They set out for the shrine. Meanwhile, half a dozen horsemen came in
from the other end of the shelf. One, overtaking Verrill and the chief,
slowed down enough to exchange a hail, and then pressed on. Before they
came to the shrine, the rider had finished his business with Kwangtan,
and was leaving.
He circled wide, to avoid an encounter. This made Verrill uneasy. The
man was dust-caked, sweat-drenched, and sagging.
Ardelan frowned. "More trouble! That's one of the outpost guards. I
wish I could have just the right amount of raiding, and no more."
"He might have told you what it was about."
"He will, at the sunset council. But Kwangtan has to dip his long nose
into everything first, or he makes trouble."
They got the news in a hurry.
Standing in the entrance of the shrine, Kwangtan cursed his chief and
the doctor as well. "Get that fellow out of here! He's come to steal
the Fire of Skanderbek. And you're a fool for allowing him around here!"
Ardelan endured the cursing until he had a chance to ask, "Have you had
another vision, Holy One?"
"The man who just rode up told me what I had already learned from the
fire gods. This Verrill has promised the ruby to one of his women."
"Who said that?" Verrill demanded.
"One of your own people who fly down from heaven. One called Dawson.
At the trading-post. Dawson talked about you to our men, and to our
neighbors."
"You stick to your own business," Ardelan interposed, quietly. "He
will stick to his. He is an outlaw from his own people. Naturally, his
enemies try to harm him."
The snarling saint listened. He and Ardelan eyed each other. What
unspoken thought passed between them was beyond Verrill's guessing; yet
it must have had force, for Kwangtan offered no objection when Ardelan
said, "Verrill, come in with me and bow to the flame."
* * * * *
The interior of the shrine was much larger than the front had
suggested. This was because of a grotto in the overhang of the cliff.
From a rift in the natural shelf of rock came hissing jets of fire.
They wavered, varied, blending into each other and separating again.
Behind the low barrier of flames was a monstrous ruby, uncut, yet a
perfect hexagonal crystal, with edges clean and sharp. This was not
from any alluvial deposit, else the faces would have been dulled and
the edges chipped.
Whether or not the stone had been polished, Verrill could not even
surmise. At all events, this was a ruby that had come from the original
matrix, the rocky birthplace of gems. It collected all the wavering
light, transformed it, and poured it back again, transmuted into living
red. The crystal seemed to pulsate with a life of its own.
The beauty and the splendor made Verrill picture the Fire of
Skanderbek against Linda's white skin--and the wonder of it must have
showed in his face, rather than the resolve to have the gem at any
cost, for Kwangtan's radiant hostility softened perceptibly. Verrill
imitated Ardelan's gesture and bow: and the two withdrew from the
shrine.
"I don't doubt," said Ardelan, once he was in the saddle, and Verrill
tramping alongside, "that you'd steal it if you could get out of here
with it. Don't try it. Maybe I could--but probably I could not--save
your life."
"You'd not try any too hard."
"You are wrong," the chief countered, earnestly. "Slitting that kid's
gullet and not hurting him was something I'd never heard about. Maybe
you can be useful around here."
"Not with what Kwangtan thinks of me."
"It really depends on the women--though quite a few of the men believe
in the fire god."
"You don't," Verrill said, boldly. "Though you do wonder a lot about
fire that comes out of a rock, with no fuel."
"I don't wonder as much as you think. There's a place, far away from
here, where a blaze like that comes from the ground sometimes when a
camp fire is built too near it. But the wind whisks the flames out and
then there's nothing but a smell."
Verrill had by now revised somewhat his notions on savages. "Then why
do you put up with that wild-eyed fanatic?"
Ardelan smiled indulgently. "You people from the outside know many
strange things. How to come down from the stars. How to make guns. But
the few of you I've talked to are dog-ignorant when it comes to people.
The fire god is something our neighbors don't have. It makes us stick
together better, and keeps us from fighting among ourselves. Aren't any
of your people smart enough to have gods?"
Verrill answered, with feigned humility, "I came to teach you people a
few things but it seems I can learn something. Then it will be a fair
exchange."
The next day, he had Ardelan send a courier to the trading-post. The
man carried an order for a consignment of medical supplies to be
sent from the Venusian Domes via the next freighter. There was also a
letter for Linda, telling of the success of his first operation, and
of Dawson's first move to make trouble. "_But Gil was a bit late_,"
he wrote. "_I'd already got in pretty solid. That won't keep him from
trying something else. He must have talked a good deal before he left.
If you hear any gossip as to what he planned to do or how he intended
to do it, be sure and write me the details. From all I've seen of
Terra so far, they should have bombed it even more than they did. One
well-organized Dome is worth a dozen Earths. But the natives don't seem
to mind a bit...._"
* * * * *
Knife and gunshot wounds and fractures, Verrill reasoned, would
make up most of his practice: surgery, that is, in its engineering
aspect, rather than as a corrective of ailments. And the centuries,
fortunately, had worked to keep his task from being utterly beyond
a well-educated layman. Whereas in the twentieth century, there had
not been more than two or three specifics, there were now ten times
as many. It was a matter of taking the proper bottle, just as, in
ancient times, one had reached automatically for quinine, the primitive
specific against malaria.
Meanwhile, what had been his prison became his home and his dispensary.
During his wait for the shipment from Venus, he instituted a
garbage-disposal program. He condemned the shallow well, and had them
build a wooden flume from a spring high up on the mountainside. Each
radical move, however, had to wait until a cure he had effected assured
him of sufficient momentary popularity to enable him to kick an ancient
unsanitary practice overboard.
Then one night came a furtive sound at his door, as though someone were
trying to enter by stealth. A cold shiver trickled down his spine.
Though he doubted that the fire priest was coming to dispose of him,
there was all too much chance that Kwangtan had convinced one of the
tribe that carving the stranger would in the long run be beneficial.
Despite the warning, and Verrill's readiness for whatever might be
creeping up, he had his moment of terror. However well he handled
himself, he could not win--for if he killed an intruder, there would be
a blood feud.
Groping in the dark, he found a length of firewood. He had to end the
matter by knocking the other out before he could come to grips to make
it a finish fight. Stealthily, he skirted the wall. He heard the soft
mumble of the leather-hinged door as it dragged the hard earth. A
sliver of moonlight reached into the darkness. Barefooted, Verrill made
no sound as he evaded the widening streak of light. A patch of shadow
broke it. A dark shape edged into the gloom. Verrill measured the
distance. He gathered himself.
He had to make sure whether there was only that one, or whether others
had joined. He held his breath until his pulse hammered in his ears.
The motion at the door had stopped. He was afraid to exhale--
And then he breathed again.
The one who approached had long hair which mirrored red glints. She
had shifted enough for the moonlight to outline the curve of cheek and
throat, and hint at the smoothness of shoulder and ripeness of breast.
The arms were white and slender. Her stalking motion was beautiful even
in the obscurity.
There was a whisper of sandals, and of breath. She was then of a sudden
close against him, and seemingly not at all surprised. It was as though
she had expected him to be precisely where they met in the darkness.
He must have dropped the cudgel, for at the first touch of her, he was
stroking the sleek red hair, and with the other hand tracing the curve
of waist and back.
She snuggled closer, and he said, "Falana!" as though touch and taste
and smell had identified the girl as surely as sight. She was Falana,
the aunt of his first patient. She wore the shapeless, crude garments
of the tribe, yet it was as though there were neither homespun nor even
a wisp of air between them.
Falana had no words to waste as she found his mouth in the darkness.
There was nothing to explain. When he stepped back and further into
the gloom, she was close as ever; and, as if seeing in the darkness,
she seemed to know exactly where he spread his sheepskin mat--
She did know. Or else he must have remembered.
When Falana finally got around to talking with words, she did not tell
him how she had admired him from first sight, or that his surgery had
been marvelous. She said, "I'll bring my things over in the morning,"
and yawned contentedly, and snuggled closer.
* * * * *
Verrill spent a restless night, being intensely occupied in telling
himself, over and over again, that Venus was a long way off, and that
whatever happened on Terra did not really count, unless as a result he
became embroiled in feuds on Falana's account and to such an extent
that he would be unable to make off with the Fire of Skanderbek.
Well before dawn, Falana went to the door to get a small bundle she had
left lying at the jamb. Before Verrill knew what was happening, he got
his first whiff of breakfast cooked in his own home.
"Eating with neighbors," Falana observed, "must have been awful. And
you never know who might poison you."
Watching Falana patting oat cakes into shape, and baking them on a hot
rock, he began to see her as a very pleasant reality, though he could
not help but go long-faced when he considered how he had without doubt
inherited a few dangerous animosities as well.
She must have read his thought, for she said, "It's much better this
way, Verrill. You haven't more than maybe one-two-three enemies on my
account. But as long as you lived alone, doctoring all day while most
of the men are out with the flocks, they'd all be suspecting and hating
you."
There was nothing to explain to Ardelan. The chief seemed to have
been expecting something of the sort. "Falana," he said to Verrill,
"probably didn't get around to telling you this, but you can either
send her home, or else take her to the fire temple to get Kwangtan's
blessing. Then you won't be a stranger anymore, and you'll get along
better."
That very day, Falana and Verrill knelt before the altar of living
flame and passed their joined hands quickly through the fire. This
time, Verrill got a good look at the shrine as Kwangtan blessed them.
He likewise got a look at the surroundings. He noted Kwangtan's cell,
hewn out of the limestone cliff. He noted the cairns of rock raised
above the grave of each of Kwangtan's predecessors. Having sized up the
situation, he decided that his next move would be to ride a circuit of
Ardelan's territory, to treat those tribesmen who rarely if ever got
to town. By becoming acquainted with all the trails, he would have a
better chance of escaping with the Fire of Skanderbek.
Too bad he could not take Falana along. She would be a sensation, back
home. The most skilled cosmeticians of the Venusian Domes could not
begin to duplicate Falana's glowing red-bronze hair.