Dusty Zebra: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  “But what would a building be doing out here in the middle of the desert, a good 500 miles from any habitation?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ken. “This is an old planet. There’s lots of strange things on it. Get out Tarsus-Egbo and hook him up. He may have developed even better eyesight than I have. If my theory is right, it should be a great deal better. He’s been tanked up longer than I have.”

  I walked to the ship and brought forth the second cylinder.

  “I won’t have you disconnected for long,” I told Ken, “Just long enough to look up the Martian and see if he can tell me anything.”

  “Hook us up together, just wire him up to the same terminals I’m hooked up to. I have been thinking about it. I am certain, from what I know of the machine, that two or even more cylinders could be hooked up at the one time.”

  “You really think so? I don’t want something to go wrong.”

  “I am certain of it. About all I can do, in the shape I’m in, is to think and I believe I have it all figured out. I’d like to talk to Tarsus-Egbo. It would be a marvelous sensation talking to another pickled brain.”

  “Well … if you are sure …”

  “Go ahead, Bob. Nothing will happen.”

  Securing two short wires, I quickly connected the Martian’s cylinder, holding my breath. At the least sign of anything wrong I was prepared to rip the wires away, but nothing did happen. The second cylinder glowed softly and took on its milky transparency.

  The Martian blinked his eyes, as if awakening from a deep slumber.

  “Kor,” I greeted him solemnly in Martian.

  He replied as solemnly.

  I shifted the cylinder so that the Martian faced my friend.

  Rapidly Ken spoke to him and the Martian replied gravely.

  “Shift my cylinder so that I may see. My eyes are good. Strange man, your theory is correct. Being placed in the cylinder does sharpen one’s senses. I am certain I can see it, if there is anything there.”

  I shifted the cylinder and Ken, speaking softly, directed Tarsus-Egbo’s gaze.

  “I also see it,” said the Martian, “It is a pyramid, one of the many which existed here on these deserts in my day, but which, before my death had been largely destroyed by my people.”

  “Why destroyed by your people?” asked Ken.

  “For two reasons,” replied the Martian. “They are structures that were built by an ancient people who subscribed to a blasphemous religion and who used the pyramids as temples. It was only just that they should be destroyed. Those who destroyed them also found a great reward, for the pyramids invariably conceal great riches. Piety and hope of gain spurred my people on to their destruction. The sight of this one maddens me. I had thought that, by now, all would have been destroyed. It is an insult to Kell-Rabin, an insult to all of Mars that it should stand there. It is the filthy manifestation of a loathsome cult that once held sway over our beautiful land.”

  I thought that I heard a faint chuckle come from Ken’s cylinder, but I was not sure, for he spoke immediately.

  “What would you say, Tarsus-Egbo, if my friend destroyed that pyramid over there? Would he be able to do it? Do you think he would find great riches there?”

  “It would be a great service to Mars if he did so,” said the Martian. “I would thank him and the high priest would thank him. Perhaps we would even accord him the honor of being placed in one of the cylinders when he dies, even as you have been accorded that honor. I would forgive him the wrong that he had done me in his insane quest for knowledge and would thank him if he destroyed the pyramid.”

  “But,” replied Ken, “my friend does not care for your thanks nor for the thanks of the high priest. In fact,” I was sure of the chuckle this time, “he would not even care to meet the high priest. I even doubt if he would care to be placed in a cylinder. He is interested only in the great riches which he might find in the pyramid.”

  “If that is all he wishes,” rumbled Tarsus-Egbo, “he will find them there. Riches that will make his brain swim. Jewels that are like fire and jewels that are like ice and others that are blue as the outer reaches of the sky. There too, he will find …”

  “Wait,” droned Ken, “Do you realize that you are in the power of my friend. Do you know that he might be very angry if he did not find riches such as you have described in the pyramid? Do you know that he might be so enraged that he would break your cylinder and destroy your immortality? My friend is quick to anger and it is best not to play upon his temper.”

  “He will find riches, great riches, in the pyramid,” insisted the Martian, terror-stricken.

  “But how do you know that some of your own people have not taken them? Just because the pyramid is there, does not necessarily mean that the riches must also be there.”

  “They are there,” insisted the Martian, “If my people had found the place, it would not be standing now.”

  “I guess that’s about all he can tell us, Bob,” said Ken and I unhooked the Martian’s cylinder.

  “This is a new one to me,” I told my friend, “I studied the Martians a great deal before they kicked me out, but this is the first time I ever heard about these incredibly ancient people.”

  “It was natural that you wouldn’t hear about it,” Ken pointed out. “It was something closely connected with their religion and you will have to admit that you can’t find out much about this religion of Mars. What we have found out has been against their will and we have paid heavily for it.”

  “This puts a different face on the whole matter,” I said.

  Ken did not reply for a moment, then he spoke.

  “I get you. With riches such as Tarsus-Egbo described, one can get anything one may happen to want. Those riches, Bob, if we can get them, will mean a lot to us. It will mean that we can continue to play our old hand against Mars. It will mean that, after all, we may not have to relinquish our revenge. It may mean that you can, at last, with safety, study the bones of Kell-Rabin. It is worth a try.”

  “Yes, worth a try,” I said, “and we are going to make that try tonight. We can fly over there in a few minutes.”

  “That’s talking now. Wish that I had a couple of hands to help you. Too bad. Two can do more than one. About all I can do is sit to one side and keep up the conversation.”

  “That’s all right, old man,” I consoled him, “Now I will have to unhook you. I’ll connect the machine to the generator inside the plane and hook you up again so that you won’t miss the trip over there.”

  “Don’t go to so much trouble,” protested Ken, “I am trouble enough as it …”

  “Shut up, you,” I rejoined, and pulled the switch, effectively silencing him.

  I had worked for an hour with what few tools I had at hand to open the sealed door of the great pyramid, which towered blackly up into the cold night of the Martian desert. Above me rolled the two moons of the planet and thousands of stars pricked out on the blue-black sky. The night desert wind sang weirdly around the corners of the pyramid. The atomic engine of the plane whined softly, operating the light generator to which I had hooked the machine which motivated the cylinder that contained the brain of Ken Smith.

  “I think I am moving a big one now,” I told the cylinder, and the voice of my friend came distinctly to me, cheering me on.

  The huge stone moved ever so slightly and I threw all my weight against the steel bar which I was using. It moved just a bit more and again I heaved. Bit by bit I worked it out, until I was certain that a few more heaves would pry it away.

  “I have it almost out now,” I told Ken, “and I am going to move you out of the way a bit. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “It would be hard luck to get cracked up now, just when we are on the verge of a great discovery,” he chuckled.

  “The Martian may have been lying,” I told him.
<
br />   “He wasn’t,” protested Ken. “He was telling the truth. That crack about you busting him up if he lied would have made him change his story in a hurry. Funny how those fellows set so much store on long life. If something doesn’t happen to me before, I am going to hire somebody to tap me over the head when I get to be about two hundred years old.”

  Laughingly, I picked up the cylinder and moved it several feet away, then went back to my task. Several more heaves brought the block of stone away and it fell, burying itself deep into the sand. The second stone was less trouble to pry away and after that the third and fourth one came still more easily. At last I had a hole large enough to pass through into the interior of the structure.

  With my flashlight trained before me, I clambered through and dropped softly to the floor, which was paved with huge slabs of stone similar to those of which the pyramid was built.

  The circle of light which I flashed before me revealed a huge block of stone, apparently an altar, set in the middle of the room. It was not the altar, however, that drew my attention. Piled in a heap before the altar were five great chests. The treasure chests!

  My heart leaped up into my throat and I ran forward. Seizing one of the chests, I attempted to lift the lid, but found that I was unable to do so. Grasping it under my arm, I staggered to the door, for the chest was heavy, and heaving the chest outside, leaped after it.

  With my bar, I attacked the lid and with a rending of metal and the splintering of breaking wood, it came away. Living fire seemed to leap from it to strike me in the face and I threw up my arms across my eyes and stepped back.

  CHAPTER V

  The Last Defiance

  There before me lay the treasure of the ancient people of Mars! Treasure that had lain for centuries under the sacred walls of the ghostly pyramid!

  Tarsus-Egbo had spoken true! Here was a planet’s ransom! Here was wealth undreamed of! Here lay jewels that flashed in the soft light of the two moons and seemed to glow and move and writhe like animate things.

  Ken was shrieking at me.

  “It’s the treasure, Bob! It’s the treasure! We are rich men, rich men! Trillionaires! Now we can carry on. Now we can thrust the bones of Kell-Rabin down the throat of the Martian nation! Now we can make them pay, pay, pay…pay, damn then, for my radium, and for my body, and for all the hell that they have made us pass through! We have them, we have them…right by the bloody throat!”

  The sight of the gleaming jewels had awakened the old hatred, the old desire for revenge. They represented power, power to strike back at Mars. Almost had we forgotten our plans of revenge…but always, now I realized, they had lurked in the back of our brains, awaiting release, the release which the jewels had given them. I seemed to see the jewels through a red haze of weird emotion. Ken was right! With them we had Mars by the throat, we could stuff the musty bones of Kell-Rabin down the throats of the high officials and the priests!

  Insane? Of course, we were insane. I think we had always been; I, since my deportation from Mars and Ken since the confiscation of his radium deposits.

  “Yes, it’s the treasure, Ken,” I choked. “It is the treasure and there are four other chests just like this one inside the pyramid!”

  I ran forward and thrust my hands deep into the box. I brought them away with a handful of stones that glimmered and glinted and flashed blue and red and green and white fire. Some rolled away and lay sparkling and shining in the sands.

  “Look, Ken,” I screamed. “Look at them. Why, damn it, man, with these we can buy out the entire planet. We can buy Mars and blow it to hell if we want to.”

  I threw a handful on the sand in front of him and raced back to the pyramid. One after the other I threw out the boxes and with the bar ripped away their lids. They were filled to overflowing with jewels some not much larger than peas, others the size of my fist. Offerings, perhaps, made to some ancient god; offerings made by a people who were wind blown dust millennia ago.

  “Are you sure that is all?” asked Ken.

  “Isn’t that enough?” I asked.

  “More than enough,” agreed my friend, “but if there are more, we want them.”

  Once again I crawled back into the pyramid room. Slowly I explored it, from one end to the other and came at last to the rear of the great stone altar. Hardly thinking of what I was doing, I lifted a booted foot and kicked at the altar. I half remembered wondering if it was a solid block or if it was hollow.

  As my foot struck the altar, it moved. What appeared to be pivoted stone set in the back of the block, swung aside and out of the aperture toppled a long, narrow box. I leaped aside out of its way and it struck the stone floor with a crash, splitting wide open.

  I screamed and fell back, still holding my light directed on the broken box. Out of it rolled something that was round and white and as it rolled I saw that it was a human skull.

  Shaking like a leaf, I moved nearer to the broken box and with my foot swept away the splintered wood. My light revealed a human skeleton, the skeleton of a Terrestrial! Still horrified, I stooped down and examined the bones. They were in a poor state of preservation, but easily identified as the bones of an Earthman, not of a Martian. Rising, I walked to where the skull lay, picked it up and examined the teeth. There were thirty-two. Thirty-two teeth, and the most any Martian could boast were twenty-four. The skull was crumbling away even as I held it. It must have been inconceivably old.

  I ran from the pyramid. The skeleton of a Terrestrial in an ancient Martian pyramid, which had been closed, which had not been viewed by mortal eyes, for thousands upon thousands of years! What did it mean? What awful secret lay back of it? Terrestrials had landed on Mars in the first space car only a few hundred years before. Yet, I had found an ancient skeleton … My mind whirled and my senses reeled at the astounding possibilities which the thing suggested.

  Terrestrials, then, had visited Mars before! Other civilizations than our own had risen to great heights, only to fall into nothingness. Could it have been men of Atlantis, or men of Mu, or men of a nation that was forgotten before those other two arose?

  Other Earthly races had visited Mars…but why had I found the skeleton of one in a pyramid associated with an ancient religion, ancient even to the aged planet of Mars? Could it have been possible … could Terrestrials have been regarded as gods? Could the proud races of Mars … could the proud religion … ?

  I stumbled out of the pyramid and tilting my head back, roared in laughter at the two moons which swung above the dead reaches of the desert.

  Many things have happened in the past five years, and as I think of it, I remember that it was just five years ago today that Ken Smith and myself, with the jewels and the cylinder which contained Tarsus-Egbo, the Martian, secretly left Mars on the ship of a space captain who was willing to take a few risks for a double handful of jewels. We reached Earth safely, the captain landing us in a remote section of the Rocky Mountain district.

  For a year we remained in hiding and discussed our plans. At last, satisfied that both the Earth and Mars had lost all trace of us, I securely hid the jewels, except for a pocketful, with the two cylinders in a cave and journeyed to the outside.

  This time there was no need for a disguise. As I look in the glass now I can scarcely believe that I am only slightly over forty. My hair is snow white and my face is the face of an old man, lined with deep wrinkles and scarred with care.

  In Chicago I experienced some trouble in retrieving the box which contained the bones of Kell-Rabin from its place in the safety deposit vault, but the papers I presented were all in good order and there was no reason for raising too great an objection, so it was finally handed over to me.

  There was much to do and I set about doing it. I realized that my time might be short, so I wasted none of it. There were draftsmen, electricians, radio experts, laborers, orders for steel and other materials, all to be attended t
o, and I attended to them. It cost money, but the jewels that we possessed represented a colossal fortune and cost meant nothing if it purchased haste and efficient workmanship.

  A month ago, I dismissed the last workman whom I had employed to build the huge broadcasting station ten miles from where I sit and write this. It is the most powerful station in the universe, greater even than those mighty stations on Jupiter. It is the pride of the Earth. I am hailed far and wide all over the planet as one of Earth’s greatest benefactors. With that station a message may be flung to the farthest limits of the universe, out to where icy Pluto swings in the outer void and where the sun is no more than a star among many stars.

  If only the Earth suspected what would be the first message that is to be hurled out from that station, it would be destroyed immediately by governmental orders. If only Mars suspected, a fleet of warships would leave the surface of that planet within the next few hours, bound for Earth.

  The Earth will call me a traitor to the solar system, Mars will list my name on the blackest sheet of the most infamous book, my own people will believe me crazy. I am crazy, crazy with suffering, crazy with a mad desire to humble a cruel and haughty nation. There is a method in my insanity, a terrible, cold, calculating method. And the world does not suspect. The Martians, who have praised my philanthropic work, do not suspect.

  Crazy, you say, insane, a raving maniac. How, I ask you, have I come to be insane? Would not any man lose his mind if he sat day after day, face to face with the brain of a friend encased in a metal cylinder? Remembering other days, when this thing in the cylinder walked on two legs, laughed and joked, enjoyed a good smoke …

  I must hasten, however. There is little time left.

  For the past four years I have lived in dread, dread that someone would recognize me, that I would be unveiled as the murderer of the Martian priests in the Chicago hotel or as the man who had blasphemed the Martian religion and profaned the Temple of Saldebar.