3 - Barbarians of Mars (16 page)

 
          
 
"His name is Mas Rava. He was once a
physician at the court of Mishim Tep, but he became afflicted with
philosophical notions and went off to the mountains somewhere in the far South,
Mas Rava had studied all the old Sheev texts he could find. But something
turned him into a contemplative and he was never seen again."

 
          
 
"When was he supposed to have been at the
court of Mishim Tep?" I asked.

 
          
 
"More than a hundred years ago.”

 
          
 
"Then he could be dead,"

 
          
 
"I am not sure. I never listened very
carefully to the stories about him in Mishim Tep. But one thing I remember -
they say he had given himself immortality."

 
          
 
"There is a slim chance that he still
exists, however," I said.

 
          
 
"Just a slim one,
yes."

 
          
 
"But the chances of finding him are even
slimmer in the time we have at our disposal," Camak pointed out.

 
          
 
"We could never find him in time,
whatever happened,' Hool Haji said.

 
          
 
Shizala said nothing. She simply bowed her
head and looked into the waters of the green lake.

 
          
 
Suddenly there came a cry from behind us and a
Pukan Nara - which was the name used on Vashu for a leader of a detachment of
warriors - came rushing towards us.

 
          
 
"What is it?" I asked him.

 
          
 
"One of our scouting airships has
returned," he said.

 
          
 
"Well?" Camak asked.

 
          
 
“The rabble is moving with unnatural rapidity.
They will be at the walls of Varnal within a day."

 
          
 
Damad glanced at me. "So soon?" he
said. "I would never have suspected it. By talking to them we seem to have
done ourselves a disservice."

 
          
 
"They are running," the Pukan-Nara
said. "From what the scout says, many drop exhausted or dead, but the rest
run. Something is causing them to rush towards Vamal. We must stop them!"

 
          
 
"We have considered all ways of stopping
them," I told him.

 
          
 
"We must fight them."

 
          
 
I clung to my rationality. "We must
not," I said wearily, though I was tempted to agree once again.

 
          
 
"Then what can we do?" the
Pukan-Nara asked desperately.

 
          
 
I came to the decision that had always really
been there.

 
          
 
"I know what this means to you," I
said. "It means the same to me - perhaps even more."

 
          
 
"What are you going to say, Michael
Kane?" asked my lovely wife.

 
          
 
"We must evacuate Varnal. We must let the
Green Death have her and must flee towards the mountains."

 
          
 
"Never I" cried Damad.

 
          
 
But Carnak put a hand on his son's arm.

 
          
 
"Michael Kane has brought us something
more valuable than life or even homeland," he said thoughtfully. "He
has brought us responsibility to ourselves - and thus to all men on Vashu. His
logic is inescapable, his reasons clear. We must do as he says."

 
          
 
"I will not!" Damad turned to me.

 
          
 
"Michael Kane!" he cried. "You
are my brother - I love you as my brother, as a great fighter, a great friend.
You cannot mean what you say. Let Varnal be taken over by that rabble - that
diseased people! You must be insane!"

 
          
 
"On the contrary," I said quietly.
"It is insanity that I fight.

 
          
 
I am striving to remain sane. Let your father
tell you - he knows what I mean."

 
          
 
"These are desperate times, Damad,"
Shizala said. "They are complicated times. Thus it is so much harder to
know the right action to take when action is called for. The people of the
Green Death, like the people of Cend-Amrid, are insane. To use violence against
them would be to encourage a different kind of insanity in ourselves. I think that
is what Michael Kane means."

 
          
 
"It is a great deal of what I mean."
I nodded. "If we give in to fear now, what will the Karnala become?"

 
          
 
"Fear!
But is
not flight cowardice?"

 
          
 
"There are varieties of cowardice, my
son," said Camak, rising. "I think that flight from Vamal - even
though we are strong enough easily to defeat that rabble advancing upon us - is
not so great a cowardice. It is a responsibility."

 
          
 
Damad shook his head. "I still do not
understand. Surely there is nothing wrong in defending our city against
aggression."

 
          
 
"There are different kinds of
aggressors," I said. "There were the Blue Giants of the Argzoon who
came against Varnal soon after I had arrived on Vashu. These were a folk of
comparatively healthy minds. It was a simple thing to fight them off. It was
all we could do. But, if violence is used in this case, we lose touch with our
whole cause - my whole cause, if you like, though I thought you all shared it.
That is to cure the disease at its source; to cure the double disease of body
and mind which has infected Cend-Amrid!"

 
          
 
Darnad looked at Hool Haji, who returned his
gaze and then looked away. He glanced at his father and his sister. They said
nothing.

 
          
 
He looked at me.

 
          
 
"I do not understand you, Michael Kane,
but I will try to," he said at length. "I trust you. If we must leave
Varnal then we must leave her."

 
          
 
And then Damad could no longer control the
tears that began to course down his face.

THE EXODUS

 
          
 
And that is why I hope you will understand how
a great city, healthy and strong, was left bereft of its population.

 
          
 
Warriors, craftsmen, women and children, left
Vamal in an orderly procession, bearing their possessions with them, the
airships - both of the Sheev pattern and my own design - drifting above them.
Some left, like Damad, weeping, others puzzled,
some
thoughtful, but all knowing in their hearts that it was right.

 
          
 
They left Vamal for a few diseased and deluded
souls to make what they wanted of it, or take what they wanted of it.

 
          
 
It was the only thing to do.

 
          
 
I am not normally a thoughtful man, as I have
told you, but I try to cling to certain principles, no matter how desperate the
situation or terrible the threat. Not through any dogmatism but, if you like,
from a fear of fear - fear of the actions one takes from fear, the thoughts one
deludes oneself with from fear.

 
          
 
I rode a dahara, side by side with Shizala on
my right and Hool Haji on my left. To his left was Camak, Bradhi of the Kanala;
to Shizala's right was Darnad, stem-faced and puzzled of eye.

 
          
 
Behind us rode or walked the proud folk of
Vamal, the graceful city of the Green Mists falling further and further behind
us.

 
          
 
Ahead were bleak mountains which we would make
our home until some hope could be found for those smitten by the Green
Death.

 
          
 
It was not merely the physical fate of Mars
that was at stake as we made our exodus from the city. It was the moral fate
-the psychological fate. We left Varnal so that Mars might still remain the
planet I loved and Vamal itself might remain the city where I felt most at
home.

 
          
 
We fought against fear and against hysteria
and against the dreadful, insane violence that these emotions bring.

 
          
 
We did not leave Vamal to set an example to
others. We left in order to set an example to ourselves.

 
          
 
All this may sound grandiose. I only ask that
you consider what we did and try to understand its objectives.

 
          
 
Our journey to the mountains was a long one,
for our pace was set by our slowest citizen.

 
          
 
At last the cold mountains were reached and we
found a valley where we could build crude houses for ourselves, since the sides
of the valley were thickly wooded.

 
          
 
This done, we set off in our airships to
explore the mountains in the hope that we should find the almost legendary
physician who was, perhaps, the only man on Mars who could save our world from
the Green Death.

 
          
 
It was not I who eventually found Mas Rava,
but he who had first named him - Damad.

 
          
 
Damad came back to the camp one night in his
airship. He had taken to travelling alone and we sympathized with the necessity
he felt for this.

 
          
 
"Michael Kane," he said, entering
the cabin where Shizala and I now lived. "I have seen Mas Rava."

 
          
 
"Can he help us?" was my first
question.

 
          
 
"I do not know. I did not speak to him,
save to ask him his name."

 
          
 
"That is all he told you?"

 
          
 
"Yes. I asked who he was and he replied,
'Mas Rava'."

 
          
 
"Where is he?"

 
          
 
"He is living in a cave many shot is from
here. Do you wish me to take you to him?"

 
          
 
"I think so," I replied. "Do
you think he has become a complete hermit? Will he be affected by our
plight?"

            
"I cannot tell. In the
morning I will take you there."

 
          
 
So, in the morning, we left in Damad's airship
to find Mas Rava. Just as I had earlier sought the machines in the hope that
they would save us, now I sought a man. Would the man prove more helpful than
the machines? I was not sure. Should I have trusted the machines so much?
Should I have trusted another man so much? Again I was not sure.

 
          
 
But I went with Damad, navigating the ship
amongst the crags, until we came to a place where a natural path climbed a
mountain to a cave.

 
          
 
I lowered a ladder on to the wide ledge
outside the cave and began to climb down until I stood outside the dark
entrance.

 
          
 
Then I walked inside.

 
          
 
A man sat there, his back against the cave
wall, one leg crooked and the other straight. He regarded me with humorous and
quizzical eyes. He was clean-shaven and quite young looking. The cave was clean
and neatly furnished.

 
          
 
He was not my idea of a hermit, nor did his
cave resemble a hermit's lair. There was something urbane about the man.

 
          
 
"Mas Rava?"
I said.

 
          
 
"The same.
Sit
down. I had one visitor yesterday, and I was rather rude to him, I'm afraid. He
was my first. I am better prepared for my second. What is your name?"

 
          
 
"Michael Kane," I said. "It is
a long, complicated story, but I come from the planet Negalu," I told him,
using the Martian name for Earth, "and from a time far in your
future."

 
          
 
"In that case you are an interesting man
for my first real visitor," said Mas Rava.

 
          
 
I sat down beside him.

 
          
 
"Have you come seeking information from
me?" was his next question.

 
          
 
"In a way," I said. "But first
you had better hear the whole story."

 
          
 
"Make it the whole one," said Mas
Rava. "I am not an easy man to bore. Proceed."

 
          
 
I told him everything I have told you,
everything I had thought and said,
everything
that was
thought and said to me. It took me several hours, but Mas Rava listened all the
time without interrupting.

 
          
 
When I had finished, he nodded.

 
          
 
"You have got yourself and your adopted
people into an interesting predicament," he said. "As a physician I
am a little rusty, though you were right in one thing. There was a cure for the
plague, according to my reading. It was not in the form of a machine - that is
where you went wrong - but in the form of a bacteria capable of combating the
effects of the Green Death in a mere matter of moments."

 
          
 
"Do you know of any place where I could
find a container of
this bacteria
?" I asked him.

 
          
 
'There are several repositories on Vashu
similar to the Yaksha vaults you discovered. It could be in any one of them
-though it is likely that something as relatively unimportant to either the
Sheev or the Yaksha might easily have been allowed to corrode away."

 
          
 
"So you think there is little chance of
finding the antidote?" I asked despairingly.

 
          
 
"Yes, I do," he said. "But you
could try."

 
          
 
"And what about you - could you prepare
an antidote?"

 
          
 
"In time, I might," he said.
"But I do not think I will."

 
          
 
"You would not even attempt it?"

 
          
 
"No."

 
          
 
"Why is that?"

 
          
 
"Because, my friend, I am a convinced
fatalist." He laughed. "I am sure that the Green Death will pass and
that its passage will leave a mark on Vashu. But I think that mark is necessary
to society - particularly a society that knows no deep dangers. It will prevent
it stagnating."

 
          
 
"I find your attitude difficult to
understand," I said.

 
          
 
"Let me be honest, then, and put it to
you in another way. I am a lazy man - indolent. I like to sit in my cave and
think. I think, incidentally, on a very high plane. I am also a man who needs
little company. I have my fear, too, if you like -but it is a fear of becoming
involved with humanity and thus losing
myself
. I value
my individuality. So I rationalize all this and I become a fatalist. I have no
concern with the affairs of the inhabitants of this planet, or any other
planet. It is planets that interest me - not a planet."

            
"It would seem to me, Mas
Rava," I said quietly, "that you, in your own way, have lost your
sense of perspective just as much as the rulers of Cend-Amrid."

 
          
 
He thought over this statement and then looked
into my face with a grin.

 
          
 
"You are right," he said.

 
          
 
"Then you will help us?"

 
          
 
“No, Michael Kane, I will not. You have taught
me a lesson and it will be of interest to speculate on what you have said. But
I will not help you. You see" - he grinned at me again -"what I have
just realized, without bitterness or despair, is that I am essentially a stupid
man. Perhaps the Green Death will come my way, eh?"

 
          
 
"Perhaps," I said in disappointment.
"I am sorry you will not help us, Mas Rava."

 
          
 
"I am sorry, too. But think of this,
Michael Kane, if the words of a stupid man mean anything to you ..."

 
          
 
"What is that?"

 
          
 
"The wish is sometimes enough," said
Mas Rava.
"Keep wishing that you might find the Green
Death gone - provided you keep acting as well, even if you do not understand
your own actions."

 
          
 
I left the cave.

 
          
 
Patiently, Damad was still there, the
rope-ladder still touching the ledge.

 
          
 
With a feeling of puzzled curiosity rather
than disappointment, I climbed back into the cabin.

 
          
 
"Will he help us?" Damad asked
eagerly.

 
          
 
"No," I told him.