Mara and Dann (32 page)

‘Central Tower, second level,' she told the man, and they walked through the six, noting how the dust was heaping around their bases, and that it looked untouched, like sand piling around an impeding stone or dead tree. They were right under the Central Tower, and ahead was an entrance, with black steps going up to it. The steps had sand filling the back of the treads. The doorway into the Tower had had a door, but it was slanting half off its hinges, and they walked straight into the long passage, as big as a hall, that bisected the building. Near the entrance were the machines that had once, on a system of weights and pulleys, carried people to the top of the building, but they were disused now. Stairs went up. Feet had recently used those stairs: dusty footprints were on every step. The first level showed a corridor running high and wide to where a light came in through a broken window. The guard was walking just behind Mara, his knife in one hand, his club in the other. He said, ‘If someone is in front, then get behind me. If someone attacks from behind, then run up the stairs but keep me in sight.' The stairs to the second level were steep and there were many of them. They arrived safely, having seen no one. Again there was the long, empty corridor, doors opening off it, as many as thirty or forty doors.

‘I shall go in first,' said the man. ‘No, I have my orders.'

And they began on a systematic inspection of the rooms. Some had had recent occupants. There were discarded containers, a roll of stained and torn bedding, old clothes like rags left on the floor. Everything was dusty. No people. Where had they gone? ‘North,' said the guard. ‘They've all gone up North.' There was the heavy, sickly smell of poppy, and there were whiffs of ganja, but not as strong.

Then, at the eleventh or twelfth attempt – they were losing count – the guard opened a door, stepped smartly back because of what he saw and stood to one side to let her in, with his knife held out in front of him. ‘Be careful now,' he said.

Mara saw three bodies, lying with their heads to the opposite wall, very still. Asleep…or dead? The smell was horrible: a concentration of fumes and sickness. The guard briefly retched, but stopped himself, holding the back of the hand with the knife in it to his mouth. His eyes, staring at the bodies, were appalled, shocked, afraid. Mara would have liked to run away, but she made herself walk in. She bent over the body nearest to her, whose face was hidden by an arm, probably to keep off light falling painfully into his eyes, and saw that this man was so ill, he was nearly dead. His breathing was feeble, coming at long, irregular
intervals, and his eyes were half open. He could die on any one of these light, gasping breaths. A Mahondi. The second body was indisputably a corpse. Again, a Mahondi, and there was a gash across his throat, and a pool of glazing blood.

Now Mara knew, because of the shape of the head, what she would see. She knelt beside Dann, who was prone. She turned him over. He was drugged senseless. His face was covered in sores. On his arms and legs were sores and scabs on dry, flaky skin. His eyes were glued with pus. His whole body was festering, and sick, thin flesh clinging to bones.

‘Dann,' she said, ‘it's Mara.'

He did not open his eyes but he groaned. He tried to speak between gummed lips. ‘Mara,' he said, and muttered and groaned, until at last she understood what he was saying: ‘I killed the bad one.'

And now, at least partially enlightened, Mara looked again at the face of the dead man and the face of the nearly dead one and saw they were alike. Brothers, perhaps – or could have been. Dann was here because he had been a prisoner, certainly of these two men, but most of all because of his own ancient and terrible obsession.

‘He was bad,' said Dann, in a child's voice. ‘Mara, he was the bad man.'

In a corner stood the can Dann had carried so far, when they travelled here, and in it slopped a little sound of water when she shook it. She poured water into that sick, foul-smelling mouth, and his lips reached up towards it as if they were creatures on their own account, desperate for water.

‘Can you get up?' she asked.

Of course he could not get up, but Mara had said it because she could not connect this poor, sick thing with the lithe and light Dann she knew. The guard gave her the knife and the club and, his face screwed with disgust, easily lifted the starved body into his arms. Around the clear space where Dann had been was a litter of lumps of black, sticky, poppy stuff, pipes, matches, and bags of bright green, dried leaf. Mara quickly took the matches and hid them. The guard looked at her strangely: he had never known that you could lack matches.

She looked at the dying man and the guard said, ‘That one won't be alive tonight.' And in fact it looked as if he had died already: he was very still.

And so Mara and the guard, with Dann in his arms, went back down the corridor to the stairs, down the stairs to the first level, and down
more stairs to the ground level. All the way Dann lay limp, but now his eyes were open. At the foot of the stairs the guard laid him down to take a rest, and Dann muttered, ‘Water, water,' and Mara gave him all that was left in the can – which she had not been able to leave behind. Outside the Tower, Dann put up his arm to shield his face, and this encouraged Mara, that he had that much strength. And then they went back through the tunnel, Mara holding up the torch. Near the entrance a couple of girls came towards them.

‘Where are all the people?' asked Mara.

They were rigid with terror – of her, or of the club and the knife she held, and pressed past, backs to the earth wall.

‘Isn't there anyone left?' Mara persisted.

‘Why should we stay? What for? We're off this afternoon.' And they began to run as fast as they could. Mara heard, ‘Mahondi spies.' ‘They're spies.'

Mara had Dann beside her in the chair, the guard who had carried him on the other side. Dann groaned and his eyes rolled. The movement of the chair was making him sick. The four chairs jogged their way back to the Mahondi quarter, slowly, because the runner in Mara's chair was finding it hard to pull three of them. Mara stopped them at Orphne's house. Dann would end up there anyway. She did not want the Kin to see him in this state. When the guard lifted out Dann the four runners came to stare at him, recognising him. Their faces, and those of the guards, staring down at Dann, had that look that puts the observer at a distance, like a judge pronouncing sentence. Dann was going to die, those faces said. And the young men thankfully turned away, the porters back to their chairs, the guards to their barracks, away from the ill luck of death.

Mara told the guard to lay Dann on a bed, and thanked him and saw him, too, hasten away. Mara found Orphne stirring cordials in her dispensary, and showed her Dann. Orphne lifted Dann's hand, saw how it fell, apparently lifeless. ‘So this is the famous Dann,' she said; and as she stood there, in a white, floaty dress, a red flower in her hair, she seemed to have walked into that room out of another life, or truth.

‘I thought you were as bad as I was likely to see,' she said, and then, ‘Let's start.' She went into her medicine room and came back with a strong-smelling drink. Between them, the two women got most of it into Dann, because he did swallow at last when choking became imminent,
and went on swallowing, slowly, mechanically. ‘Good,' said Orphne.

And now she took off her white dress and stood there in her long, flouncy, white knickers, her big breasts loose, and said, ‘If you don't want that outfit to be filthy, take it off.' Mara removed her clothes – Meryx's. She could not stop herself looking enviously at Orphne's breasts, when hers were still mere plumpnesses on her chest. Orphne saw her looking and said, ‘You had nothing at all there when I first saw you. Now, lift.'

They lifted the unconscious boy and took him next door, and laid him in a shallow bath. Over him Orphne poured sun-warmed water, full of herby substances. Dann was dirty, but nothing like as grimed as he had been a year ago, when the two of them came down the cliff into Chelops. The water was soon dark with dirt and blood and full of crusts from the scratches and ulcers. Then, as his body became visible, they saw around his waist a chain of scars that looked like knife cuts, as if he had decided to make a belt of scars for decoration or for ritual. They were red and sore-looking. The round, flat shapes under the skin told Mara what she was looking at, and she cried out to Orphne, who was manipulating the flesh there, ‘No, don't squeeze.' Dann had cut himself and slid in coins for safe keeping, and let the flesh heal over them. Orphne's eyebrows were demanding explanation and Mara, close to tears, said, ‘I'll tell you…I'll explain.'

That water was flung out into the hot sun where its filth could be burned harmless, and more medicinal water was poured around Dann, who lay quite still, eyes closed, and did not move when Orphne wiped his face and his eyes, and then held his head to wash his hair. They dried him and laid him back on the bed. Orphne cut Dann's nails, which were not far off claws, rubbed oil into dry skin, and examined his teeth, which were loose in inflamed gums, as Mara's had been so recently. But now they were white, and tight in her head, and she was proud of them: so would Dann's be, quite soon.

‘So,' said Orphne again, ‘this is the famous Dann. He looks like you, or will when he's better.' The big, strong woman, with her big breasts, which shone with health, and which seemed to shine, too, with kindness, stood looking down at her patient; and then, evidently pleased, because he was already less inert, slipped on her pretty, white dress, replaced the cactus flower in her hair, and said, ‘Now Mara, you aren't going to like what's going to happen next, so I suggest you leave.'

‘No, I'll stay.'

Orphne tied Dann to the bed with cords, interposing soft pads of cloth between them and his skin, laid a single piece of cloth over him, because of the heat, and sat down next to the bed. ‘Have you ever seen someone while the poppy is leaving them? No? Well, I'm warning you.'

Mara replaced her tunic and trousers, and sat down. She thought, It doesn't seem as if he knows I am here, but perhaps he does.

For some time Dann slept, or was unconscious, or both, but then he began to moan and shiver, and to fight against his bonds; great spasms shook his body, while his teeth clenched and his eyes rolled, and yet all the time he seemed insensible, so that it was like watching someone fighting in his sleep with an assailant, or a drowning person struggling just under the water. It was sickening, and Mara wanted to untie him, and hold him as she had the small child, to lift that body of his, as light as bones picked up from beside a road, and run away with him, shelter him, hide him – but she knew that this Orphne with her skills was right, was curing him, and that she must sit quiet and watch.

Juba came, and Dromas, and then Candace and Meryx, and one after another all the Kin came and stood gazing down; and their faces were like the guards' and the runners', and – Mara thought – probably like hers when she looked at the dying milk beast. Which was not going to die, because a woman had given it water, and Dann was not going to die either.

Late that night Meryx came, found Orphne alert by Dann, and Mara sitting dozing in her chair. He tried to lift Mara up, to take her to bed, but her hand tightened around Dann's. Orphne shook her head at Meryx, who stood beside Mara for a while, stroking her hair, and Orphne watched, smiling drily. Then Meryx kissed Mara, and went off to bed; and Orphne said, meaning the way Mara envied her big body and her breasts, ‘But you have the lover, and I don't.'

Through that night Orphne poured her soporific drinks and potions into Dann; but as she said, what goes in must come out, and she had a shallow pan by her, which she slid under Dann, watching for the moment. Then she had to clean him, and he screamed at the first touch. Orphne pulled apart his legs. The two women bent, shocked, to see how the area around the anus was bruised black and green and blue, and the anus itself was loose and bleeding. Mara had not seen anything like this, nor even thought about it; but Orphne knew and said, ‘They enjoy it
when they are young but they don't think that when they are old they won't be able to hold their shit.'

‘Old,' said Mara, for this was one of the moments when she felt as if she lived a different life from these gentle people. ‘Which of us do you imagine will live to be old?'

‘I will,' said Orphne, smearing ointment on Dann. ‘I shall be a wise old woman. I shall be a famous healer. Even the Hadrons will honour me and use my cures.'

‘They do now,' said Mara.

‘And my little hospital will be twice as big, and I shall train people to be famous healers.'

And Orphne sat smiling at Mara, calm, confident, and with only a hint of the pugnacity that means doubt.

‘You know,' said Mara, after a long pause of not knowing what to say, ‘I have learned something important here. Do you want to know what it is?'

‘I suppose so,' said Orphne, her smile meaning now: There she goes again.

‘You can tell someone something true, but if they haven't experienced anything like it they won't understand. Orphne, if I say to you, “You can't buy something if you haven't got the money,” you'll say, “Well, of course.”'

‘Of course,' said Orphne, laughing.

‘But you don't understand what it means to have a cache of gold coins, each one enough to buy a house, or three hours in a sky skimmer that means saving many days of walking – but if you don't have a little coin, you can't buy a piece of bread or some matches.'

‘Then change a gold one,' said Orphne. ‘What's the problem?'

‘That's the problem,' said Mara.

All the next day Dann shook and screamed and begged for poppy, and Orphne kept him bound and cared for him; and that night he was so exhausted she gave him the same strong sleeping draught she had given Mara. It had in it ganja, and a little poppy; and when Mara said, ‘But surely that is only prolonging the agony,' Orphne said, ‘There is only very little poppy, but it will be enough to calm him. To take someone off the stuff suddenly – you can, but it is dangerous when he is as weak as Dann.'