3 - Barbarians of Mars (17 page)

 
          
 
"Why not?
He
must!"

 
          
 
"He says he will not. All he told me was
that a cure for the plague did exist, might possibly exist now - and it is not
a machine."

 
          
 
"Then what is it?"

 
          
 
"A container of bacteria," I mused.
"Come
on,
let us return to the camp."

 
          
 
Next day I had made up my mind to return to
Vamal and see what had happened to the city.

 
          
 
I took an airship without saying where I was
going.

 
          
 
Vamal looked unchanged - even more beautiful,
if anything - and as I landed in the city square there was no smell of death as
I had expected, and none of the subtler smell of fear.

 
          
 
I stayed in my cabin, however, for safety's
sake, and called out through the empty streets.

 
          
 
In a little while I heard footsteps and a
woman with a small child walked round the comer. The woman was an upstanding
person and her child looked very healthy.

 
          
 
"Who are you?" I asked in
astonishment.

 
          
 
"Who are you is more to the point?"
she replied boldly. “What are you doing in Vamal?"

 
          
 
'This is the city where I normally live,"
I said.

 
          
 
"And this is the city where I normally
live, too," she said crisply. "Were you one of those who left?"

 
          
 
"If you mean was I one of the many
thousands who left the city when the folk with the Green Death came," I
said, "the answer is ‘yes’."

 
          
 
"All that is over now," she said.

 
          
 
"What is over?"

 
          
 
“The Green Death.
I
had it for a while, you know."

 
          
 
"You mean you have been cured? How?
Why?"

 
          
 
"I don't know. It was coming to Varnal
that did it. Maybe that's why we came here. I can't remember the journey too
clearly."

 
          
 
"You all came to Vamal and it cured you
of the plague? What could it be - the water?
The air?
Something like that? By the Sheev, surely all my questing has not been for
nothing. Surely the answer has not lain here all the time I"

 
          
 
"You sound a bit crazy to me," said
the woman. "I don't know what it is. I only know I'm cured - and so's
everybody else. A lot of them have gone back home, but I stayed on."

 
          
 
"Where do you originally come from?"
I asked.

 
          
 
"Cend-Amrid," she said. "I miss
it, rather."

 
          
 
I began to laugh uncontrollably.

 
          
 
"Here all the time!"-1 yelled.
"Here all the time!"

TO CEND-AMRID

 
          
 
By a strange twist of fortune, it seemed, we
were now able to return to Vamal.

 
          
 
It was a joyful occasion and the journey back
was swifter even than the journey away from Vamal.

 
          
 
It was not only, of course, because of this
that we felt light-hearted. We had discovered a cure for the plague - or, at
least, we had discovered that the plague could be cured.

 
          
 
Once we had settled in Vamal, to the surprise
of the few people who had made the city their home, we began to inspect the
damage. There was nothing serious save that anything vaguely mechanical had
been hurled into the green lake.

 
          
 
This must have been part of the mob's insane
urge to destroy anything 'functional’.

 
          
 
Now it struck me that something could have
been thrown into the lake that had caused the water to turn into an antidote
for the plague.

 
          
 
I tried to think what it might be.

 
          
 
But I could not. Only now can I look back and
wonder if that small tube I had carried with me from Bagarad, and which I never
found again, had contained the antidote.

 
          
 
I shall never know.

 
          
 
The important thing is that the water of the
Lake
of the Green Mists was now able to combat
the plague, and all we needed to do was to get it into containers and carry it
to the victims.

 
          
 
This became our most important task.

 
          
 
We designed tanks to hold the green water and
devised a means of attaching them to our airships.

 
          
 
Then we set off towards the central source of
the plague -the insane city of
Cend-Amrid
.

 
          
 
With us we took Ala Mara, whom I had seen
little of since she had rescued us, but who had begged to return with us.

 
          
 
A fleet of airships - all that we could muster
- began the journey and our hopes were high. We flew away from Varnal with its
pennants fluttering bravely from her towers again, towards the horror of the
plague.

 
          
 
In the leading airship were myself, Hool Haji
and Ala Mara. In the nearest one to us
was
Damad and
his men, and behind us came the airships in charge of Varnala's bravest
Pukan-Naras.

 
          
 
At several points we discovered towns and
villages where the plague raged and were able to dispense the small amount of
water needed to cure it.

 
          
 
Finding so many places infected, we concentrated
first on helping these, and thus it was some time before we sighted Cend-Amrid
ahead of us. It was the source of the plague and now, thanks to the green
water, it was the last place where the plague flourished.

 
          
 
We came cautiously to the city and hovered
above its houses.

 
          
 
Then we drifted until we were over the
Central Place
, the squat, ugly building where dwelt the
Eleven.

 
          
 
Wooden-stepped and walking more stiffly and
slower than when I had last observed and fought his kind, a guard appeared on
the roof.

 
          
 
With immobile face he looked up.

 
          
 
"Who you?
What
want?"

 
          
 
"We bring a cure for the Green
Death," I told him.

 
          
 
"No cure."

 
          
 
"We have one."

 
          
 
"No cure."

 
          
 
"Tell the Eleven that we bring a cure.
Tell the Eleven to come to us."

 
          
 
"I tell."

 
          
 
The man walked stiffly off. It was hard to
believe that a human being still lived under the robot-like exterior, but I was
sure one could be found.

 
          
 
Soon the Eleven came on to the roof - though I
was astonished to count
Twelve
of them.

 
          
 
Looking closely at their expressionless faces
I could see that one of them was Barane Dasa, the man we had met in prison.

 
          
 
"Barane Dasa!” I cried. '"What are
you doing back with these people?" He did not reply.

 
          
 
"You," I said pointing. "Barane
Dasa! Answer me!"

            
The blank face remained
expressionless. "I One," came the cold voice.

            
"But you - they judged you
insane."

            
"Mind repaired."

 
          
 
I shuddered to think what that phrase might
imply - even crude brain surgery was suggested by the statement 'mind repaired'.
"What want Cend-Amrid?" said another of the council.

            
"We bring a cure for the
Green Death."

            
"No cure."

 
          
 
"But there is one - we have it - we have
proved it.”

            
"Logic
prove
no cure."

 
          
 
"But I can illustrate the fact that we
have a cure," I said desperately.

            
"No cure."

 
          
 
I rolled down the ladder. I was going to have
to talk to these fear-created creatures face to face, hope that a little
humanity could be touched in them.

 
          
 
"Lower the water tank," I said to
Hool Haji. "Perhaps that will convince them."

            
"Be careful, my friend,"
he warned.

 
          
 
"I will be," I said. "But I do
not think they will use physical violence themselves."

 
          
 
Soon I was standing on the flat roof,
addressing the Eleven. "Why do you call yourselves 'Eleven' still?" I
asked. "You are Twelve again."

 
          
 
"We Eleven," they said, and I could
not shake them. Evidently they had gone ever further down the road to unreality
than when I had first met them.

 
          
 
I stared into the cold, blank faces, looking
for some sign of real life there, but I could find none. Suddenly one of the
Eleven pointed upwards, "What that?"

 
          
 
"You’ve seen one before. It's an
airship."

            
"No.''

 
          
 
“But you saw one when I last came to
Cend-Amrid!"

 
          
 
"What that?"

 
          
 
"An airship - they fly through the air. I
showed you how the motor worked."

 
          
 
"No."

 
          
 
"But I didl" I said, exasperated.

 
          
 
"No.
Airship not
possible."

 
          
 
"But of course they are possible. There
it is for your own eyes. It exists!"

 
          
 
"Airship not
work
.
Idea of airship non-functional idea."

 
          
 
"You
fools
. You
can see one working in front of you. What have you done to your own
minds!
"

 
          
 
One of the Eleven now put a whistle to his
lips and blew a shrill note.

 
          
 
On to the roof the sword-wielding automatons
who served them came running.

 
          
 
"What is all this about?" I asked.
"You must realize we are here to help you."

 
          
 
"You make Cend-Amrid Machine
non-functional. You destroy principle - you destroy motor - you destroy
machine."

 
          
 
"What principle?"

 
          
 
"The First Idea."

 
          
 
"The idea that drove you to become what
you are? What motor?"

 
          
 
"You are not a motor - you are individual
human beings. What machine?"

 
          
 
"Cend-Amrid!"

 
          
 
"Cend-Amrid is not a machine - it is a
city created and lived in by people."

 
          
 
"You make unfactual statement. You be
made nonfunctional."

 
          
 
Unwillingly, I drew my sword, but it was all I
could do. From above I heard a great yell from Hool Haji followed by a thump as
he leapt from the airship and landed beside me.

 
          
 
The Eleven instructed their guards to attack
us.

 
          
 
The great press of automatons came towards us,
raising their swords as one man.

 
          
 
Close to the edge of the roof, it seemed that
Hool Haji and I would be toppled over within a few moments by the sheer mass of
the guards.

 
          
 
Then, shouting the ancient cries of the Kanala,
Damad and other Vamahan warriors joined me, leaping from their airships until
we formed a thin line of fighting men against the horrible, dead things that
came towards us, slowly, at exactly the same pace, like a single strange
entity.

 
          
 
The fight began.

 
          
 
The bravery of the Kanala is a legendary thing
throughout the whole of Southern Mars, but they were never
so
brave as in this fight, when the thing they fought seemed never to die.

 
          
 
Every guard that went down was replaced by
another. Every sword that was knocked from a fist was substituted by another.
We had nothing at our backs but thin air, and so we could not retreat.

 
          
 
Somehow, by sheer will-power I think now, we
actually began to gain ground from the automatons.

 
          
 
We pushed them back, our swords flickering and
flashing in the light, our battle-cries rarely off our lips as we shouted to
one another to keep our spirits up.