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Authors: Lin Carter

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BOOK: Lin Carter - The City Outside the World
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pressure masks, and domed their towns with plastic bubbles. But soon the men of science set to work upon the problem. Earthsiders would never have more than a toehold on this world if they must wear suits and masks in order to live. Since Mars was too vast by far to be terraformed, men themselves were forced to become acclimated.

The first clue came from the Martians themselves. They were warm-blooded hominids of obvious mammalian descent—human to a dozen decimal places—and, somehow or other, they managed to survive.

Biochemists, studying the natives, found out how nature had adapted them to survival under these conditions, and, in time, learned how to modify the body chemistry of the colonists to conform to this harsh environment. The series of operations was expensive, and permanent, but Ryker was damn glad he had bought them. Otherwise, he could not have lasted long in the Dustlands, away from the domed cities of his kind.

But even with his body chemistry adapted to Mars, some precautions were necessary. The thermals he wore were of tough, wear-resistant synthetic, and helped retain his body heat. The pressure still he should have brought with him, and would have, had he known in advance he was in for some overland travel, would have squeezed enough moisture from the rubbery plants that carpeted the so-called "canals" to sustain him without dangerous dehydration.

Lacking it, he was in trouble.

This did not become evident until morning, when he woke to find his throat and the inside of his mouth as dry as blotting paper, and an ache in his sinuses that presaged difficulties to come. A swig or two from his canteen helped, but the water it held would not last for long.

They mounted and rode out.

Valarda and her companions, being natives, did not feel the lack of water as badly as Ryker did. Over the millions of years since Mars first lost her oceans and began to dry up, evolution had adapted the Martians to a lesser need for moisture and an ability to retain moisture superior to that of Earthsider bodies. For instance, Martians do not perspire Also, their glands produce epidermal oils which tend to seal body moisture within, preventing its evaporation.

Still, in time they would all need fresh water, or they would begin to die that most horrible of all deaths—death through dehydration.

All that day they rode on, heading almost due northwest, for in the Dustlands it is usually possible to travel in straight lines—"as the crow flies," an Earthsider might have put it—but the People have another expression which states the identical notion.

Alcyonius Nodus would afford them shelter and, probably, food, as the crumbling ancient cliffs of the mesa provide shelter for other life forms beside man.

Whether they could find water there, though, that was another question.

Had they dared ride due south, they could have found water at Nodus Laocontis, the old canal which once served to irrigate the gardens of Yeolarn.

Or they could have ridden southwest, into Nilosyrtis, an even greater canal which had similarly served the old, abandoned city near whose ruins the modern colony of Syrtis Port was built.

But these routes were too dangerous, as either would bring them within dangerous proximity to Yeolarn. And the two canals were more than twice as far away as Alcyonius.

So they rode on towards the Pole and the barren lands in the west.

Whether they would ever get there was another question and one which only time could answer.

5. The Cliff Dragon

ryker had known
from the first that there was something unusual about his three companions.

Their strangeness did not lie entirely in Valarda's uncanny golden eyes. Neither did it reside in the half-erased Clan tatoo on the boy's breast.

During the two days it took them to reach the mesa, he pieced the parts of the puzzle together and was able to put it into words.

They did not act like Martians.

The difference was subtle, not blatant. It took intuition to notice it. But Ryker noticed it.

In the first place, why were they willing to let him go with them? The People hate Earthsiders with a virulent intensity hard to describe, but it was more than than just the xenophobia most provincials feel for outsiders. The
F'yagha
had raped their world from them, and left them homeless vagabonds wandering amid the wreckage of their own empire. By contrast, the Apaches and Cherokees and other subjugated aborigines of the Americas had been treated with courteous and chivalric generosity. The Conquistadores had left Montezuma with more dignity and power than the Earthsiders had left the Martians.

True, he had intervened to save them from the mob. But an ordinary native woman and her retinue, under the same circumstances, would have thanked him frostily, and left him to his own devices.

Valarda was no ordinary woman. This he knew by sheer gut-level instinct.

Nor was she a dancing girl. Ryker had mingled much with the People, an outcast from his own kind, and there were Low Clan women who danced naked before men. Whereas she had the daintiness and reserve of a princess.

Of course, even a princess can be left destitute, homeless and starving by whims of fortune. The difference is that a princess would
rather
starve than show her nakedness before men. And he would have staked his life on the fact that Valarda was highborn.

As for the old man, he too displayed marks of breeding and elegance. His features were delicately carved, and there was nobility in his high brow. When he spoke, which was seldom, his accent and vocabulary were those of a learned man, a priest or a scholar. And no itinerant musician for a dancing girl ever bore a name like his. "Melan-dron" was a High Clan name, and a very ancient sort of name, at that. The sort of name the Old Kings had in the hero legends and epics of the past.

As for the boy, he was just a boy. Nothing was mysterious about him, save for the marking above his heart.

Ryker was two days with them before he discovered they had a secret language.

He spoke the Tongue as well, he supposed, as any
F'yagha.
Which is to say, he could make himself understood in it, and could interpret what was said to him pretty well. But the language of Mars is old beyond telling, rich in allusions to literature and folklore and legendry, with whole vocabularies of rare or obsolete words. There was much of the Tongue he could not and did not know. But he could recognize the main regional accents used by the major Clans, and these three spoke with an accent he had never before heard.

When, towards evening on the second day out of Yeolarn, they came within sight of Alcyonius Nodus, Valarda and the old man halted their steeds and sat there in ihe saddle for a time, staring at the mesa with an emotion in their eyes he could not name.

And when they spoke softly to each other, it was in a language he did not understand.

And this was
very
strange.

The Martians have been civilized for so many ages, they long ago lost national divisions. For millions of years they have been one nation, and the one Tongue is spoken universally from pole to pole. If once upon a time they spoke several different national languages, it was so very long ago they have forgotten it, even in their myths.

And the language in which Melandron and the girl conversed was not the Tongue. Or if it was, it was a dialect so ancient, or so rare, or so sacred, he did not recognize it.

He filed the fact away for later thought.

But he was beginning to wonder to himself, and strongly, where these three had come from.

It was like they were from another world.

Or another age.

That night they slept in a cave in the mesa wall. The boy Kiki had gone dart hunting, and had brought back fat scarlet lizards whereon that night they feasted.

Ryker had gone out to help, but when he saw the boy clambering over the cliff face as agile as any monkey, he knew there was nothing he could do.

And dart hunting is a Martian sport at which Ryker's sort are hopelessly clumsy. The slim metal shafts, like miniature javelins, were too light for his musculature, and Ryker knew it. Earthlings are built by evolution to stand erect under the crushing gravity of their heavy planet ; they

have more strength than is required on Mars, where a man who would weigh one hundred fifty pounds back on Earth here weighs only fifty-seven.

So he watched with helpless admiration as the boy cast his slim glinting darts at the rock lizards. They flickered through the air like weightless beams of light, transfixed the wriggling scarlet reptiles with unerring accuracy; and that night they feasted on
ongga-steak
broiled over chemical fire in spice leaves.

And they drank deep, having found in the deep crevices of the cliff rich growth of pod lichen the Martians crush and drain for precious water.

Here they were safe, with food, shelter and even water for their needs. By now Ryker was certain they were not being followed. The shambling gait of a loper's splayfooted stride raises a plume of the talcum-fine sands of the Dustlands you can see for many miles. And there were no far, dusty plumes behind them on the dark skies.

Ryker had tried a few casual questions, had been answered by silence, and gave it up. You do not intrude upon the privacy of this fierce, proud, wary people with blundering queries. What they wish you to know, they impart unasked.

But why wouldn't Valarda or the old man or the boy tell him where they were from, or the name of their tribe?

Actually, there could be many reasons. They could easily be outlaws, fleeing from tribe justice, or exiles, cast out by their chief.

Or the last remnants of a dying people.

Odd how that thought popped into his head.

Odder still how his skin crept and his nape hairs tingled at the thought. It was as if his body recognized the truth before his mind had reason to believe it.

Still, there was no evidence.

He set it aside to think about later.

That night, very late—near dawn, it was—Ryker came lully awake all of a sudden, as if some sixth sense warned him of danger.

Without the twitching of a single muscle, without changing the slow, deep rhythm of his breathing, did he give notice of his awakening. But with slitted eyes he searched the black gloom for a sign of difference.

A faint green glow from the residue in the fire pan was ihe only illumination that pierced the inky darkness of the cave. That, and a dim, blue-white glimmer from the thronging stars.

Nothing moved in the darkness, and no sound broke the stillness. He levered himself up on one arm, his other hand brushing his gun butt. There lay his companions bundled m their cloaks, spaced around the fire. Nor was there anything in the cave.

But something was wrong, he knew. He searched the green-lit gloom again—and then he saw it.

The girl was not there.

Her cloak and furs lay neatly arranged in the place she had selected for herself, but the place was empty.

Soundlessly as a cat, Ryker rose to his feet and padded to the mouth of the cave. Peering out, he saw her crouched in a huddle on the stone ledge. Cold blue starfire shone from her naked shoulders, caught and dazzled in her silken hair, and glowed upon the soft rondures of her bare breasts.

Ryker caught his breath at the loveliness of Valarda, nude in the starlight.

He must have made some slight sound—perhaps the

scuff of his boot leather rasping against dry stone—for she turned and saw him. And he saw that she had been weeping, for starfire glittered in her tear-wet lashes like tiny gems.

In the star sheen her perfect breasts were coppery silver above, polished ebony beneath. He had one swift, breathtaking look at her nakedness. Then she shook forward the black wings of her long hair, veiling from him the temptation of her tawny flesh.

And her face—open, vulnerable, soft lips atremble, some strange, heart-deep sorrow visible in her wet eyes— went hard and proud and cold. It was as if she had, in an instant, donned a lifeless mask; her eyes were frozen now, aloof, with the hauteur of a princess whose privacy a boor has blundered into.

He cursed himself for letting her discover him watching from the shadows like some panting voyeur. He opened his mouth to make some fumbling apology for intruding upon her privacy—and then, very suddenly, they were both of them too busy for words.

A terrible shape, black as night, edged with star jewels where the dim light caught its scales, clambered up over the brink of the ledge.

The
slioth
was a cliff scavenger, found commonly in these cliffs and mesas, which was accustomed to devouring the bodies of dead things. It did not usually prey upon the living, but—after all—meat is meat, and even the cliff dragon likes a hot, fresh meal at times.

For a split second it paused, clinging there by the suction pads on its six, hook-clawed feet. Then it slithered up and over the ledge and came at them, eyes burning like lamps of green phosphor, filled with a mindless, ravening hunger.

The girl sprang for the safety of the cave but Ryker was

in her way. She stumbled against him and went down on her knees and he tried to interpose his body between the lizard and the girl. One hooked paw raked him from throat to navel and he staggered back, until he stood flat against the wall of the cliff.

BOOK: Lin Carter - The City Outside the World
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