The barge was long and narrow, buoyed on pontoon-like floats so that
it rode high even with a full cargo. Pontoons, hull, and deck were
metal. There had not been any trees for ship-building for a very long
time. In the center of the deck was a low cabin where several people
might sleep, and forward toward the blunt bow was a fire-pit where the
cooking was done. The motive power was animal, four of the scaly-hided,
bad-tempered, hissing beasts of Martian burden plodding along the canal
bank with a tow-cable.
The pace was slow. Carey had wanted to go across country direct to
Barrakesh, but Derech had forbidden it.
"I can't take a caravan. All my business goes by the canal, and
everyone knows it. So you and I would have to go alone, riding by night
and hiding by day, and saving no time at all." He jabbed his thumb at
the sky. "Wales will come when you least expect him and least want him.
On the barge you'll have a place to hide, and I'll have enough men to
discourage him if he should be rash enough to interfere with a trader
going about his normal and lawful business."
"He wouldn't be above it," Carey said gloomily.
"But only when he's desperate. That will be later."
So the barge went gliding gently on its way southward along the thread
of dark water that was the last open artery of what had once been an
ocean. It ran snow-water now, melt from the polar cap. There were
villages beside the canal, and areas of cultivation where long fields
showed a startling green against the reddish-yellow desolation. Again
there were places where the sand had moved like an army, overwhelming
the fields and occupying the houses, so that only mounded heaps would
show where a village had been. There were bridges, some of them sound
and serving the living, others springing out of nowhere and standing
like broken rainbows against the sky. By day there was the stinging
sunlight that hid nothing, and by night the two moons laid a shifting
loveliness on the land. And if Carey had not been goaded by a terrible
impatience he would have been happy.
But all this, if Woodthorpe and the Rehabilitation Project had their
way, would go. The waters of the canals would be impounded behind
great dams far to the north, and the sparse populations would be
moved and settled on new land. Deep-pumping operations, tapping the
underground sources that fed the wells, would make up the winter
deficit when the cap was frozen. The desert would be transformed, for
a space anyway, into a flowering garden. Who would not prefer it to
this bitter marginal existence? Who could deny that this was Bad and
the Rehabilitation Project Good? No one but the people and Dr. Matthew
Carey. And no one would listen to them.
At Sinharat lay the only possible hope of making them listen.
* * * * *
The sky remained empty. Arrin spent most of her time on deck, sitting
among the heaped-up bales. Carey knew that she watched him a great deal
but he was not flattered. He thought that she hated him because he was
putting Derech in danger of his life. He wished that Derech had left
her behind.
On the fourth day at dawn the wind dropped to a flat calm. The sun
burned hot, setting sand and rock to shimmering. The water of the canal
showed a surface like polished glass, and in the east the sharp line
of the horizon thickened and blurred and was lost in a yellow haze.
Derech stood sniffing like a hound at the still air, and around noon he
gave the order to tie up. The crew, ten of them, ceased to lounge on
the bales and got to work, driving steel anchor pins for the cables,
rigging a shelter for the beasts, checking the lashings of the deck
cargo. Carey and Derech worked beside them, and when he looked up
briefly from his labors Carey saw Arrin crouched over the fire-pit in
the midst of a great smoke, cooking furiously. The eastern sky became
a wall, a wave curling toward the zenith, sooty ochre below, a blazing
brass-color at its crest. It rushed across the land, roared, and broke
upon them.
They helped each other to the cabin and crouched knee to knee in
the tight space, the twelve men and Arrin, while the barge kicked
and rolled, sank down deep and shot upward, struggling like a live
thing under the blows of the wind. Dust and sand sifted through every
vent-hole, tainting the air with a bitter taste. There was a sulphurous
darkness, and the ear was deafened. Carey had been through sand-storms
before, and he wished that he was out in the open where he was used to
it, and where he did not have to worry about the barge turning turtle
and drowning him idiotically on the dryest world in the System. And
while all this was going on, Arrin was grimly guarding her pot.
The wind stopped its wild gusting and settled to a steady gale. When it
appeared that the barge was going to remain upright after all, the men
ate from Arrin's pot and were glad of the food. After that most of them
went down into the hold to sleep because there was more room there.
Arrin put the lid back on the pot and weighted it to keep the sand out,
and then she said quietly to Derech,
"Why is it that you have to go--where you're going?"
"Because Dr. Carey believes that there are records there that may
convince the Rehabilitation people that our "primitives" know what they
are talking about."
Carey could not see her face clearly in the gloom, but he thought she
was frowning, thinking hard.
"You believe," she said to Carey. "Do you know?"
"I know that there were records, once. They're referred to in other
records. Whether they still exist or not is another matter. But
because of the peculiar nature of the place, and of the people who made
them, I think it is possible."