’s men laid the mossy sod over the dual grave. He stole a sidewise glance at her, and found her face stony and devoid of any expression. Neither were there any tears in her eyes.

She had said her farewells to Suoli long ago, he guessed or knew… .

They had buried them without the guns. Those now hung heavy in the hands of Tuan.

The outlaw chief saw that Brant had noticed that he had taken up the power guns that he had once thieved from Brant. Now, his face proud, he approached the Earthsider, who stood easy, empty hands at his side, waiting for whatever might come.

“The truce that was between the people of Brant and the people of Tuan was to last only so long as both were the prisoners of the Sea People,” Tuan reminded him softly. Brant nodded.

“I remember.”

“It was only right,” said Tuan. “Then we were few among very many, outnumbered and alone.”

“I know,” said Brant levelly.

Suddenly, Tuan did an amazing thing. He extended both hands to Brant, offering the power guns hilt forward. Brant refused to let his surprise show in his face. He accepted the weapons without changing expression, but in his heart he knew. When a warrior of Mars offers a weapon to one of the Hated Ones, it is a gesture of brotherhood, not of friendship: a gesture that means even more than the sharing of water.

Meeting Tuan’s eyes squarely, he replaced the guns in their worn holsters.

“He who stole the treasure of my ancestors from me has gone down to death, and paid the expiation for his crime,” said Tuan. “Those who were his companions, who remain, are innocent of wrongdoing, for they knew him not at that time, neither did they learn of his crime until later. So be it.”

Brant nodded silently. Tuan wet his lips.

“They have been through much together, Tuan and Brant,” he declared. “Side by side, they have looked upon wonders such as no man would believe. And never has the one betrayed the other, even when death threatened them all. True has been the trust which Tuan placed in Brant, and truly has that trust been returned. Is it not so?”

“It is so,” answered Brant softly.

Tuan grinned. “Then let the truce continue—forever, if needs must! Never shall we be foes again: comrades, if it comes to that—”

“And friends, anyway, if it doesn’t,” remarked Brant.

They smiled at each other. It was not a Martian custom to shake hands, but the touch was there in their linked eyes.

Tuan turned away, clearing his throat noisily.

“Then let us begone from this place that welcomes us no more,” he said gruffly.

Securing their garments and their gear, they found the entrance to the stair again, and paused thereupon for a time, looking off over the strange vista of this weird world, which had become so familiar to them in so brief a span of time.

Zuarra fingered something in the pocket of her robes. She withdrew it and opened her fingers to show Brant the glimmering and jewel-like stone she had taken up from the shores of the luminous sea during the first hours they had spent here in the world of Zhah.

“Zuarra knows in her heart that we are forbidden this place ever again,” she said sadly. “But—O, Brant, must I give this stone back to the shores of the sea?”

Brant put his arm around her and grinned down into her wistful, upturned face.

“I think a souvenir is permitted to us,” he said gently. The Martian woman said nothing. She replaced the smooth, richly colored gemstone in its pocket, and her expression was radiant.

They stood and gazed for one last time upon the sloping sward of indigo moss, upon the fantastic fungus-forest, and upon the old, gentle hills that hid from their view the luminous waters of the Last Ocean.

Then they turned and began to ascend the stony stair.