Seahorse in the Sky

CHAPTER SIX

RUSSELL GRAHAME SAT on his bed in his own room late at night, brooding upon the deaths of two of his companions in three days. He had brought a half bottle of whisky up with him and was proceeding to demolish it systematically. Solitary drinking had never appealed to him before. It did not appeal to him now.

He was leaning on the whisky as a man with a broken leg might lean on a crutch.

At the rate he had been drinking it during the last few days, he told himself, he stood a fair chance of breaking all speed records for becoming an alcoholic. It was a good job the invisible replenishers kept topping up supplies. Though how they did it was a complete mystery. He had arranged for a night watch to be kept on the supermarket, but no one had detected any visitation. Yet, every morning, whatever had been taken out on the previous day was restored. It was a hell of a mystery. But then what was one bloody mystery among so many?

He felt desperately lonely. There were obvious reasons for that. Perhaps it would not have been so bad, though, if he had not been so damned egotistically public-spirited as to accept leadership and with it the concomitant of responsibility. People looked at him and asked him things as if he was supposed to know all the bleeding answers.

Hell, he didn’t even know the right questions. A fine leader indeed!

He poured himself some more whisky.

Because he had accepted responsibility, he felt the loss of the British girl and the young Swede all the more keenly.

Salud, Marina! Salud, Gunnar! May your bones and spirits rest in peace on this alien world far from the green fields of Earth…

He tried to concentrate on the information that the survivors of the second expedition had brought back with them. It was more alarming even than the minority reports from the first expedition. For on the second journey, everyone agreed on what they had seen. And they had brought back instant photographs to prove it.

Apart from Gunnar’s death, the most disquieting event on the second expedition had been the discovery of other human beings—the People of the River, as they were now being called.

Simone, the young French artist, had been the first to spot them. They might easily have been missed, because the party was about twenty kilometres from ‘home’ and travelling on a course roughly parallel with the river, which was about two kilometres from them. Simone had chased after what she believed to be a large and gorgeous butterfly which she had evidently surprised as the party was travelling through heavily wooded country. The butterfly seemed to be moving rather slowly—almost, she suggested later, as if it were trying to lead her.

Perhaps it was. The party was already near the edge of the patch of forest, and the pursuit of the butterfly took her out into open country on a small rise, where she could look down slightly on the river. She promptly lost the butterfly. But, luckily, she was carrying the binoculars. Idly she used them to look at the river. What at first appeared to be a rough bridge turned out not to be a bridge when she focused carefully.

Or, rather, it was a bridge of rough huts built upon piles. Smoke was coming through roof holes. The occupants of the huts were evidently at home.

Sensibly, the exploration party approached the small colony of river dwellings very cautiously indeed. They did not go nearer than half a kilometre, and they conducted their investigation with the aid of the binoculars.

The river people—and there were several of them on the near bank—looked rough and shaggy and seemed to be clothed in animal skins. They looked for all the world, said John Howard, like refugees from the Stone Age. They had axes and clubs, apparently with stone heads, and spears with stone blades. They also had what seemed to be hollowed log canoes.

Wisely, John Howard decided not to investigate more closely—in case of accidents. He thought it was more important to bring the information they had already discovered back to base. However, he spent some time studying not only the People of the River with his binoculars but also the surrounding terrain. In the distance, on the far side of the river, he found what he could only describe as a high, unmoving wall of fog or mist. It seemed to be five or six kilometres away, and he judged that it must be at least a couple of hundred metres high.

The party retreated to the forest to camp for the night, which they spent with two people watching and two people resting for hourly spells. They heard some rather disturbing sounds of wild animals, but saw nothing. On the following day, it was not until they were no more than seven or eight kilometres from home that Gunnar Rudefors fell into the pit.

It was not a very big pit. But it had been cunningly placed in a barely distinguishable track—perhaps the watering route of some herd creatures—that the party must have been subconsciously following. The sharpened stakes killed him almost instantly. They had been arranged so that they would achieve minimum damage.

Gunnar was doubly unlucky. Unlucky that he was leading at the time and unlucky that he did not notice that the patch of grass ahead of him was curiously brown…

As he mulled over all that had happened since he had stepped out of his coffin and entered the hotel, Russell Grahame was acutely aware of his own inadequacy. Leader, indeed! He was not fit to lead a troop of Boy Scouts.

If he had had any sense, he would have kept people so busy that Marina would have been too tired to contemplate suicide. If he had had any sense, he would not have allowed exploration parties to venture forth until they had trained themselves very carefully. If he had had any sense…

Leader indeed! Decision maker indeed! By God, now was the time to jack it in before everybody got fed up and deposed him.

There was a knock at the door. It opened.

“May I come in?”

Anna Markova granted herself permission before he could reply.

“Hello, Anna.”

“Hello, Russell.”

Everyone was on Christian name terms now. There was no point in formality when you were stuck X light years from the nearest book on etiquette. And it was strange—very strange—how, with the gift of tongues, nationality no longer mattered.

Anna glanced at the whisky. “Do you like drinking alone?”

“No.”

She smiled. “Then you should offer me some.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude… Can you manage with a tooth glass, or shall I go down to the bar for another whisky glass?”

“The tooth glass will do, thank you.” She sat on his bed and bounced up and down a little. “This bed is more comfortable than mine, I think.”

“Complain to the management,” he suggested with the ghost of a smile. “Alternatively, I would be happy to change rooms with you.”

She changed the subject abruptly. “You are full of sorrow, Russell. It is natural to mourn the dead, but one should not do it alone. And this,” she glanced at the glass of whisky he had given her, “this will not help as much as you hope.”

“Amen,” he said, raising his own glass.

“Amen,” repeated Anna, drinking with him. “This is the first opportunity I have had of talking alone with you. I shall tell you what I think, and then you shall tell me what you think. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Well,” she went on, “it seems obvious that we are in a kind of zoo. On earth in the more modern zoos,” her eyes twinkled, “or, at least, in modern Russian zoos we try to ensure that the animals have surroundings that are as natural as possible. I think our captors have done this for us. That is why we have been given an hotel to live in, why we are able to get what we need from a supermarket or store, and why there are cars on the street.”

“The cars don’t work.”

“Naturally. There is nowhere for us to drive them. But our captors know that we are accustomed to these things, and so they have tried to make us feel at home.”

“Their solicitude would be more appreciated if they would return us home,” he remarked sombrely.

“They will not do that,” said Anna.

“Why not?”

“We are—or were—eight men and eight women.”

“So?”

She regarded him with sad amusement. “The implication is obvious, Russell. We have been brought here to breed… Do you not think so?”

He did not answer. Nor did he meet her gaze.

“I see you do think so. It is better to face facts, isn’t it? We have been brought here to breed. And if that is so, it is most unlikely that we shall ever be returned to earth.”

Now he looked at her, and was amazed by the calmness of her expression. “The thought does not terrify you?”

She shivered momentarily. “One must face it and accept it. Then life can go on. Life has to go on, Russell. What has happened is dreadful and wonderful. We cannot left it be pointless.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only that we shall breed. There are married people in our group, and already other liaisons are developing.” She laughed, rather grimly. “I do not think you will find any supplies of contraceptives in our obliging supermarket, Russell.”

Impulsively, he took her hand and held it. “Has it occurred to you, Anna, that these people or creatures, or whatever, have just picked us up as biologists collect specimens? That we may simply be experimental material to them and that when the experiment is over…” He stopped.

“They will have no further use for the specimens?”

Russell nodded.

“That is possible,” conceded Anna. “But I do not think it is probable. In any case, we must, act as if it were not so. Otherwise—otherwise life would be unbearable.”

“Is it not becoming so?”

“No.”

He laughed. “I think you must have a very resilient personality.”

“Perhaps. But it will only stay resilient if… Do you find me attractive, Russell?”

“I find you very attractive, Anna.”

“Do you have a wife or a family in England?”

“No. I have been far too busy being a bad socialist to indulge in anything so—so creative.”

She smiled. “Then you shall have your chance. I am a bad communist but a very practical woman.

I am not a virgin, and I have learned not to expect too much from men… So I shall come and live with you, and we shall learn to keep each other warm. Sex might be enjoyable for us both, I think, but it must never become a duty. After all, there is something much more important—friendship. Don’t you agree?”

He looked at her silently for a moment or two—with eyebrows raised. Then he said solemnly:

“Anna Markova, I am slightly drunk and you are a very remarkable woman.”

“That is settled then. If we do not suit each other, the arrangement—not the friendship—can easily be ended.”

Russell raised his glass. “God bless Karl Marx.”

Anna stood up, raising her own glass, and announced, somewhat inscrutably: “The Queen.” Then, having disposed of her whisky, she went to collect her few possessions.

Suddenly, Russell Grahame realized that his mood of depression had left him and that his confidence had returned. It took him a few moments to understand why.

Then he discovered that he was no longer lonely.