The Three Suns of Amara

by William F. Temple

  His witless wandering had brought him to this lozenge-shaped natural pool in a waste of green grass. He stood up and made a more careful survey of the area. In the opposite direction to the far-away mountain range there was what appeared to be another ridge. He looked hard at it and saw that it was, in fact, no more than a ridge. Although it formed the sky-line it was actually quite near. The grass carpet rolled up and over it.

  His gaze wandered along the crest, then focused on what looked like a small conical cairn heaped there. A primitive grave? His eyes watered as he forced them to gather more detail.

  He divined that it was no cairn, but part of something which stood beyond the ridge.

  He was staring at the dull nose of a space-ship—and it could only be the Pegasus

  ,

  For all his anxious calculations, detours and misadventures, he had arrived at Na-Abiza at last without realizing it.

  The discovery gave him a real shot in the arm. He even took time out to walk back and take a closer look at the line of white effulgence. Not too close a look; its brightness pained the eyes. Moreover, he suspected radioactivity here. So this was the “slow burn.” It seemed to be a channel of liquid fire, hardly more than a couple of inches wide. The eye could detect no progress. All the same, the burn was progressing, as he knew from Lee’s description, and must be heading for the grassy ridge.

  He surveyed its line of march. With a little shock, he saw that the Pegasus stood plumb on an extrapolation of that line. It was a chance in millions. But he wondered if it, like many other odd freaks on Amara, was due only to the laws of chance. There seemed no laws of nature here. Why should there be laws of chance?

  He set off towards the ship. There was a vague sense of something missing. Then, for the first time, he noticed that he had arrived at this place minus two old faithfuls—the rucksack and the machete. They’d accompanied him for so long that it seemed a pity they wouldn’t complete the journey with him. He guessed he’d left them back there in that room of horror.

  He climbed on to the top of the ridge; the effort sapped a deal of his small bonus of energy. Now he could see that the ridge had concealed more than the bulk of the Pegasus. There was an irregular cluster of wattle and daub huts, the crudest he had seen on Amara. Among them a few natives were strolling. They were tall and well built. In the yellow sunlight they looked yellow, which meant that they could be yellow or white.

  He observed with surprise that the base of the spaceship was totally enclosed by a high fence, also of sticks and clay. None of the crew was visible. This was his goal. Alone on his raft, he had yearned to get here. For this he had walked out on Rosala. Now, with the goal attained, he felt strangely indifferent. He walked down towards the ship, desiring food more than human company. The natives noticed him. They gathered, whispering. They seemed excited. By now, he reckoned, they must know—by sight, anyhow—all of the crew members of the Pegasus. So he was a phenomenon; the new Earth-man who had arrived on Amara somehow without a ship. Maybe he could fly through space by just waving his arms like the wings of a bird.

  As he neared, without exception they sank to their knees and bowed their heads to him.

  He acknowledged the salutation with weary amusement. “Well, thanks, folks. But no autographs today.”

  They remained silent, bowed, reverent.

  There was a gate in the fence around the ship. He pushed through. At the bottom of the ship’s ladder, Captain Bagshaw was sunning himself in a sagging canvas chair. He wore only bathing trunks, which had stretched and split. On his left was a big pile of fruit, loaves, and native dishes. On his right, within reach, a swollen wineskin lay in the shade of a broad-leaved potted plant. Sherret stopped short at the sight of him.

  Was this Bagshaw, the immaculate Englishman, sartorial wonder of the Space Corps, proud of his narrow waist and broad shoulders, affectionately known as

  “The Tailor’s Dummy?”

  Bagshaw was equally surprised at the sight of Sherret.

  “Who the devil are you?”

  Sherret performed a salute which the Captain ignored.

  “Lieutenant Sherret, sir, of the Endeavor.”

  “Alex Sherret? Good heavens, so it is. All that face fungus fooled me. You’ve lost a bit of weight, too. Come and sit down, boy. Have a drink.”

  “I’d rather have something to eat, sir.”

  “Help yourself from that heap. All fresh—today’s offerings.”

  Bagshaw became all fat buttocks as he reached behind his chair for another which lay there folded. He dragged it back with a grunt, failed to get the rods in the right slots, and let it subside in shapeless disorder.

  “Damn silly things,” he said and abandoned it.

  Again, Sherret found it hard to believe that this flushed, careless drunk, all sweaty paunch and flabby limbs, was Captain Robert Bagshaw, one-time Number One Cadet of the Space Academy, champion middleweight boxer of the Space Corps, Fifth Division, renowned disciplinarian, chess master—and total abstainer. For that was as Sherret remembered him. His old hero.

  “Have a drink, Alex,” Bagshaw said again.

  Sherret had a mouth full of newly baked bread, but he said, muffledly, “Thanks, I will. I need one.”

  “Don’t we all?” said the Captain, heaving the wineskin onto his enormous thighs. He poured two large glasses of orange liquid.

  “Damn stuff looks like orangeade in this yellow light,” he said. “Don’t let that fool you—it isn’t. In white light, in the ship, it’s red. In the red time, it’s a beautiful dark ruby. Heart’s blood, we call it. Native brew. Potent. It’ll be the death of me. Cheers.”

  Sherret watched him over the rim of his glass.

  “Is the ship—” he began, and choked as a fireball exploded in his gullet. Captain Bagshaw guffawed. “You’ll get used to that delayed action in time.”

  When Sherret could speak, he tried again, “Is the ship still being run under Reparism?”

  “Good lord, no. Repairism is passé—don’t you know?”

  There was more than a trace of bitterness in Bagshaw’s tone. He took another gulp of the brew.

  “Goffism is the bright new hope of Earth,” he went on. “Don’t believe in it myself. Don’t believe in anything much any more.”

  “You don’t have Goffism here, then?”

  “We do not. We certainly do not. We don’t have any Kings for a Day kicking us around. We all do as we damn well please.”

  “But—”

  “Look, son, we’ve had it. The dream days of Reparism are over for us. Oh, it’ll come back. Like the horse. After we’re dead. That won’t do us much good, will it?

  I’ve no family, so what the hell does it matter to me? I used to sit here on my then respectable ass waiting for notification from HQ that I’d been given an award for the success of this expedition. I lived for those gongs, stars and ribbons, y’know—the eternal fossilized boy scout. I hoped they’d make me a colonel. But those Goffists back on Earth—why, they don’t even bother themselves to answer our messages. What does the latest jack-in-office care about us stuck out here on Amara? They’re too busy with their private vendettas. Look at what happened to that poor chump Maxton.”

  “What, sir?”

  “Don’t ‘sir’ me, Alex. I’m Bob to you. Good old Bob Bagshaw. Maxton? Oh, they hung him. Chief Engineer’s orders—what’s his name?—Mackay. He was sorry afterwards. The Scots get murderous in drink, y’know. They were all blind drunk. Must be a foul native brew in those parts. This stuff isn’t like that. It makes you feel fine, good, benevolent—know what I mean? We Pegasus chaps go like a bomb together here. Happy band of brothers, and all that. The natives worry me, though. The men, that is. The women are a fine-looking lot, comely wenches. You saw them?”

  Sherret started. His thoughts were far away. He was thinking about Captain Maxton and his fate, and his own shipmates, and their likely fate.

  “Yes, I saw the natives, sir. They seemed to imagine I was a little
tin god.”

  Bagshaw shook his head. His fat cheeks, wobbled. He tapped the ship’s ladder.

  “This is the little tin god—the Pegasus. At least, it’s supposed to be the temple of the god. And we’re the priests of the god, to be respected as such. That’s what the natives made up out of their own little heads when we arrived, and at the time we saw no reason to disillusion them. For they’re a tough crowd. They’d kill you as soon as look at you if you didn’t have some kind of hold over them. I was a fool. I took the easy, ready-made, reach-me-down way. Not like me in those days, either. But there you are. And now it’s going to backfire on me—on all of us.”

  “In what way, sir?”

  “You’ve seen the slow burn, as they call it?”

  “Yes. It’s heading right for the ship,” said Sherret, starting another loaf.

  “You’re right, Alex. It’s heading for the village, too. When Pegasus landed smack in its path, the natives assumed a god had descended from Olympus, or thereabouts, to cry, ‘Halt! You shall not pass. I have come to save Na-Abiza.’

  Egotistical lot! Swollen-headed mutts! But it’ll burn through poor old Pegasus like a super blow-torch. In anything from ten to fifteen years, I reckon. But it’s unlikely I’ll be around then. Heart’s blood will have taken care of me. But how better to pass the time than in merry wassail? My men like the women here, too. Most of ’em have gone native to some extent. Hang the women, I say. For me—the grape.”

  “But, sir—Bob—why don’t you get to hell out of it before the showdown? When the natives see the ship succumb to the slow burn, and their village in danger again, they’ll go hopping mad. If you’re still around here, they’ll probably kill you. Get out while the going’s good. Amara’s plenty big enough to get lost in.”

  “Lost? I’m already lost, Alex. Still, I did plan a move from here, long ago. But I’d already lost authority through accepting this priesthood masquerade. The men had become too happy here. They’d never been made such a fuss of in all their lives. Not a man would come with me. Not one. If only one of ’em had crossed to my side of the line… Pity you weren’t drafted to my bunch, Alex. You’d have come with me.”

  “Sure I would, Bob.”

  Bagshaw sighed. “It means everything to have someone you can count on.”

  Sherret thought, You’re too right.

  Aloud, he said, “Well, it’s not too late. Come with me now.”

  Bagshaw shook his head. “Too out of condition. Amara’s too tough for me now, I can’t take it. I’ve been out there. You can’t rely on a damn thing. You never know what’s going to hit you next, but one thing you can be sure of—it’ll be an unpleasant surprise packet. An unpredictable world. I can’t adapt to it, I’m a product of Reparism. There’s no place for me on this lunatic planet. But if you can take it, then you’re a man, my son. Got a B-stick on you? No, I thought not. Run out of ’em long since. Know what? I wish we hadn’t run right out of fuel when we landed. Wish we had something left in the drive-box, just enough to blast Pegasus out of here—and I wouldn’t care a curse where we crashed. End with a bang, not a whimper. Where’s your glass?”

  “Thanks, I’ve had enough. Enough of everything. I’m moving on now, Bob.”

  “But you haven’t met any of the boys. Digger, Fritzy, and Doc Lamont—you know them. Doc’s up in the ship. The others are with their lady loves in the village. They’d be glad to see you.”

  “Another time, maybe,” said Sherret. But he knew there would never be another time. “Good-bye, Captain.” He grasped Bagshaw’s hand and shook it.

  “I’m sorry you’re not staying, Alex. Yet, in another way, I’m glad. You may make out. The rest of us have made a mess of it.”

  He insisted that Sherret take a big plastic bag stuffed with food from the heap of offerings, and a full wineskin. He saw him off at the gate, and the natives made obeisance to both of them. Bagshaw indicated them with good-humored contempt.

  “If they could read our minds, within the hour we’d be fatting all the region kites. Especially me.” He thumped his paunch.

  Sherret climbed up and over the ridge, and never once looked back. There was nothing to look back on. Na-Abiza—the Na-Abiza of his imagination—just wasn’t there.

  He recalled that conversation with the Paddy at the outset of the trek. It had seemed sheer nonsense at the time.

  “Have you ever been to Na-Abiza?”

  “Yes, I have, human, but I didn’t get there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it wasn’t there when I got there.”

  “But you just said you didn’t get there.”

  “Of course I didn’t, human, if it wasn’t there.”

  “Well, is it there now?”

  “How can I tell? I’m here, not there.”

  Yes, he would always be here, but never there. The paradox was that a man just wasn’t here, was nothing, if he weren’t trying to get there. Shakespeare had said it, as he’d said everything. You had “to shine in use, or rust in monumental mockery.”

  But one didn’t learn from books, only from one’s own experience. As a youth, he’d read Stevenson’s proclamation that to travel hopefully was a better thing than to arrive. He agreed, but mental subscription wasn’t enough. As a man, he’d have to learn it the hard way.

  He set his sights on the next goal, the V-shaped notch in the distant mountains. Once, coming from the other direction, he had thought of it as the gateway to Na-Abiza. Well, it still could be. Without Rosala, for him there could be no Na-Abiza.

  It was the deep orange time, and he was well into the pass, almost back to the village. He was sad but not afraid. The Three-people were not dangerous so long as you didn’t consort with them. And, as he knew, isolated in their separate cells, they wished only to be left alone.

  Then he saw the graveyard, just off the road. Fleeing from the house, he must have stumbled mindlessly past it before. It was well tended and there were two new graves, heaped with fresh earth, with carved wooden boards at the heads of each. He picked his way between other graves to them.

  The inscriptions, not long completed by an unknown villager, said baldly on the one board: LAUREL CANATO.

  And even more baldly on the other: UNKNOWN.

  There were several other nameless headboards around, too, but they were old and weathered. This could only be Lee’s.

  He stood for a long time looking at it, remembering. But for the accidental death of Canato breaking up the amalgam, he himself would probably be filling another nameless grave here.

  Just behind him, someone stepped on a twig and snapped it. He started violently and spun around.

  It was Rosala. Surprise stunned him. He could only stare at her. She was wearing a tunic he’d never seen before. It was somewhat travel-stained. And she was lovely—lovelier even than he remembered—in the warm orange light.

  She was smiling, yet on the verge of tears. She could say nothing, but held out her arms to him.

  They embraced with passion.

  After a time, he said, “How did you come to be here? I don’t understand. You said Petrans are forbidden to leave their own area. The law—”

  “I broke the law, darling. I didn’t want to go on living on sufferance any longer. I decided I’d rather be dead.”

  “Yet you’re alive.”

  “Yes. I think more alive than I’ve ever been. Because I decided not to wait for my man to come back to me, but to go and seek him.”

  A doubt, arising from the old jealousy, came upon him. He held her a little apart from him.

  “Myself? Or Lee?” He added, a trifle sourly, “As it happens, you’ve found us both.”

  “Both? What do you mean?”

  Haltingly, he explained, and was as distressed as she. She knelt over the grave and cried freely. He watched her with mixed feelings.

  He said, awkwardly, “We haven’t the right to be sorry for him. Rather, admire his triumph, for he was not defeated. He faced and fought the u
ltimate horror, and kept his sanity. He proved himself a better man than his father. That was what he wished most to do.”

  “Even more than…”

  “Yes. Honestly, I think so. Even more than living with you.”

  Abruptly, she stood up, dried her eyes, and said, “Let us get away from this terrible place.”

  “And go where?”

  “Wherever you want to go, darling.”

  He was still doubtful. “You’ll go with me—as second best?”

  “Lee is dead. I am released from any obligation to Lee. But that doesn’t mean that you were second best. When Lee left me, I could not bring myself to go and look for him. I stayed in my house, clinging to what I thought was my life. But when you left me, I realized I had no life. There was no life without you. I came seeking you, not Lee.”

  He kissed her.

  “Well, now we can go back.”

  “There’s no going back, Sherry, once the law has been broken. Anyhow, I don’t want to go back to the house. I’m happier free from it.”

  “But your pictures, and all—”

  “You said you believed art wasn’t the whole of existence. I believe that, too, now. All I want is you. I can learn to paint and sculpt again, later, in a more deeply satisfying way. It came all too easily before. It was no credit to me.”

  He frowned at her, puzzled.

  She explained, “It was the Power acting through me. Petrans are born mediums, so long as they act in accordance with the law. But a renegade Petran loses the ability to tap the Power. If he quits his area, the contact breaks. I can tell you this now—now that I’m outside the law.”

  “You renounced the Power—for me?”

  “When it came to it, there was no. choice. I just didn’t want to live without you. Anyhow, I’ve gained, not lost. My body is my own. Try as you will, you can’t change me now. I exist in my own right, and believe in my own existence. I shall live and die like any normal humanoid. It was a paradox. If you were content to let the Power act through you, then you had no faith in your own power to act independently—or even to exist independently. If you renounce the Power, then you gain faith in yourself. Maybe I’m the first Petran ever to learn this.”