Lin Carter - Down to a Sunless Sea (9 page)

Brant rubbed the line of his jaw with one thumbnail, thinking.

"A hiding place, then. God, we could use one! But will it still be there, after half a million years, or however old this map may be?"

"I can't say," Harbin admitted. "But it's better than running. Because they have more men than we, and probably more guns. And sooner or later, our lopers will founder under the double weight. ..."

"I know, damn the luck," growled Brant. "Okay, since it's in our path, we'll watch for it. Let me know when the map exactly matches the terrain."

"I will," said the other man.

They mounted up and rode on into the day.

Zuarra shared the saddle with Brant on the remainder of that day's riding, and she seemed to be in a surly and sullen mood. Glancing back, Brant guessed the reason. For Agila
had the other woman, Suoli, before him in the saddle, and his hands were wandering under her robes and he was whispering something in her ear that caused her to giggle and to blush shyly.

Hearing the giggling, Zuarra tightened her jaw and pinched her full lips together, staring ahead grimly.

Brant grinned wolfishly, but said nothing. His arms tightened a little about Zuarra's lissom waist, and she did not seemingly resent the minor intimacy.

The breach between the two "sisters" had widened since that episode on the ledge where the more feminine of the two had fearfully shrunk from coming to Zuarra's aid. Brant kept his thoughts to himself, but enjoyed the tantalizing nearness of the woman in his arms and savored the dry, musky perfume of her body.

They rode on into the unknown, for there was nothing else to do, since to stand and fight against Tuan's band, which now numbered at least fourteen warriors, would have been, quite simply, suicidal. But inwardly Brant felt a welling-up of hopelessness: they were following a map millions of years old, perhaps, looking for a refuge which might very well no longer exist.

But there was nothing else to do. . . .

During the next rest stop, Brant scanned the ridgeline through his binoculars, and found the tireless riders. He swore under his breath.

"They keep up with us, the bastards, but nothing more! Why, goddammit,
why?"

It was a rhetorical question, but Will Harbin took it seriously enough to offer an answer.

"Possibly because Tuan fears that, if pressed, we will destroy the golden dish," he suggested. "We could do it very easily, you know. One bolt from your power guns would fuse the ancient relic to a shapeless puddle of metal. ..."

Brant considered. "Hmmm . . . hadn't thought of that. You may be right. You're a good man to have along, Doc, on a risky ride like this one."

Harbin smiled and said nothing.

Just past midday, they reached the site marked on the golden map. Or so, at least, Harbin was convinced.

"The weather on Mars is of little consequence," he said. "It takes many millions of years to sufficiently deface a shoreline like the one we are following. The site marked on the map is—there!"

He pointed to a narrow cleft in the wall. It looked so unimportant that Brant would easily have ridden past it without even noticing it. His expression was dubious.

"You sure, Doc?" Harbin nodded.

"Sure as I can be."

They rode closer. Harbin gave voice to an exclamation, and pointed with a trembling hand. Brant peered and saw ancient characters cut in the stone above the cleft, almost worn to the point of being indistinguishable.

"Can you read 'em?" Brant demanded gruffly.

The expression on Doc's homely face became somber, almost reverential. "No, but I can almost guess," he breathed.

13

The Safe Place

Dismounting, and leading their riding beasts by the bridles, they entered the narrow cleft in single file, with Brant leading the way. Harbin studied the rock formations of the walls, and remarked that all of this was exceptionally ancient.

"But it's obviously been improved upon by man," he muttered, pointing. "See? There and there? Chisel-work: someone has widened this passage where it narrowed, and the ceiling overhead has been groined where necessary, but a more stable roofing."

Brant nodded curtly. "Wonder how far back this cleft goes?" he mused aloud.

"Let's find out," suggested Harbin.

They went deeper and deeper into the solid bedrock of the ancient continent. The women seemed uncertain and nervous. Finally, Zuarra stepped to where Brant walked in the lead.

"What is it, woman?"

"Should not we have posted a guard at the entrance?" Zuarra asked. Brant looked at her, then grinned.

"We're looking for 'a safe place,' " he said shortly. "If we find it, we won't need a guard. If we don't, then we'll go back and post one." He chuckled and she gazed at him inquiringly.

"Probably Agila," Brant grinned. "He's the one we can most comfortably do without!"

At that remark, she, too, smiled, rather vindictively. He gathered that she would have been all too pleased if they had abandoned the lean wolf at any point of this journey.

They went on, exploring the narrow-walled cavern.

Harbin examined the walls as they went past, pointing out where hands—presumably human—had widened and smoothed out the narrower or rougher portion places.

"Notice the chisel-work?" he asked, pointing.

"Yeah," Brant grunted. "Also, see how the floor is pretty smooth underfoot?"

"I've noticed," said the older man.

"Wonder why anybody'd take the trouble to do this," mused Brant curiously. "Suppose people lived in here once?"

Will Harbin shrugged. "Hard to tell . . . but if they did, it was ages ago and whatever signs of their residence they left—smoke from cookfires, for instance, gnawed bones, refuse, broken crockery—have long since been obliterated by the passage of time."

Brant privately guessed that the long, narrow cavern had been the tomb of a clan prince, or the hiding place for a treasure trove. Or, just possibly both. There had to be
something
about the cave that made it a place of very special importance —or why else would its precise location be so carefully engraved into the ancient dish of pallid Martian gold?

He mentioned these notions in low tones to Harbin, not wishing the others to overhear. The People had certain scruples about plundering the burial-places of their kingly dead, and, while Agila was not likely to object to picking up some ancient loot—thief that he already admittedly was—the women might not have been of the same mind.

"Those possibilities also occurred to me," nodded the old scientist. "But this does not resemble any of the native tombs or sepulchers I know of. Well, maybe we'll find out. ..."

They went on into the gloom.

After a time, they came to the end of the cavern, and found something odd and unexpected. It was neither a coffin nor a cache, however, but something neither of the two Earthsiders could possibly have predicted.

It was ... a door!

A stone archway, at any rate, sealed with a gigantic slab of dull metal. The two looked at each other blankly.

By the light of his fluoro, Harbin closely scrutinized the surface of the metal. He uttered an exclamation and dazedly mumbled something under his breath. It was in no language with which Brant had any familiarity.

"What did you say, Doc?" he inquired.

Harbin looked at him a bit bemusedly.

"Nothing, really. That inscription—see it, here and here? Almost worn away by time ..."

"Yeah, I see it," said Brant. "But it's in the Tongue, and what you said was in some other language."

Harbin smiled faintly. "You're right, Jim! It was Italian, of the Middle Ages. Did you ever read the ancient poet Dante?"

Brant wrinkled up his brow. "
Paradise Lost?
' he made a guess. Ancient literature was not something he was very fond of.

Harbin shook his head. "Close, but not quite it. No . . . the
Divine Comedy.
An epic about a sort of guided tour of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, you might say."

"I don't get it," admitted Brant.

""This inscription reminded me of the one Dante said was carved over the gates of Hell . . . '
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here' ..."

The words echoed solemnly in the silent gloom. Here in this stark and lifeless place, they sounded even more ominous than they would have under the open sky and in the light of day. Zuarra repressed a shudder of ... of what? Perhaps it was foreboding.

"Shall we not discover what lies hidden beyond the portal?" suggested Agila. "It might be a great treasure."

"It might, indeed," said Will Harbin absently. And then he added, to himself: "Or a great mystery. . . ."

Brant examined the portal, with its ominous inscription. He could see no lock, but when he tested his strength against it, it gave only a little.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say it was bolted from the other side," he said incredulously.

"Well, Jim, how do you know it isn't?" asked Harbin. The strange nature of their discovery intrigued him more and more—and scientists of his persuasion develop lively curiosities.

"Because we're deep into the solid bedrock of the continent by this point, and there's certainly no way out," Brant answered him gruffly. "What did they do, lock themselves in there to die?"

"I don't know," replied the older man. "But I'm getting very interested in finding out. Do you think we can get the door open?"

Brant shrugged. "I suppose so. There are the hinges, and with a narrow beam we could cut them through and pry the door out of its frame with the right tools, bolt or no bolt. But it would take some doing. ..."

"Then we had better get started," the scientist remarked. "For our friends are not going to stay up on the ridgeline for very long, now that they can see we have found a refuge."

"Yeah," Brant agreed soberly, "it's either that, or hold them off at the mouth of the cave. It's narrow enough for one man to hold it against many ... but I'd kinda like to see what's behind that door, first. I like to know what's at my back in a fight like this."

They began working on the metal door.

Zuarra said nothing, but in her thoughts echoed that grim, enigmatic phrase the old man had spoken.

What good thing could you expect to find behind a door marked with a warning like "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here"?

Behind the Door

With Agila at his side, Brant began working on the portal. The others withdrew to the middle section of the narrow cave, with Will Harbin and Zuarra keeping watch at the cave mouth against the expected arrival of the outlaw band.

Adjusting his power gun to the narrowest setting, Brant aimed a needle-beam at the topmost hinge. Sparks flew crackling in all directions, illuminating the dark cavern with an eerie blue-white glare.

The metal glowed with heat and began gradually to soften. The heat at the far end of the cavern became at first uncomfortable, then hard to endure. Brant withdrew, gesturing curtly to Agila to take up the work, and turned down the controls on his suit.

Before long, he turned the heat off entirely and even unseamed the insulated garment from throat to navel. By this time, Agila had stripped naked save for a cloth wound about his loins. His coppery-red body glistened with oily perspiration.

Brant replaced him and let him withdraw to cooler parts of the cavern. They had cut entirely through the topmost hinge by this time, and Brant began working on the midmost hinge.

There was no real danger that this work would exhaust the power cells in the pistol, for they automatically recharged themselves by the use of dialetric accumulators, as did the pressure-still and the heating elements in the insulated suits the two Earthsiders wore. But it was hot, nasty work, the air reeking with ozone and stinking of hot, dripping metal.

Brant persevered. When he turned the job over to Agila, and strolled to the entrance of the cave to cool off, Harbin greeted him cheerfully.

"No sign of our friends yet, Jim. How's the work going?"

"Almost done," Brant grunted, sucking in lungfuls of clean, cold, pure air. "Doc, I'm gonna need that geologist's pick you use for cutting fossils out of the rocks. Need something to help pry the door loose, once we got the three hinges cut through."

"Certainly. The pick is in my saddlebags. You take over here, and I'll find it for you." The scientist went to where the lopers lay curled in fitful slumber and began rummaging through his baggage.

Left alone with Zuarra, Brant glanced at the woman.

"You all right?" he inquired gruffly. "Not frightened, are you?"

She leveled a scornful glance at him, then relented, smiling a little. He had not noticed what a lovely smile she had until just now. Her teeth were white and even in her copper mask of a face.

"Only a fool or a madman would not feel a little frightened in such a place, O Brant, with enemies nigh upon us and nowhere left to ran. But Zuarra is not so frightened that she cannot maintain her vigilance!"