Seahorse in the Sky

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

IT WAS EARLY in the afternoon, but though the sun was still high in a fleecy sky there seemed to be an unusual touch of coldness in the air. Or perhaps it was not in the air, thought Russell, shivering slightly.

Perhaps it was something inside him—the coldness of fear.

He looked at Anna, sitting by his side in the boat, paddling away with apparent unconcern. He thought she looked beautiful. He had not realized before just how beautiful she was. But then, he reflected, one takes so many things for granted until one is aware of the nearness of death.

Anna Markova’s long dark hair was tied carelessly with a piece of string behind her head. She was wearing little but an open shirt and a pair of tattered trousers. All the warm clothing had been stacked neatly in the small, detachable and now insulated cabin that Tore Norstedt had made before he died.

On top of the cabin, mounted neatly on a wooden rack, were three pairs of wooden wheels and two long shafts with a rope harness. These had been made by John Howard so that the boat could be converted into a miniature wagon for overland travelling. If, indeed, thought Russell grimly, the need for travelling overland should ever be realized. For, now that the journey of exploration had begun, his optimism had drained away; and he was convinced that it would end in disaster.

The cabin stood amidships—if that was not too grand a term—separating the bench on which Russell and Anna sat from the bench near the bow occupied by Farn zem Marur.

Farn was adept at paddling Indian fashion; and his blade tirelessly chopped at the water on alternate sides. Fortunately, very little effort was required to keep the heavily laden boat moving since it was travelling downstream. The paddles were useful chiefly to keep the boat clear of the banks and the occasional midstream obstacles. In places the lazily rippling ribbon of water was no more than seven or eight metres wide; but here and there it expanded into broad, slow-moving shallows. And there were times, even, despite the shallow draught of the boat, when it lightly scraped the bottom.

Looking at the sturdy shoulders and efficient movements of Farn zem Marur, Russell was glad that Absu had allowed his pathfinder to come on the journey. Absu himself had not volunteered because he believed that his first duty lay in looking after his sept. For this reason also, he disapproved of Russell taking part in the exploration. But he had kept his disapproval to himself, reflecting that the ways of the magicians were not as the ways of normal people.

Originally, Russell had wanted to bring Mohan das Gupta with him. But Anna had talked him out of the idea. If for any reason the expedition ended in disaster, she had pointed out, there would be a serious unbalance of the sexes at the Erewhon Hilton. Two men, Gunnar Rudefors and Tore Norstedt, had already died; and though Marina Jessop had committed suicide, the possible loss of another two men might eventually create complications that could destroy what was left of the small group—to say nothing of seriously weakening their defensive power.

Since Russell himself was determined to go—being convinced that, in the event of his non-return, John Howard as his official deputy would handle matters just as well, if not better—Anna maintained that she was the logical choice of companion. Certainly, in many respects Anna Markova was as good and as practical as a man; but he realized that he had accepted her argument for purely selfish reasons. He bad wanted her to come. Now, although he was still selfishly glad that they were together, he bitterly regretted his weakness. He would prefer to have her relatively safe with the others.

During his absence, however long that might be, Absu had promised to maintain regular contact with John Howard. In the event of trouble, they had agreed that the sept Marur would move into the Erewhon Hilton or the terrestrials into the Keep Marur as the situation dictated.

Russell did not have the slightest notion what kind of danger might necessitate such a joining up, but it had seemed a good idea to indulge in some contingency planning. After all, the entire situation was grotesque; and should one really be surprised if the nocturnal spider robots took it into their transistors to run amok, or if the ‘fairies’ that had been seen but not contacted should suddenly descend on the occupants of the zoo with sinister intent?

He looked at Anna once more and saw that she was smiling at him. He put the fear behind him and returned her smile. Gloom could be infectious. What was needed was light-hearted confidence—Gentlemen in England now abed, and all that rot.

Anna stopped paddling for a moment, and kissed his ear. Then she whispered: “I am glad we are together, Russell, but I am still very much afraid… Are you afraid, too?”

He wiped the sweat—cold sweat—from his forehead and touched her shoulder affectionately, “Do you really expect an old-fashioned Englishman to admit to an emancipated Russian woman that he’s frightened?”

“If it is the truth.”

“My dear,” he said lightly. “You must allow me the privilege of a certain quaint hypocrisy. A gentleman never does his nut in the presence of a lady.”

Anna laughed. “Already, you make me feel better. It is strange, the effect of a few words.”

“Strange, indeed,” agreed Russell. “You remember what it was like when we passed under the bridge of huts? Everyone was shouting and dancing about, and for a few terrible moments I thought Ireg and Ora had not managed to persuade the People of the River that we were friendly—or else that Ireg had decided he could get along quite well without friendship.”

“It was terrifying,” said Anna. “It seems so long ago, but I suppose it is only about three or four hours.”

“Less, I think,” said Russell. “I was beginning to believe we would end up in a Stone Age cooking pot, especially when Ireg pushed off from the bank in his dugout canoe and came at us jabbering away and brandishing his best hunting axe.”

Anna smiled. “All he did was throw it into the boat.”

“That was the point. Do you remember what he said? He said: ‘Ireg give Russell-friend good big thing. Stone little thing but carry good big thing. Hold hard, Russell-friend. Go quick. Come quick. Then Ireg-friend Russell-friend laugh hurt, eat hurt.’”

Anna started to paddle once more. “That was a big speech for Ireg. Perhaps the biggest he has ever made.”

Russell picked up the stone axe from the bottom of the boat and held it wonderingly. “I don’t really know why,” he said, “but it made me feel rather proud… I suppose it is something to have established friendship with a man like Ireg.”

The boat had reached a broad patch of the river. The banks were low and sandy; and on either side the green, treeless plain stretched far into the distance. The character of the country had changed. The high savannah grass and the patches of forest had been left behind. The short smooth grasses that covered the land seemed so even that they might recently have been cut.

Far away, Russell spied a herd of grazing animals. He took the binoculars out of the cabin and inspected them more closely. But for the single horns set centrally on their heads, it would have been easy to mistake them for young domestic bulls. It occurred to him then that he had really seen very little of the indigenous wild life—if, indeed, these creatures were indigenous—on the world that had come to be called Erewhon. Apart from the pulpuls imported for the benefit of the occupants of Keep Marur, the wild creatures seemed to be concentrated in the forests near the camp of the People of the River. But perhaps even those creatures had been imported for the benefit of Ireg and company, who were natural hunters. So quite possibly these creatures grazing in the distance might have been brought for the benefit of yet another group.

There were so many questions to be answered. So many curious occurrences to be explained. So much to know! Absently, Russell stroked the small bump on the back of his head—all that remained of the miraculous operation that presumably enabled everyone to communicate with each other directly.

Strange, too, how everyone was adapting to their new environments and learning to accept the miraculous, the crazy, the grotesque and the absurd. Perhaps it all really was some strange, prolonged dream. Perhaps Anna, apparently real and living in the day and deliciously warm and exciting at night, was no more than a vivid projection of his mind—an illusion of life, breathing and pulsing nowhere except in his sleeping brain. Perhaps Absu, Keep Marur, pulpuls, Stone Age people, spider robots and all were fantasies—figments of an insane or a dying dream. Perhaps the jet from Stockholm to London had crashed; and even now Russell Grahame, M.P., was under the surgeon’s knife, hanging between life and death, shielded from the pain of the scalpel by anaesthetics and a nightmare of his own creation. Perhaps…

“Lord Russell,” said Farn zem Marur, breaking the reverie, “I think that we are no more than a few varaks—perhaps eight or nine—from the wall of mist. Would it not be well to rest, to eat and to refresh ourselves before we hazard our bodies against the coldness of the barrier?”

“A wise thought, pathfinder. Let us pull into the bank and prepare ourselves. We must also take the warm clothing out of the cabin and have it ready to put on.”

As he spoke, Russell thought of the comparative temperature readings that John Howard had made a few days before far to the north. According to John’s calculations, the mist barrier was probably no more than fifty metres thick. But the calculations, as John had pointed out, were no more than flimsy guesswork, since there were no means of knowing how low the temperature of the mist fell in its centre.

For reasons which Russell could not clearly understand, John had worked on the assumption that the temperature would not fall more than fifty degrees below zero. On that basis, he estimated that the heat reduction of the river, as it emerged from the mist barrier into the zoo indicated a minimum thickness of thirty metres and a maximum thickness of about fifty. But he could be wrong, terribly wrong. And if he were, there would soon be three hard frozen bodies as the price of his error.

While Farn zem Marur steered the small boat in towards the left-hand bank of the river, Russell looked through his binoculars once more across the treeless plain. There, in the distance, to the planetary south, a curved white wall seemed to rise up to merge in places with low-lying cloud. It was difficult to estimate the height, but Russell guessed that the mist barrier must be at least two hundred metres and perhaps even as much as four hundred metres high.

If it were so high, it was unlikely that the wall of mist would be only fifty metres in thickness. His heart sank, and the coldness inside him became more intense.

He did not point out the mist barrier to Anna and Farn zem Marur. He did not need to. Even without the binoculars they had already noticed the distant white wall that marked the boundary of their prison.