The Torian Pearls

Chapter 21

Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, and the Torians did not come. Blade suspected that when they did come east again, they would come with fourteen or even forty thousand men, and they would be a great deal harder to defeat or discourage.

Meanwhile the Kargoi did what they could to prepare. The West Fort was repaired and a second fort was built and garrisoned. Five hundred mounted warriors camped on the edge of the forest, ready to move out to the aid of either fort. The rest of the warriors camped wherever they could get food and avoid the Hauri. They spent much of their time making fifteen-foot pikes and practicing using them, in lines, squares, and columns. Blade watched them with growing confidence. If the Torians were too slow in launching their next attack, they might face a pike wall that no cavalry charge could break. That might be enough to give the Kargoi the victory they needed. Hopefully they would not need to march two hundred miles to Tordas, storm its walls, and put Queen Kayarna to the sword in her own palace before the Torians would agree to let the Kargoi use the plains!

The truce with the Hauri held firm. The Kargoi still did not entirely trust the fishermen of the villages, while the Hauri did not wish to seem too friendly to the Kargoi, in case the Torians won the next battle.

Yet slowly the wariness and suspicion faded. The women of each people began to find the men of the other interesting, and the men did the same with the women. The Kargoi developed a taste for eating dried fish and wearing necklaces of polished shells. The Hauri found it agreeable to feast on roasted drend meat and wear garments of drend leather or armor of reptile hide.

The Hauri and the Kargoi were still not one people. That would take generations, if it ever happened at all. They were two peoples who had begun to trust each other. That meant a good deal. The Kargoi could face the Torians knowing that their rear was safe, and the Hauri could go about their lives as they had done for centuries.

After a month or two the Hauri began to invite Blade and other high-ranking warriors of the Kargoi to their villages. The visitors ate fish and oysters roasted on driftwood fires and strong-tasting stews of clams and seaweed. They slept in the grass-roofed huts with the chocolate-colored Hauri women. They even sailed in the Hauri's outrigger canoes, far out on what had been open sea even before the ice melted and the water rose.

Blade was happy to go on those fishing trips. He could do nothing against the Torians for the moment, while far out to sea he might again encounter the Menel.

There were whitecaps on the sea, and the sail of the big canoe was filled out round and firm.

«Like the breast of a fine woman,» said Fudan, as he put the helm over. The canoe heeled sharply; it would have capsized without the outrigger. The sail swung around with the mast and rigging creaking under the strain, and the canoe settled on its new course. Now they were heading straight toward a low rocky island that reared up out of the depths and sheltered a stretch of water three miles long. They could anchor in the lee of the island, safe from most storms but within easy diving range of a particularly rich pearl bed.

«Like Loya's breasts,» Blade thought, looking at the sail. He did not say this out loud, although he knew Fudan made no effort to act as his sister's guardian. He'd seen Loya often during the past few weeks. She never wore more than the trousers in which he'd first seen her, and sometimes less. Other women of the Hauri might cover themselves from throat to ankles, but not Loya, in the pride of her rank or perhaps in the even greater pride of her beauty.

The pearl bed they sought lay no more than sixty feet down, shallow water for the pearl oysters. Closer to the mainland, such a shallow bed would long since have been stripped of its choicest pearls. Here they were a good thirty miles farther out than the canoes of the Hauri usually came. Only a bold sailor such as Fudan would come this far.

A flash of light low on the horizon caught Blade's attention. It was far too bright to be sunlight reflected on the sea. It came and went irregularly. Blade realized that it was indeed reflected sunlight, but sunlight flashing from something made of polished metal, moving slowly just above the water. It appeared to be moving toward the lee side of the island, where Blade and Fudan were planning to anchor.

A moment came when the sunlight was not blazing from the moving object. Blade got a clear view of a streamlined metal cylinder with a high fin aft and a bubble canopy forward.

It was a flying machine of the Menel. He'd seen them before in the Dimension of the Ice Dragons. In fact he'd flown a force of raiders aboard one into the polar regions, to destroy the Ice Dragons and the Ice Master and liberate his slaves and prisoners. The one he'd flown against the Ice Dragons was several times larger than the one he saw now, but they were of the same basic design.

As Blade watched, he realized that the machine was not under full control. It was weaving erratically from side to side and bobbing up and down, sometimes barely skimming the crests of the waves, at other times soaring high into the air. Gradually it took a nose-down attitude. Blade held his breath, watching and waiting for the inevitable.

The machine swooped low, and this time its nose dug into the crest of a wave. Spray exploded around it as it cartwheeled for a hundred feet, the canopy shattering and the tail fin ripping loose. Blade thought he saw an elongated dark shape with four waving arms hurtling out of the spray. Then the machine struck again and arrowed straight down into the water. A spreading patch of foam marked the spot.

It was a moment before Blade realized that Fudan had watched the final gyrations and fall of the Menel flying machine. Blade stared at the man, trying to read the expression on the weather-beaten brown face.

«It will not come again, after this,» said Fudan quietly.

Blade was startled and his voice showed it. «You mean-this is nothing new to you? You've seen-that-before?»

«Oh yes. Our fishermen see it come up from the south, oh, once a month, for two years now. Always the same one, we think.»

«For two years, you say?» Blade went on. He was finding Fudan's calmness harder to deal with than panic or superstitious awe.

«Oh yes. It began after the great star fell from the sky onto the island to the south. So we think it comes from that island, where the Sky People must live.»

Blade realized that if the conversation went on this way much longer, he was going to either lose his temper or sound like an idiot. Neither would do any good. «You know that people from the sky have come to this world, and are living on an island to the south. Their machine has come once a month for the past two years. Didn't you do anything about this?»

Fudan looked innocent. «Why should we? They have done nothing to us by flying over our canoes and looking at them. The fish and the oysters and the seaweed are as abundant as ever, the sharks and eels no more dangerous, our women bear as many healthy children as before.» He frowned. «Of course, if the sea reptiles are becoming dangerous, as you say, perhaps it is these Sky People who are behind it. In that case perhaps we shall have to think about what we may do against them, if they go on doing evil with-«

Blade's temper nearly snapped. «Why didn't you tell me?» he said, an edge in his voice.

«You never asked me,» said Fudan.

Blade let out his breath in a long whoooossssh and began to laugh. Fudan was quite right. It had never occurred to him that the Hauri might have seen the Menel without thinking them worth mentioning. It had seemed wise to keep the Menel as much a secret from the Hauri as he'd kept them from the Kargoi.

So much for what had seemed wise.

«I understand,» said Blade. «But I must tell you that Sky People, the Menel, are indeed using the creatures of the sea and the birds of the air against us. They are enemies to the Kargoi. They may become enemies to the Hauri as well. Now that their machine has fallen, we have a good chance to learn more about them. We must dive down to that machine and look at it and everything in it. This will be more dangerous than letting the Menel fly over your canoes and look at you, but-«

«Do you think the Hauri become afraid so easily?» said Fudan. He did not sound angry, merely implying that Blade was being rather silly to even raise the point.

«No. I have fought the Hauri and know they are a brave people. But the Menel have weapons against which the courage of the Hauri and the Kargoi together may be nothing. There may be such weapons in this machine, and some of the Menel may still be alive to use them. So let us not treat them like stranded sea turtles, to be knocked on the head with a stick.»

«Certainly, that would not be wise,» said Fudan. He put the helm over, and the canoe turned toward the position of the crash. «Blade, look to our weapons. The weapons of the Hauri have slain green sharks and death eels, so perhaps they will make even the Menel know that the Hauri are not easy prey.»

If the Menel beamers didn't work under water, Fudan might very well be right. The Hauri's underwater weapons would not have been turned down by a Home Dimension skin diver. They had tridents and thrusting spears, hooked bars for prying shellfish loose from rocks, crossbows with elastic bands of fish skin that propelled heavy barbed darts, and curved knives that could slit the throat of a man or the gills of an eight-foot green shark with equal ease. The Hauri never killed or took more than they needed from the sea, but they made sure they could always take that much.

Fudan started the canoe zig-zagging as they approached the crash position, to make a difficult target for anyone who might be waiting. Blade hoped the wreck would be no more than eighty feet down. He was a good enough skin diver to reach that depth easily, but he was no more than an amateur by the standards of the Hauri. Their best divers could bring up shells and coral from a hundred and seventy feet down.

As they drew closer to the position Blade scanned the water, looking for floating wreckage. Fudan lowered the sail and broke out the paddles. The water was now so transparent that they could see down to the bottom a hundred feet below, every fish and every coral boulder clearly visible. Both men loaded crossbows and put them in the bottom of the canoe within easy reach.

They were entering the area of the crash when Blade saw a gray-white cloud of shrieking sea birds whirling over something floating in the water. Without a word Fudan steered for it. A few more strokes, and Blade could make out the floating object as one of the Menel. A few more, and they were alongside the body.

There was no doubt the Menel was dead. No living creature could survive with its head crushed into featureless pulp, two arms torn out of their sockets, and half its body split open so that strange internal organs trailed out into the water. Small fish were already nibbling at those organs while the sea birds swooped on them from above.

Blade looked at the Menel, and couldn't help feeling slightly sorry for it. It reminded him of the body of an RAF pilot he'd seen, washed ashore after a high-speed plane crash into the sea. It had suffered a wretched death he wouldn't wish on any intelligent creature, human or not, friendly or not.

Blade saw no other bodies floating. If there'd been any other Menel aboard the machine, they were probably trapped in the wreckage. Fudan said nothing, although this must have been his first sight of one of the Sky People. Perhaps to a man used to the strange creatures of the sea, even a being from outer space would not look strange.

Another hundred yards, and Blade saw a dark shape on the bottom below. Its outlines were distorted by the water and by crash damage, but it was unmistakably what they were looking for. Fudan threw the anchor overboard and counted the knots on the line as it ran out. Finally the stone touched bottom and the canoe swung gently to and fro.

«Nine dzor,» said Fudan, as he laid his paddle in the bottom of the canoe. The dzor was a measure of depth equal to about seven feet. So the wreck lay about sixty feet down, easy diving depth.

Blade pulled off his sandals and began strapping on the fish-skin fins. Then he tied the weight belt with its pouches of gravel around his waist and picked up a sack and his crossbow.

«With your permission, Fudan?» he said. The first dive on a fishing expedition had a certain ritual quality. Normally Blade would have let Fudan go first, but he didn't know how much time they would have. If the crashed machine had been able to get off any sort of a distress signal ….

Fudan nodded. He was silently pulling on his own diving gear, watching both sky and water as he did so. There was no need to tell him to keep alert. The Hauri knew the basic safety rule for diving: one man in the water, the other in the boat, alert and ready to help if needed.

Blade clung to the side of the canoe, breathing deeply to fill his system with oxygen. At last he let go of the canoe, flipped upside down, and plunged toward the wreck below.

He seemed to drift down through the greenness, although he was kicking as hard as he could. The wreck of the Menel machine seemed to hang suspended before his eyes in a distant limbo for a long time, without getting any closer. A school of foot-long silver fish with dark stripes swam up past him. Then suddenly the coral branches on the bottom seemed to be reaching up toward him like clutching hands. He leveled out and swam toward the machine.

It lay with its nose crushed against a cluster of boulders and its tail standing up like a tombstone. The canopy was gone, both hatches blown off, and the metal skin amidships torn open like a paper bag. Blade swam up to the gaping opening left by the missing canopy and looked down into the cockpit.

Two of the Menel lay there in the wreckage, their bodies mangled almost beyond recognition. Among the smashed controls and what must have been seats, Blade could see the twisted shape of one of the beamers. Farther back in the fuselage he could make out a third Menel, crushed under several items of heavy equipment torn loose from the walls and floor by the impact of the crash.

That was all he could make out before his chest began to tighten up from lack of air. He backed out of the machine and thrust himself steadily back to the surface, the sunlight, and the air.

For the next two hours, Blade and Fudan alternated diving and keeping watch. Dive after dive, Blade explored the machine. Dive after dive, Fudan brought up pearl oysters and piled them in the bow. He paid no attention to the machine.

«It interests me, yes,» he said. «But also I must bring home the pearls. We have come too far to do otherwise. Besides, if we bring home no pearls, many will wonder what we did here. They will ask questions that I do not want to have to answer.»

Since the machine was designed for a crew of beings nine feet tall, there was plenty of room inside it in spite of the damage. Blade swam about freely, examining the equipment as well as he could in the dim light and the short time he had on each dive.

He was able to recognize many familiar objects. There was a small computer with a print-out device. There were the remains of a radar set. There were various items of scientific gear, including a spectroscope, a centrifuge, sampling devices, chemical-analysis equipment, and much that was less easily identifiable. There was a cargo compartment aft, holding boxes and tubes of many different sizes with as many different markings. On the floor lay a number of the electronic implants for the brains of the sea reptiles, spilled from a broken box.

From each dive Blade brought up some small piece of Menel equipment. The pile of bits and pieces in his end of the canoe grew, like Fudan's pile of shells in his end.

Blade kept on diving until the first warning twinges of pain in his joints and muscles told him that he was approaching his limit for the day. It was maddening to have to leave the machine with so much of it still a mystery, but there was no helping it. He'd already collected as much as he could hope to analyze himself, perhaps more. He'd also collected ten times more than he could ever hope to bring back to Home Dimension.

On his last dive he went down determined to examine the ceiling of the machine. So far he'd been too busy searching and stripping the floor. He swam in through the crack in the fuselage, turned on his back, and looked up.

A large squarish shape seemed to be hanging from the ceiling at an impossible angle. At first Blade thought it was another piece of broken equipment, then he realized that it was floating freely. He reached up and drew it down to him.

It was a large black-covered book of some sort, scaled in a waterproof sack with a small cylinder at one end for buoyancy. Obviously it was designed to survive and float free in the event of a crash. Did the Menel keep diaries or logs? If so, then this might be one. Blade clutched the book under his arm and dove out of the machine. Excitement drove him up to the surface. He threw the book into the canoe, hauled himself out of the water, and caught his breath.

Fudan looked at Blade, experienced eyes noting his fatigue. «Blade, I hope that was your last dive for the day?»

Blade nodded. «I'll stay in the canoe, until you've finished your diving.»

«That will not be much longer,» said Fudan. «I see in the sky that a great storm will come in from the sea in another day. If I dive much more, we shall have to spend the night here. With a storm coming, that would not be wise.»

As Fudan slipped over the side again, Blade relaxed into the healthy fatigue that came after a long day's work well done. He looked up at the sky. The faintest hints of sunset colors were beginning to glow in the west. Above the colors rode the mackerel-scale clouds that indeed promised foul weather not far off. Except for those clouds and the wheeling sea birds, the sky was empty.

A sudden splash alongside the canoe made Blade turn. He expected to see Fudan's head emerge dripping from the water. Instead he looked straight into a pair of glittering golden eyes, set in a totally hideous face. It was a death-eel, the most sinister-looking and voracious creature in the seas of this Dimension, one that sometimes attacked even the great sea reptiles.

The mouth opened, exposing two rows of needle-sharp teeth. Blade's eyes ran from the bulging head back along the coal-black body and he swallowed. This death-eel could not be an inch under thirty feet long.

What had brought it here, Blade didn't know. What he did know was that in no more than a minute Fudan would be rising from the bottom, straight into the creature's striking range, straight into those gaping, teeth-studded jaws. Fudan would not see it until it was too late. There would be no escaping the eel's enormous speed and agility.

Somehow, though, the eel didn't seem to be paying any attention to Blade. Somehow he'd failed to register in its tiny, hunger-filled mind as either a possible prey or a possible enemy. He had a few seconds at least to act.

Blade started to pick up one of the crossbows. As he did, the eel's head sank down and vanished under the raft. Blade swore. Now he couldn't get a killing shot in before the eel noticed Fudan. There was only one thing to do. Catching up a knife in one hand and a spear in the other, Blade rolled over the side of the canoe and into the water. Before the eel could react, he was gripping the slimy body with both legs. As the body began to twist, Blade reached forward with his knife and his spear and drove the points of both deep into the eel's head.

He'd hoped to reach the brain with one weapon or the other. Instead he drove the eel into a sudden fury. Its body arched from nose to tail; and its head plunged down into the depths. Blade barely had a chance to gulp a breath of air before he was dragged under. At least he'd drawn its attention away from Fudan.

If Blade hadn't had his knife gripped firmly and driven in deeply, he would have been torn loose from the eel. As it was, the force of the water tore the spear point out of the eel's head and the spear shaft out of Blade's hand. The spear vanished, and Blade drew his belt dagger.

The eel chose that moment to shake its head from side to side in a desperate effort to get rid of its tormentor. Blade felt his left arm nearly dragged out of its socket, but he held on. As long as he held on where he was, the eel could not twist around and reach him. The moment he let go, it would be looping around and those tooth-studded jaws would be reaching out for him, perhaps closing on him.

Blade thrust his dagger into the black flesh. Blood flowed, pale green in the underwater light. The eel twisted convulsively, but showed no sign of weakening. It continued its plunge toward the bottom.

Blade realized that it must be planning to try scraping him off against the rocks on the bottom. He also realized that even if it didn't do that and even if his knives held, the breath in his lungs was almost gone. He might already be so far down that he could never hope to reach the surface alive. But he could not and would not let go, as long as there was any chance that Fudan hadn't made it to safety.

Blade knew that he was only moments away from death, either by drowning or in the jaws of the eel. None of his life passed before his eyes-his mind was still working too furiously, trying to think how to strike a lethal blow against the eel. It would go on working like that until the last brain cell winked out from lack of oxygen.

Then the eel was twisting more furiously than ever. Blade held on to both knives, but the eel's twisting tore them free. Blade found himself floating upward as the eel curved around underneath him, the head rising toward him, the jaws opening, the teeth ready to tear his flesh and a crossbow bolt suddenly standing out from the black head, squarely between the golden eyes.

That was the last thing Blade knew until he awoke, facedown in the bottom of the canoe, with Fudan pounding his back and heaving his arms up and down. It was a crude form of artificial respiration, but it worked. Blade gulped in air until his head stopped swimming, then slowly sat up. Once more he looked into the eyes of the death-eel alongside the canoe, but now the eyes were closed and the thirty feet of sinister black body floated limply in death.

Blade went on catching his breath, until he felt like speaking again. Even then he looked at Fudan for quite a while before he said a word. The Hauri chief matched him stare for stare.

«You saved my life,» said Blade at last.

Fudan shook his head. «Perhaps. Certainly you saved mine first. I would not have been alive to shoot the eel if you had not fought it as you did. You would probably have killed it even without my help.»

Blade had his doubts on that point, but there was no use in arguing. Fudan went on.

«Certainly we have this day fought a death-eel and slain it, and one of us has just as certainly saved the other.» He smiled. «By the customs of the Hauri this makes us brothers in the spirit. Each may ask of the other the same that a brother in the flesh could. Each must grant what is asked if there is no dishonor in it.»

«Well,» said Blade. «In that case I will promise you my voice in the councils of the Kargoi, to speak for making the peace with the Hauri last forever.»

«I also will give my voice for peace between our peoples, among the headmen of the Hauri. I will also consent that you take as wife my sister Loya.»

Blade frowned. «I am honored. But I would not take her against-«

Fudan threw back his head and laughed. «Blade, Blade, Loya has already given her consent ten times over. It is her dearest wish to be your wife, to bear you sons and daughters who will be living proof that there is peace between the Hauri and the Kargoi. Do you find her displeasing?»

It was Blade's turn to laugh. «Hardly. It is merely that I have given no thought to taking a wife.» He did not add that this was partly out of a reluctance to involve Loya in all the battles he knew he still had to fight in this Dimension. Women who became involved in his battles had a way of getting killed, and he wanted to avoid that fate for Loya. «If it is now proper that I take a wife, certainly I could find none better than Loya. She is beautiful, strong, and wise.»

«She is. I am glad you think of her as she thinks of you.» Fudan turned and began heaving on the anchor rope. «If you feel able to put away our weapons and the bags of shells, I think it is time to see about beginning our voyage home.»