"I don't understand."
"On whether, and how soon, somebody sends a flier out here to see what
happened to him." He patted the water-bags. "That's why these are so
important. They give us time."
They started up the stair again, treading in the worn hollows made by
other feet. The Ramas must have come this way for water for a very long
time. Presently a weak daylight filtered down to them. And then a man's
voice, tight with panic, cried out somewhere above them, "I hear them!
They're coming...."
The voice of Howard Wales answered sharply. "Wait!" Then in English it
called down, "Carey. Dr. Carey. Is that you?"
"It is," Carey shouted back.
"Thank Heaven," said Wales. "I saw you, but I wasn't sure.... Come up,
man, come up, and welcome. We're all in the same trap now."
V
Sinharat was a city without people, but it was not dead. It had a
memory and a voice. The wind gave it breath, and it sang, from the
countless tiny organ-pipes of the coral, from the hollow mouths of
marble doorways and the narrow throats of streets. The slender towers
were like tall flutes, and the wind was never still. Sometimes the
voice of Sinharat was soft and gentle, murmuring about everlasting
youth and the pleasures thereof. Again it was strong and fierce with
pride, crying _You die, but I do not!_ Sometimes it was mad, laughing
and hateful. But always the song was evil.
Carey could understand now why Sinharat was tabu. It was not only
because of an ancient dread. It was the city itself, now, in the sharp
sunlight or under the gliding moons. It was a small city. There had
never been more than perhaps three thousand Ramas, and this remote
little island had given them safety and room enough. But they had built
close, and high. The streets ran like topless tunnels between the walls
and the towers reached impossibly thin and tall into the sky. Some of
them had lost their upper storeys and some had fallen entirely, but in
the main they were still beautiful. The colors of the marble were still
lovely. Many of the buildings were perfect and sound, except that wind
and time had erased the carvings on their walls so that only in certain
angles of light did a shadowy face leap suddenly into being, prideful
and mocking with smiling lips, or a procession pass solemnly toward
some obliterated worship.
Perhaps it was only the wind and the half-seen watchers that gave
Sinharat its feeling of eerie wickedness. Carey did not think so. The
Ramas had built something of themselves into their city, and it was
rather, he imagined, as one of the Rama women might have been had one
met her, graceful and lovely but with something wrong about the eyes.
Even the matter-of-fact Howard Wales was uncomfortable in the city, and
the three surviving City-State men who were with him went about like
dogs with their tails tight to their bellies. Even Derech lost some of
his cheerful arrogance, and Arrin never left his side.
The feeling was worse inside the buildings. Here were the halls and
chambers where the Ramas had lived. Here were the possessions they
had handled, the carvings and faded frescoes they had looked at.
The ever-young, the Ever-living immortals, the stealers of others'
lives, had walked these corridors and seen themselves reflected in
the surfaces of polished marble, and Carey's nerves quivered with the
nearness of them after all this long time.
There were traces of a day when Sinharat had had an advanced technology
equal to, if not greater, than any Carey had yet seen on Mars. The
inevitable reversion to the primitive had come with the exhaustion of
resources. There was one rather small room where much wrecked equipment
lay in crystal shards and dust, and Carey knew that this was the place
where the Ramas had exchanged their old bodies for new. From some
of the frescoes, done with brilliantly sadistic humor, he knew that
the victims were generally killed soon, but not too soon, after the
exchange was completed.
* * * * *
Still he could not find the place where the archives had been kept.
Outside, Wales and his men, generally with Derech's help and Arrin
as a lookout, were sweating to clear away rubble from the one square
that was barely large enough for a flier to land in. Wales had been in
contact with Kahora before the unexpected attack. They knew where he
was, and when there had been too long a time without a report from him
they would certainly come looking. If they had a landing place cleared
by then, and the scanty water supply, severely rationed, kept them
alive, and the Shunni did not become impatient, they would be all right.
"Only," Carey told them, "if that flier does come, be ready to jump
quick. Because the Shunni will attack then."
He had not had any trouble with Howard Wales. He had expected it. He
had come up the last of the stairway with his axe ready. Wales shook
his head. "I have a heavy-duty shocker," he said. "Even so, I wouldn't
care to take you on. You can put down the axe, Dr. Carey."
The Martians were armed too. Carey knew they could have taken him
easily. Perhaps they were saving their charges against the Shunni, who
played the game of war for keeps.