"Then I'll go with you. I'd rather see what happens to you than wait
and wait and never know." As though that settled it, she curled up in
her bunk and went to sleep.
Carey slept too, uneasily, dreaming shadowed dreams of Sinharat and
waking from them in the dusty claustrophobic dark to feel hopelessly
that he would never see it.
By mid-morning the storm had blown itself out, but now there was a
sandbar forty feet long blocking the channel. The beasts were hitched
to scoops brought up from the hold and put to dredging, and every man
aboard stripped and went in with a shovel.
Carey dug in the wet sand, his taller stature and lighter skin
perfectly separating him from the smaller, darker Low-Canallers.
He felt obvious and naked, and he kept a wary eye cocked toward the
heavens. Once he got among the Drylanders, Wales would have to look
very hard indeed to spot him. At Valkis, where there was some trade
with the desert men, Derech would be able to get him the proper
clothing and Carey would arrive at the Gateway, Barrakesh, already
in the guise of a wandering tribesman. Until then he would have to
be careful, both of Wales and the local canal-dwellers, who had very
little to choose between Earthmen and the Drylanders who occasionally
raided this far north, stripping their fields and stealing their women.
In spite of Carey's watchfulness, it was Derech who gave the alarm.
About the middle of the afternoon he suddenly shouted Carey's name.
Carey, laboring now in a haze of sweat and weariness, looked up and saw
Derech pointing at the sky. Carey dropped his shovel and dived for the
water.
* * * * *
The barge was close by, but the flier came so fast that by the time
he had reached the ladder he knew he could not possibly climb aboard
without being seen. Arrin's voice said calmly from overhead,
"Dive under. There's room."
Carey caught a breath and dived. The water was cold, and the sunlight
slanting through it showed it thick and roiled from the storm. The
shadow of the barge made a total darkness into which Carey plunged.
When he thought he was clear of the broad pontoons he surfaced, hoping
Arrin had told the truth. She had. There was space to breathe, and
between the pontoons he could watch the flier come in low and hover
on its rotors above the canal, watching. Then it landed. There were
several men in it, but only Howard Wales got out.
Derech went to talk to him. The rest of the men kept on working, and
Carey saw that the extra shovel had vanished into the water. Wales
kept looking at the barge. Derech was playing with him, and Carey
cursed. The icy chill of the water was biting him to the bone. Finally,
to Wales' evident surprise, Derech invited him aboard. Carey swam
carefully back and forth in the dark space under the hull, trying to
keep his blood moving. After a long long time, a year or two, he saw
Wales walking back to the flier. It seemed another year before the
flier took off. Carey fought his way out from under the barge and into
the sunlight again, but he was too stiff and numb to climb the ladder.
Arrin and Derech had to pull him up.
"Anyone else," said Derech, "would be convinced. But this one--he gives
his opponent credit for all the brains and deceitfulness he needs."
He poured liquor between Carey's chattering teeth and wrapped him in
thick blankets and put him in a bunk. Then he said, "Could Wales have
any way of guessing where we're going?"
Carey frowned. "I suppose he could, if he bothered to go through all my
monographs and papers."
"I'm sure he's bothered."
"It's all there," Carey said dismally. "How we tried it once
and failed--and what I hoped to find, though the Rehabilitation
Act hadn't come along then, and it was pure archeological
interest. And I have, I know, mentioned the Ramas to Woodthorpe
when I was arguing with him about the advisability of all these
earth-shattering--mars-shattering--changes. Why? Did Wales say
something?"
"He said, 'Barrakesh will tell the story.'"
"He did, did he?" said Carey viciously. "Give me the bottle." He took a
long pull and the liquor went into him like fire into glacial ice. "I
wish to heaven I'd been able to steal a flier."
Derech shook his head. "You're lucky you didn't. They'd have had you
out of the sky in an hour."
"Of course you're right. It's just that I'm in a hurry." He drank again
and then he smiled, a very unscholarly smile. "If the gods are good to
me, someday I'll have Mr. Wales between my hands."
* * * * *
The local men came along that evening, about a hundred of them with
teams and implements. They had already worked all day clearing other
blocks, but they worked without question all that night and into the
next day, each man choosing his own time to fall out and sleep when
he could no longer stand up. The canal was their life, and their law
said that the canal came first, before wife, child, brother, parent,
or self, and it was a hanging matter. Carey stayed out of sight in the
cabin, feeling guilty about not helping but not too guilty. It was
backbreaking work. They had the channel clear by the middle of the
morning, and the barge moved on southward.
Three days later a line of cliffs appeared in the east, far away at
first but closing gradually until they marched beside the canal. They
were high and steep, colored softly in shades of red and gold. The
faces of the rock were fantastically eroded by a million years of water
and ten millennia of wind. These were the rim of the sea-basin, and
presently Carey saw in the distance ahead a shimmering line of mist on
the desert where another canal cut through it. They were approaching
Valkis.
It was sunset when they reached it. The low light struck in level
shafts against the cliffs. Where the angle was right, it shone through
the empty doors and window holes of the five cities that sprawled
downward over the ledges of red-gold rock. It seemed as though
hearthfires burned there, and warm lamp-light to welcome home men weary
from the sea. But in the streets and squares and on the long flights
of rock-cut steps only slow shadows moved with the sinking sun. The
ancient quays stood stark as tombstones, marking the levels where new
harbors had been built and then abandoned as the water left them, and
the high towers that had flown the banners of the Sea-Kings were bare
and broken.
Only the lowest city lived, and only a part of that, but it lived
fiercely, defiant of the cold centuries towering over it. From the
barge deck Carey watched the torches flare out like yellow stars in the
twilight, and he heard voices, and the wild and lovely music of the
double-banked harps. The dry wind had a smell in it of dusty spices
and strange exotic things. The New Culture had not penetrated here,
and Carey was glad, though he did think that Valkis could stand being
cleaned up just a little without hurting it any. They had two or three
vices for sale there that were quite unbelievable.
"Stay out of sight," Derech told him, "till I get back."
It was full dark when they reached their mooring, at an ancient stone
dock beside a broad square with worn old buildings on three sides of
it. Derech went into the town and so did the crew, but for different
reasons. Arrin stayed on deck, lying on the bales with her chin on her
wrists, staring at the lights and listening to the noises like a sulky
child forbidden to play some dangerous but fascinating game. Derech did
not allow her in the streets alone.
Out of sheer boredom, Carey went to sleep.
He did not know how long he had slept, a few minutes or a few hours,
when he was wakened sharply by Arrin's wildcat scream.