"I can sleep on the way," said Carey, and Derech looked at him with
amber eyes as coldly speculative as a cat's.
* * * * *
Carey did not press him. The room was large, richly furnished with
the bare, spare, faded richness of a world that had very little left
to give in the way of luxury. Some of the things were fairly new,
made in the traditional manner by Martian craftsmen. They were almost
indistinguishable from the things that had been old when the Reed Kings
and the Bee Kings were little boys along the Nile-bank.
"What will happen," Derech asked, "if they catch you?"
"Oh," said Carey, "they'll deport me first. Then the United Worlds
Court will try me, and they can't do anything but find me guilty.
They'll hand me over to Earth for punishment, and there will be
further investigations and penalties and fines and I'll be a thoroughly
broken man when they've finished, and sorry enough for it. Though I
think they'll be sorrier in the long run."
"That won't help matters any," said Derech.
"No."
"Why," asked Derech, "why is it that they will not listen?"
"Because they know that they are right."
Derech said an evil word.
"But they do. I've sabotaged the Rehabilitation Project as much as
I possibly could. I've rechanneled funds and misdirected orders so
they're almost two years behind schedule. These are the things they'll
try me for. But my real crime is that I have questioned Goodness and
the works thereof. Murder they might forgive me, but not that."
He added wearily, "You'll have to decide quickly. The UW boys are
working closely with the Council of City-States, and Jekkara is no
longer untouchable. It's also the first place they'll look for me."
"I wondered if that had occurred to you." Derech frowned. "That doesn't
bother me. What does bother me is that I know where you want to go.
We tried it once, remember? We ran for our lives across that damned
desert. Four solid days and nights." He shivered.
"Send me as far as Barrakesh. I can disappear there, join a southbound
caravan. I intend to go alone."
"If you intend to kill yourself, why not do it here in comfort and
among friends? Let me think," Derech said. "Let me count my years and
my treasure and weigh them against a probable yard of sand."
Flames hissed softly around the coals in the brazier. Outside, the wind
got up and started its ancient work, rubbing the house walls with tiny
grains of dust, rounding off the corners, hollowing the window places.
All over Mars the wind did this, to huts and palaces, to mountains and
the small burrow-heaps of animals, laboring patiently toward a city
when the whole face of the planet should be one smooth level sea of
dust. Only lately new structures of metal and plastic had appeared
beside some of the old stone cities. They resisted the wearing sand.
They seemed prepared to stay forever. And Carey fancied that he could
hear the old wind laughing as it went.
* * * * *
There was a scratching against the closed shutter in the back wall,
followed by a rapid drumming of fingertips. Derech rose, his face
suddenly alert. He rapped twice on the shutter to say that he
understood and then turned to Carey. "Finish your wine."
He took the cup and went into another room with it. Carey stood up.
Mingling with the sound of the wind outside, the gentle throb of motors
became audible, low in the sky and very near.
Derech returned and gave Carey a shove toward an inner wall. Carey
remembered the pivoted stone that was there, and the space behind it.
He crawled through the opening. "Don't sneeze or thrash about," said
Derech. "The stonework is loose, and they'd hear you."
He swung the stone shut. Carey huddled as comfortably as possible in
the uneven hole, worn smooth with the hiding of illegal things for
countless generations. Air and a few faint gleams of light seeped
through between the stone blocks, which were set without mortar as in
most Martian construction. He could even see a thin vertical segment of
the room.
When the sharp knock came at the door, he discovered that he could hear
quite clearly.
Derech moved across his field of vision. The door opened. A man's voice
demanded entrance in the name of the United Worlds and the Council of
Martian City-States.
"Please enter," said Derech.
Carey saw, more or less fragmentarily, four men. Three were Martians in
the undistinguished cosmopolitan garb of the City-States. They were the
equivalent of the FBI. The fourth was an Earthman, and Carey smiled to
see the measure of his own importance. The spare, blond, good-looking
man with the sunburn and the friendly blue eyes might have been an
actor, a tennis-player, or a junior executive on holiday. He was Howard
Wales, Earth's best man in Interpol.
Wales let the Martians do the talking, and while they did it he drifted
unobtrusively about, peering through doorways, listening, touching,
_feeling_. Carey became fascinated by him, in an unpleasant sort of
way. Once he came and stood directly in front of Carey's crevice in the
wall. Carey was afraid to breathe, and he had a dreadful notion that
Wales would suddenly turn about and look straight in at him through the
crack.
The senior Martian, a middle-aged man with an able look about him,
was giving Derech a briefing on the penalties that awaited him if he
harbored a fugitive or withheld information. Carey thought that he was
being too heavy about it. Even five years ago he would not have dared
to show his face in Jekkara. He could picture Derech listening amiably,
lounging against something and playing with the jewel in his ear.
Finally Derech got bored with it and said without heat,
"Because of our geographical position, we have been exposed to the New
Culture." The capitals were his. "We have made adjustments to it. But
this is still Jekkara and you're here on sufference, no more. Please
don't forget it."
Wales spoke, deftly forestalling any comment from the City-Stater.
"You've been Carey's friend for many years, haven't you?"
"We robbed tombs together in the old days."
"'Archeological research' is a nicer term, I should think."
"My very ancient and perfectly honorable guild never used it. But I'm
an honest trader now, and Carey doesn't come here."
He might have added a qualifying "often," but he did not.