Wales shrugged. "My assignment was to bring you in. I take it there
won't be any more trouble about that now--if any of us get out of here.
Incidentally, I saw what was happening at Barrakesh, and I can testify
that you could not possibly have had any part in it. I'm positive that
some of my superiors are thundering asses, but that's nothing new,
either. So go ahead. I won't hinder you."
* * * * *
Carey had gone ahead, on a minimum of water, sleep, and the dry desert
rations he had in his belt-pouch. Two and a half days were gone, and
the taste of defeat was getting stronger in his mouth by the hour. Time
was getting short, no one could say how short. And then almost casually
he crawled over a great fallen block of marble into a long room with
rows of vault doors on either side, and a hot wave of excitement burned
away his weariness. The bars of beautiful rustless alloy slid easily
under his hands. And he was dazed at the treasure of knowledge that
he had found, tortured by the realization that he could only take a
fraction of it with him and might well never see the rest of it again.
* * * * *
The Ramas had arranged their massive archives according to a simple and
orderly dating system. It did not take him long to find the records he
wanted, but even that little time was almost too much.
Derech came shouting after him. Carey closed the vault he was in and
scrambled back over the fallen block, clutching the precious spools.
"Flier!" Derech kept saying. "Hurry!" Carey could hear the distant
cries of the Shunni.
He ran with Derech and the cries came closer. The warriors had seen the
flier too and now they knew that they must come into the city. Carey
raced through the narrow twisting street that led to the square. When
he came into it he could see the flier hanging on its rotors about
thirty feet overhead, very ginger about coming down in that cramped
space. Wales and the Martians were frantically waving. The Shunni came
in two waves, one from the well-stair and one up the cliffs. Carey
picked up his axe. The shockers began to crackle.
He hoped they would hold the Drylanders off because he did not want to
have to kill anyone, and he particularly did not want to get killed,
not right now. "Get to the flier!" Wales yelled at him, and he saw
that it was just settling down, making a great wind and dust. The
warriors in the forefront of the attack were dropping or staggering as
the stunning charges hit them, sparking off their metal ornaments and
the tips of their spears. The first charge was broken up, but no one
wanted to stay for the second. Derech had Arrin and was lifting her
bodily into the flier. Hands reached out and voices shouted unnecessary
pleas for haste. Carey threw away his axe and jumped for the hatch.
The Martians crowded in on top of him and then Wales, and the pilot
took off so abruptly that Wales' legs were left dangling outside. Carey
caught him and pulled him in. Wales laughed, in an odd wild way, and
the flier rose up among the towers of Sinharat in a rattle of flung
spears.
* * * * *
The technicians had had trouble regearing their equipment to the
Rama microtapes. The results were still far from perfect, but the
United Worlds Planetary Assistance Committee, hastily assembled at
Kahora, were not interested in perfection. They were Alan Woodthorpe's
superiors, and they had a decision to make, and little time in which
to make it. The great tide was beginning to roll north out of the
Drylands, moving at the steady marching pace of the desert beasts. And
Woodthorpe could no longer blame this all on Carey.
Looking subdued and rather frightened, Woodthorpe sat beside Carey
in the chamber where the hearing was being held. Derech was there,
and Wales, and some high brass from the City-States who were getting
afraid for their borders, and two Dryland chiefs who knew Carey as
Carey, not as a tribesman, and trusted him enough to come in. Carey
thought bitterly that this hearing should have been held long ago.
Only the Committee had not understood the potential seriousness of
the situation. They had been told, plainly and often. But they had
preferred to believe experts like Woodthorpe rather than men like
Carey, who had some specialized knowledge but were not trained to
evaluate the undertaking as a whole.
Now in a more chastened mood they watched as Carey's tapes went
whispering through the projectors.
They saw an island city in a blue sea. People moved in its streets.
There were ships in its harbors and the sounds of life. Only the sea
had shrunk down from the tops of the coral cliffs. The lagoon was a
shallow lake wide-rimmed with beaches, and the outer reef stood bare
above a feeble surf. A man's voice spoke in the ancient High Martian,
somewhat distorted by the reproduction and blurred by the voice of a
translator speaking Esperanto. Carey shut his ears to everything but
the voice, the man, who spoke across the years.
"Nature grins at us these days, reminding us that even planets die. We
who have loved life so much that we have taken the lives of countless
others in order to retain it, can now see the beginning of our own
inevitable end. Even though this may yet be thousands of years in
the future, the thought of it has had strange effects. For the first
time some of our people are voluntarily choosing death. Others demand
younger and younger hosts, and change them constantly. Most of us have
come to have some feeling of remorse, not for our immortality but for
the method by which we achieved it.
"One murder can be remembered and regretted. Ten thousand murders
become as meaningless as ten thousand love affairs or ten thousand
games of chess. Time and repetition grind them all to the same dust.
Yet now we do regret, and a naive passion has come to us, a passion to
be forgiven, if not by our victims then perhaps by ourselves.
"Thus our great project is undertaken. The people of Kharif, because
their coasts are accessible and their young people exceptionally
handsome and sturdy, have suffered more from us than any other single
nation. We will try now to make some restitution."
* * * * *
The scene shifted from Sinharat to a desolate stretch of desert
coastline beside the shrunken sea. The land had once been populous.
There were the remains of cities and town, connected by paved roads.
There had been factories and power stations, all the appurtenances of
an advanced technology. These were now rusting away, and the wind blew
ochre dust to bury them.
"For a hundred years," said the Rama voice, "it has not rained."
There was an oasis, with wells of good water. Tall brown-haired men and
women worked the well-sweeps, irrigating fields of considerable extent.
There was a village of neat huts, housing perhaps a thousand people.
"Mother Mars has killed far more of her children than we. The fortunate
survivors live in 'cities' like these. The less fortunate...."
A long line of beasts and hooded human shapes moved across a bitter
wasteland. And the Dryland chiefs cried out, "Our people!"
"We will give them water again," said the Rama voice.
The spool ended. In the brief interval before the next one began,
Woodthorpe coughed uneasily and muttered, "This was all long ago,
Carey. The winds of change...."
"Are blowing up a real storm, Woodthorpe. You'll see why."
The tapes began again. A huge plant now stood at the edge of the sea,
distilling fresh water from the salt. A settlement had sprung up beside
it, with fields and plantations of young trees.
"It has gone well," said the Rama voice. "It will go better with time,
for their short generations move quickly."
The settlement became a city. The population grew, spread, built more
cities, planted more crops. The land flourished.
"Many thousands live," the Rama said, "who would otherwise not have
been born. We have repaid our murders."
The spool ended.