Mara and Dann (35 page)

‘Do you remember?' she urgently shouted at Dann. ‘Their faces – exactly the same.'

Dann smiled, and took her hands, and said, ‘Mara, you worry about me too much. Thank you, but it's all right. I've seen these people when I was travelling, when I was away from you. I saw a whole town of them, in the East.'

This was certainly not little Dann speaking, and Mara felt her heart ease and the worry lift.

The machine landed in a big square. At once a heavy, warm air enveloped them, and they felt the sweat start all over their bodies. Felice took cans from beside her, and said again,
‘Don't
get out.' She walked quickly off, ignoring the people who were crowding in to see the machine.

They were the same as Mara remembered: large, solid, heavy…But no, their eyes were different, not pale but brownish. Their skins were not greyish but dull brown. Their hair was not a mass of light frizz but a mass of brownish frizz. Their faces were all the same, with lumpy noses and low foreheads made lower because of the frizzy bush above. Their clothes were all of the same colour: it seemed that these creatures had been dipped into the same dye tub, fully dressed, so that everything was an ugly, lightless brown.

Dann took her hand. ‘They are stupid,' he whispered. ‘Don't do anything to surprise them. I think they have only one mind between them. They are like animals.'

It was like being surrounded by animals that were being drawn into a centre by curiosity: wary, ready to take fright and break away in a run. Those staring faces, those eyes! – and how did they tell each other apart? What could it be like, being one of a people exactly alike, every tiny detail the same, so that you turned your gaze from one face to the next, but it was as if you were still staring at the first? They were coming in slowly from everywhere, all the surrounding streets and lanes, a big crowd of them, and the skimmer seemed a frail thing in the middle of
that crush and press. What big, solid people they were, and their hands so big, and their bare feet splayed out into the dust on great pads of flesh, and their toes continually curling and moving like an insect's antennae sensing the air. One lifted an enormous hand and felt Mara's hair. ‘Careful,' she heard from Dann. ‘Don't move.' Another poked her cheek. Was this one a man? Were they male, all of them? They seemed so. On the other side of the machine one was peering into the empty seat beside the pilot's, and was trying the handle, but the door was locked. The machine began to rock. Feeling it rock, they all put their hands to it and pushed; both sides pushed. They were not co-ordinating, and so for a moment the machine shook and seemed to jump about, but was not in danger of falling over. And then Dann let out a shout of alarm, which caused the creatures to jump back and glare, mouthing and muttering. One of the pincer beetles had survived the flight, and was trying to scuttle away from the machine between the big feet towards the houses. Dann shouted, ‘Kill it, kill it,' but they were slow in turning, and then in seeing it; and then they turned to stare at him, not understanding; and then, at last understanding, went after it, all jostling together like a herd of beasts. Then, having lost it, because it scuttled away somewhere, they were slow in turning and resuming their slow pressure in on the machine. Felice appeared, running, with a can in each hand, shouting to scare them away so she could pass, and when a gap appeared as they turned to stare, she jumped in and at once started the machine, and it began to rise. As it did, the enormous hands were reaching up to bring it down, and could have done, had they been a moment sooner. The skimmer flew off, and the three looked down at those upturned dull faces, a multitudinous unity, a nightmare.

Beyond the town, the skimmer dropped among the dry grasses of the savannah. Felice got out and fed the machine with the sugar-oil in her cans. Then she said, ‘Get out, you two.'

The brother and sister stood side by side while the young woman walked all around them, stood examining them. Meanwhile she talked. The town just behind them had only males in it. There was a town near by that had females. They all met at stated times, to mate: at the equinoxes and solstices. You could hardly tell the males and females apart.

Now, having thoroughly inspected the two, she pronounced judgement.

‘You are altogether too appetising, both of you. You've got to disguise yourselves a bit.'

Mara knew she was in danger: she felt her aptitude for fertility strong in her body, and had seen that her black shining hair and her new soft breasts had invited stares. And Dann was a handsome youth and, with all his scars and weals well hidden, looked like a sleek and well fed member of the Kin.

‘Runaway slaves,' said Felice. ‘That's what you are and that's what you look like. You're an invitation to any slave trader. And don't imagine that all slavers are sweet and kind like me.'

‘Tell me,' said Mara, ‘if you had sold me and Dann to the Hadrons, what would you have got for us?'

‘Not much. You were in such a terrible state. In good condition, the equivalent of one of your gold coins. Yes, you are right – it was easy to let you go because I wouldn't have got anything for you anyway.'

Mara smiled: this exchange was without ill-feeling.

‘So I can see I'm not going to make you believe in my kind heart.'

‘Have you got a lot saved?' asked Dann.

‘I'm glad to say, yes. A profitable business, buying and selling people.'

Now she went to her machine, and took from it one of her working uniforms, faded blue, top and trousers and belt, and said, ‘I'll charge you as little as I can.' Dann counted small coins into her hand till she said it was enough. ‘You wear it,' she said to him. ‘You are in even worse danger than your sister is.'

‘I know I am,' said Dann, and this acknowledgement eased Mara's anxiety, for she had seen how he had been looked at recently, in Chelops. He stripped off his robe, put it into his sack and for a moment stood almost naked. He had on a small loin cloth. Felice laughed and said that she could fancy him herself, but unfortunately fate would soon separate them. Dann responded to Felice's flirting, and that cheered Mara too. For she secretly feared Dann's returning to drugs, and being used by men again.

He put on the tunic and trousers, slipped his knife into a pocket, and again the two stood side by side.

‘Better,' said Felice. ‘You could pass for a workman and his slave.' She fetched water and bread from the skimmer, and the three sat on the earth and ate and drank. Around them stretched the yellow, beaten-down grasses of the dry season, and under them was the soft detritus of last year's wet season, for there had been rain here, if not enough. The sky was tall, and so blue, and there was only a little dust in the air.

‘We have a long flight,' said Felice. ‘And when we get to the next town you must go straight to the river and make sure of your places in
tomorrow's boat. Then go for the night to an address I will give you. Pretend you are a couple, it will be safer. Don't go into the town, they don't like travellers. If I can refuel I'll leave straight away for the East. I'm going to sell the skimmer. It's too hard to get sugar-oil and spare parts.'

‘And then?' asked Dann.

‘Then I'll take what turns up.' They could see that the idea of throwing herself on the chances of luck invigorated her. ‘I might buy a boat with the skimmer money and run a river service instead.'

‘And I suppose I won't see you again,' said Mara.

‘Well, that's how we live now: we meet people, we become friends, and then that's it. Perhaps we'll run across each other somewhere or other.'

Dann was drawing a shape in the dust. It was Ifrik. He put a bit of straw down for Rustam, a little stone for the Rock Village, a leaf for Chelops, and then handed Felice a pebble and said, ‘Where will we be tonight?'

Felice put down the stone half a hand's span from Chelops. Now it took the span of Dann's hand, his long fingers at full stretch, to reach between Rustam and where they were going. He said to Mara, ‘See how far we've gone already?'

Felice watched this, not smiling: Mara could see she did not believe they would get much farther.

Mara said, ‘We did well in Chelops, and you didn't think we would.'

‘True,' said Felice. ‘And, anyway, good luck. I don't know why I like you two, but I do.'

‘Luck?' said Dann. ‘It's knowing that matters.' He pointed to the place where Felice had said they were going, and said, ‘On the globe this area was all green, and it was full of rivers.'

‘What globe?' said Felice.

‘Of how the world was long ago.'

Felice shrugged. ‘I don't know anything about that.'

‘On the map that has the Ice all over the north of the world, the north part of Ifrik is not brown, the way it is on the globe, because before the Ice it was all desert – all the north of Ifrik was a desert. But it isn't now. And on the globe the only part that is green is where we are going: rivers and a lot of green.'

‘Rivers, yes,' said Felice. ‘But not much green, you'll find.' Then, ‘But I don't know what you are talking about, not really.' She was offended.
‘And let me give you a word of advice. Not all the tall tales you hear in the Mahondi quarter are true. They go in for a lot of mystification, you know, to impress people.'

And they were off, the sun standing above them, and beneath them the scrubby plain; and then the sun was on their left, shining hot and clear, not dulled by dust; and then it was low; and below them was a river and a small town that as they came down seemed full of people. They landed. The people were what Mara was now used to: a mix of every kind of person, with every shade of skin, and hair sometimes straight and sometimes frizzed, and of every colour. There were no Mahondis, no Hadrons, and none of the kind who looked all the same.

Already there was a small crowd around the machine. Felice told Mara and Dann an address, pointed where they should go, said, ‘See you some time, somewhere,' and flew off, this time to the East.

Mara and Dann were surrounded by staring, curious eyes. Not hostile, or at least not yet. They walked quickly to where they had been directed, followed by stares. It was hot, the wet heat, and they could feel the sweat trickling, and the air going into their lungs was like steam.

The houses were of wood, a few of mud bricks. The roofs were of grass. It looked a prosperous enough place, certainly not threatened with emptying, as Felice had said these River Towns were.

They found a little house in a lane. They walked into a room where a big, homely woman was cutting up roots. She looked them up and down, heard that Felice had recommended them, nodded, and said, ‘Sit down.' They sat at a big, wooden table, laid with bowls and spoons for supper. She put questions to them, which they answered guardedly, saying that they had come from Chelops. She nodded and said, ‘Yes, refugees from Chelops have become rather more than we can manage.'

Dann asked where the landing stage was, and she said that she would send her son to book them places. Her advice was to stay indoors until they had to go to the boat. ‘A lot of refugees have been robbed,' she said. ‘You don't look as if you've got much to steal, but one never knows. And there have been a couple of slavers around, too.' Here she examined Mara's slave dress, but said nothing.

She fed them the kind of supper that Mara had not eaten for a long time, of stewed roots, and bread: this was hardly the fare that the Mahondis were used to.

She did not ask what their relationship was, but showed them a room at the back, with barred windows. The room had several beds in it. Mara
lay where she could watch the window, and Dann squatted on a bed, and counted out the small money Candace had given them, then dividing it and putting it into little leather bags. He gave her half. He counted the nine gold coins he had left, and tried various places to put them, an inner pocket, his shoes, but ended by choosing one of the little leather bags, where they could seem only another purse of cheap coins. They checked their store of bread, and decided they should try to buy more from their landlady.

All this went on for a good hour or more, the contriving and planning.

Mara thought, And this is the difference between having enough, as in Chelops, when all this business of keeping alive takes care of itself, just one of the things you do, and being on the edge, when you think of nothing else.

They slept, and in the night woke to see the dark outlines of two people trying to get in at the window, but the bars held. They slept again, and Mara dreamed of Meryx and woke thinking she was in his arms. But it was not the dream that had woken her. Dann was thrashing about and fighting in his sleep, and was muttering threats, ‘I'll kill you,' with names Mara could not catch, but she thought she heard him say Kulik.

In the morning she told him he had been dreaming. He said he knew that: he had terrible nightmares most nights. She asked about Kulik, but Dann said that he was only one of the suppliers. Clearly he did not want to talk about it, and they went down, and were given hot tea made from some plant the woman said grew on the river bank, and some bread. They paid what she asked for, enquired if they could buy some bread, were given a few pieces, for a couple of little coins, and went as fast as they could to the river.

A big boat, about thirty paces in length, and half as much wide, was tied up to a stump, and people were already going aboard. Mara and Dann took their places on a bench under a little roof of reeds, and felt the wet river heat soak them and their clothes. There were tiny biting insects, in clouds. The passengers were making fans from anything they had, bits of clothing, their hands, even a flap of bread. Then a boy came running and jumped on to the boat just as it moved. He was selling fans made of river grass. Mara and Dann bought two and sat fanning away the insects, while the boy made a prodigious leap from the boat to the bank, earning applause, and the town they had scarcely seen moved away from them into the past.