Seahorse in the Sky

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IT TOOK SEVERAL days before Absu mes Marur’s wounds were sufficiently healed for him to be able to walk once more. During that time, he and Russell Grahame learned a great deal about each other and about the quite different worlds from which each of them came. In this respect, Grahame had the considerable advantage of having been reared in a technological and emotionally sophisticated society. He was able to grasp ideas and concepts that were far beyond the mind of one whose culture was roughly similar—as Grahame had surmised—to that of the European Dark Ages.

The one thing that continued to surprise Russell Grahame and his companions was that Absu was indisputably human. Familiar though he was with the beginnings of space exploration and the preparations for interplanetary travel that were already being carried out on Earth, Grahame had never given much thought to its breathtaking possibilities. He had imagined that such journeyings must of necessity be confined to the solar system, since the gaps between the stars were too vast to be spanned effectively by ‘conventional’ modes of travel.

But he and his companions had received by their own experience dramatic confirmation that long star voyages were not only possible but could be accomplished with relative ease. However, because the terrestrials had been unconscious, presumably, during their abduction, there was no way of knowing the subjective time that had been needed to transport them to Erewhon. They could have been in their plastic coffins—possibly under some kind of suspended animation—for minutes or centuries. Perhaps one day their captors—if, indeed, they ever revealed themselves—might explain the mechanics as well as the purpose of the abduction. But, for the time being, all was wild speculation.

It became clear, though, after some discussion, that the terrestrials were not alone in their bafflement or in their isolation from the world they had known. Absu mes Marur and fifteen companions had arrived on Erewhon in a similar fashion. The only difference was that they had not been taken from an airborne transport but from an earth-bound caravan consisting of merchants, warriors, women and pack-beasts transporting the precious red spice of the Kingdom of Ullos to the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Gren Li.

That these kingdoms, as Absu described them, could not exist on any planet of the solar system, Grahame was absolutely certain. He knew enough about the solar system to realize that only Earth, the third planet, was naturally favourable to the evolution of human life.

Yet Absu mes Marur, whose planet of origin must therefore belong to an alien star, was undeniably human. On Earth he might have passed as the result of mixing African and Asian blood. But he was not of Earth nor even of the Sun’s family. Yet he was human. And, as time passed, Grahame began to entertain the equally baffling notion that Absu mes Marur and his kind would turn out to be genetically compatible with the men and women of Earth.

He thought grimly of Anna Markova’s light-hearted threat that she would bear his children. If things did not go well in this, fantastic situation that was developing—or, indeed, if things went too well—poor Anna and the other women in the group might find that they would be faced with the possibility of bearing—in every sense of the word—far more than they could at present imagine.

In the matter of his origin, Absu was not a great deal of help. Despite his initial horror and humiliation—inspired, no doubt, by strange tabus or attitudes—he came to trust Grahame, and even to accept his friendship.

“Let us talk, Absu,” said Grahame one morning when the knight was well enough to sit up and concentrate. “I think we have much to discuss.”

“I am willing to talk with the lord Grahame,” returned Absu evenly, “if the lord Grahame will declare with hands on head and heart, swearing by the sacred robe, that there is nothing of deceit or treachery in his words.”

Feeling somewhat foolish, Grahame placed one hand on his forehead and one on his chest. “Like this?”

Absu mes Marur nodded. “Such is the custom.”

“I swear,” said Grahame solemnly, “by the sacred robe that there is nothing of deceit or treachery in what I have to say. I swear also that neither I nor my companions have any enmity towards the lord Absu mes Marur or his people.”

“The lord Grahame is generous in his oath.”

“Russell is my first name and I understand that Absu is your first name. Is it proper for us to use these names to each other?”

“Only if we have made the bond.”

“How can we make this bond?”

Absu mes Marur smiled. “With a sword or a lance or a poniard at each other’s throats. Between sept lords it should properly be swords.”

“I have no sword, but I wish to make the bond.” He glanced at the weapon that had not left Absu’s bedside since he had placed it there. “May we not manage with one sword only?”

“It has been known,” conceded the knight, “but chiefly on the field of battle.”

“My friend,” said Grahame without humour, “I think we may regard ourselves as being, in this place, on the field of battle.”

“So be it,” said the knight. “Let us then draw blood.”

With a surprisingly agile movement for one who was injured and lying in bed, Absu mes Marur gripped his sword, leaned forward and pressed the point lightly into Grahame’s throat.

Grahame felt a thin trickle of blood running down his neck. He gazed along a metre of razor sharp metal into the fierce eyes of a man who could end his life by a slight jerk of the wrist. He did not move.

Absu mes Marur growled. “Here is one whom I cannot kill. Here is one upon whom I may turn my back. Here is one in whose presence I may sleep. Here is one with whom my women may speak. If I forget these things, may a shameful death remind me. Thus, by the robe, it shall be.”

He put down the sword and gestured to Grahame to take it.

Grahame held it gingerly. He did not trust himself with it. He was afraid to place it too near Absu’s neck.

“Draw blood!” snapped the knight. Seeing that Grahame was reluctant, he pushed his throat on to the tip of the blade, and a thin stream of blood began to flow. “Now repeat the bond!”

Looking along the blade into the eyes of his companion, he spoke the words. Oddly, he found them very moving. They were, after all, a most powerful incantation. For they could stop men killing each other.

When he had finished, he placed the sword by Absu’s side.

“This means that we no longer need to fight each other?” he asked.

“It means that we must never meet in combat.”

“Good. To your custom, Absu, let us add one from my country.” He held out a hand and showed Absu mes Marur how to clasp it and shake it. “I give you my hand in friendship… Now, if you are not too tired, I will tell you about my own country and how I and my companions were brought to this place. When I have done so, you shall tell me about yourself.”

In as simple a way as possible, he tried to describe the technological civilization of the industrialized countries of Earth. But when he spoke of flying machines, of machines that could cover great distances rapidly on land or sea and of machines for communicating at a distance, he saw that Absu’s understanding and credulity were at breaking point. Hastily, he concluded with a description of their arrival on Erewhon in the plastic coffins and of their attempts at exploration.

“You are, then, a race of magicians?” Absu regarded him mistrustfully.

“No, Absu, we are not magicians. I think the main difference between us is that my people have had longer to work metals than your people. And the clever men among us discovered how to make machines that would do much of the work of men and beasts… Now let me hear your story. There will be time enough for us both to think about these things.”

So it was that Grahame, his head aching because Absu naively assumed much background knowledge on his part, learned of the fateful red spice caravan travelling from the Kingdom of Ullos to the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Gren Li. Absu had been in command of the whole entourage, which consisted of some thirty warriors, nine or ten merchants, about fifteen women and more than thirty pulpuls—a sort of mixture of deer and horse—carrying spice and other goods. Absu had no idea how or when the attack, as he chose to define it, had taken place. In this respect, his memories and those of his companions were just as hazy as the recollections of the terrestrials. All that he knew for certain was that the caravan had been five days out of Ullos and was making its way across the high and extensive mountain range that separated Ullos from the Upper and Lower Kingdoms.

The manner of their arrival on Erewhon was much the same as that of the terrestrials except that instead of an hotel there was a stout wooden keep and instead of a supermarket there was a herd of pulpuls. The curious thing was that Absu had received his injuries in the same way that Gunnar had met his death—quite possibly, even in the same pit.

Fortunately, on his exploratory jaunt, Absu had been riding a pulpul, which had taken the brunt of the fall and had impaled itself on the sharpened stakes. Ironically, most of Absu’s wounds were caused by the pulpul in its death throes. He evidently became unconscious for a time, but in the end he managed to stand on the remains of the pulpul and haul himself out of the pit.

Being half out of his mind with pain and shock, he had tried to find his way back to the safety of the keep only to wind up in a place that seemed, as he put it, to have been fashioned in the country of the dead.

The white faces of the people he met—it appeared he had not noticed Selene—only served to confirm his first impression that he was among demons or ghosts.

“You are not among magicians or demons or ghosts,” said Grahame, when he had finished his account. “You are among people like yourselves, Absu. It is true that our skins are paler—though some of our people are also dark—and that we are taller and live in different ways. But we, also, are men and women. Like you we have been taken from our own world and placed—”

“From your own world?” interrupted Absu. “You mean, do you not, from your own country?”

“No, from our own world.”

Absu mes Marur laughed. There was a look of relief upon his face. “So you magicians do not know everything,” he observed jovially. “Know, friend Russell, that there is only one world. It is at the centre of all things, and the sun is its lantern… You have already spoken some nonsense of a world beyond the stars and on the far side of the sun. But such cannot exist; for Earth is as it always was—the play-board of the gods.”

Grahame was confounded for a moment. “You speak of Earth?”

“I speak of Earth, this stage whereon our games are played, where we were born and where we must die. It is the only place, Russell, where men can live. It is the only place in all the strange abundance that the gods have created.”

Grahame gazed at him in perplexity. “What shape do you think this earth is?”

Again Absu laughed. “So much for the great machines and the great wisdom of you magicians.

Truly, you must live near to the rim and so to outer darkness… Even children know the shape of the Earth.

It is flat and round like a platter and very great are its dimensions. It is, doubtless, filled with many countries and many strange peoples with strange customs. But both your race and mine, Russell, belong to this Earth.

We are its children.”

“Then tell me,” said Russell helplessly, “what would happen if a man were to journey to the very end of the world?”

“He would fall off,” said Absu. “He would fall into darkness and be seen no more by his fellows.

Such is the punishment of folly.”

“Absu, my friend,” said Russell with a sigh. “I fear that both of us have much to learn.”