"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.
Many of the automatons went down.
Not one of our men received more than a minor wound. Somehow we all survived against the might of the men-turned-machines.
But, bit by bit, they surrounded us and crushed us inwards until there was no room to fight.
Then we were captured - not killed, as I had expected - and our swords wrenched from our hands.
What did the Eleven intend to do with us now?
I looked up at our airships. What would they do with those? With the plague-curing water we had brought?
I wondered if there was never to be good health and sanity in Cend-Amrid.
Chapter Eighteen
HOPE FOR THE FUTURE
We were imprisoned in the same kind of cell we had found ourselves in before.
There were quite a few of us and it was rather cramped. I could not understand why we had not been killed outright, but I decided to accept this and begin trying to think of a means of escape.
I inspected our cell. It had been well made and designed specifically to imprison men - a rare thing on Mars, where the whole idea is normally abhorrent.
Suddenly I remembered the slim dagger that Fasa the cat-girl had given me earlier.
I removed it from my harness and looked at it, wondering how it might be used to our advantage.
There are only so many ways of escaping from prison - if the prison has been thoughtfully designed in order to afford no entrance but the door. I considered them all, going carefully over the door in particular.
The hinges were its weakest point. I began to work at the wood of the door-frame, near the hinges, with the idea of hauling the door inwards.
I must have worked, absorbed in what I was doing for several shatis.
At length I had succeeded in cutting the wood away from the frame. Then Hool Haji, Damad and myself hauled at the door. It groaned inwards, the bar on the other side falling down with a clatter.
No one seemed to have heard us.
Silently, we began to move towards the steps that led up to the first floor of the Central Place.
We had just reached the corridor and were hoping that we could somehow reach the roof and the airships - if they were still there - when I heard a sound to my left.
I whirled, dagger in hand, crouched and ready for action.
A figure stood there, blank-faced and stiff-bodied.
"One!" I said. "Barane Dasa!"
"I was coming to cells," came the cold voice. "Now it not necessary. You come."
"Where to?" I asked.
"To main water supply Cend-Amrid," was the reply. "Your tanks are there."
Wonderingly, we followed him, still unsure, still believing this might be some kind of trap.
We followed him through corridors and passages that seemed to lead away from the Central Place, perhaps underground, until we came to a high roofed place that was in semi-darkness. Here a great reservoir of water gleamed. On a kind of jetty leading out into the reservoir were the tanks in which we had carried the green water from the Lake of the Green Mists.
Somehow Barane Dasa must have manhandled them here by himself!
"Why do you go against the Eleven?" I asked him, as I checked that the tanks had not been tampered with.
"It is necessary."
"But when I last saw you, you were a fairly normal human being. What has happened to you?"
For an instant his face relaxed and his eyes had a faint, ironic gleam. "To help them we must not attack them," he said. "I think you taught me that, Michael Kane."
I was astonished.
This man had pretended to become 'rehabilitated' into the Eleven so that he could try to reverse the effects of the creed he had himself originated. I could only admire him. I thought he might do it - once the plague was cured for good and all.
"But I still cannot quite see why you brought us here," I said.
"For more than one reason. You saved the life of my niece, Ala Mara, while you were here. That is simple gratitude. But-also you showed me how I might best work to correct the crime I began here in Cend-Anuid."
I reached out and gripped his arm. “You'are a man, Barane Dasa, You will do it."
"I hope so. Now you must all get the antidote into the water supply. All machines need fuel," he said, "and the machines of Cend-Amrid must drink."
His reasoning was sound. We were going to do good, as he hoped to do personally, by stealth.
Soon we had got all the green water into the reservoir and our work was done - or would be done in the course of a da
y.
Now Barane Dasa said, "You come," returning to his original ro1e.
We followed him through a series of winding passageways.
Slowly we began to work our way higher and higher until, to my astonishment - for I had completely lost my bearings -we found ourselves on the roof of the Central Place.
And there were our airships.
They were in exactly the place we had left them.
Peering down from the cabin of my own airship was Ala Mara, a smile of relief on her face.
"Uncle!" she whispered excitedly when she saw Barane Dasa. But the man did not look at her, keeping his face rigid and his body straight. He did not even make a gesture to her.
"Uncle" - her voice broke a little - "don't you recognize me - Ala Mara, your niece?"
Barane Dasa remained silent.
I made a sign for her - a gesture that was meant to comfort her, but I heard her sob as, she retreated into the cabin.
"Why did they do nothing to our airships?" I said softly to Barane Dasa.
"Airships not exist," he said.
"So they cannot see them - or have deluded themselves into thinking that they can't see them."
"Yes."
"You have a hard fight on your hands for one man," I said.
"Plague gone - fight easier," he said. "Plague go fast - this take longer."
"And you will win, if any man can," I said, voicing the sentiments I had expressed earlier.
I gripped his arm once more and began to climb the ladder up to the cabin. I would need to comfort Ala Mara now, tell her a little at least of what her uncle had been forced to make of himself.
Soon we were all swinging up the ladders and entering our cabins.
Our main mission had been a success and some of our earlier exhilaration had returned.
The airships swung in the air, pointing back towards Vamal.
Soon we were speeding rapidly over the lakes, crossing the place of flowers and quicksands.
We were going home. In a sense we were already there, for our hearts were at ease and our minds at rest at long last!
We came back to Vamal on a peaceful morning full of gentle sunlight. The green mists swirled delicately through the city, the marble towers gleamed and glinted, and the whole city scintillated with light like a precious gem.
Far away came a faint sound, as of children singing, and we knew we were hearing the songs of the Calling Hills.
The whole of Mars seemed at peace. We had fought long and hard for that peace, but we were not heroes because of that. All we had done, in a sense, was to make heroes of all those who had fought with us.
It was enough.
Shizala was waiting in the central square near the palace. She was mounted on the broad back of a gentle dahara and she had another beast saddled and ready beside her.
I was not tired and I knew that she would know that.
I was quick to scramble down the ladder and swing from it on to the back of the waiting dahara.
I leant over and kissed my wife, hugging her close to me.
"Is it over? " she asked.
"Mainly," I said. "In time it will be nothing but a memory of sadness and disturbance. It is good that Vashu should have such memories."
"Yes." She nodded. "It is good. Come - let us ride to the Calling Hills as we used to when we first met."
Together we urged our daharas forward through the quiet morning, riding through the lovely streets and out towards the Calling Hills.
With my beautiful wife riding beside me, and with the exhilaration of the fast ride, I knew that I had won something of immense value - something that I might well have lost if I had not come to Mars as I did.
The cool scents of the Martian autumn in my nostrils, I gave myself up to the joy that comes from true and simple happiness.
EPILOGUE
I HAD listened with keen interest to Michael Kane's story and it had moved me to a deeper emotion than any I had experienced before.
Now I realized why he seemed so much more relaxed than he had ever been before. He had found something - something rare on Earth,
At that point I was tempted to ask him to let me return to Mars with him, but he smiled.
"Would you really like that?" he asked.
"I - I think so."
He shook his head.
"Find Mars in yourself," he said. Then he grinned. "It is far less strenuous, for one thing."
I thought this over and then shrugged.
"Perhaps you're right," I said. "But at least I'll have the pleasure of committing your story to paper. So others will have the pleasure of sharing a little of what you found on Mars."
"I hope so," he said. He paused. "I suppose you think me rather sentimental."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, trying to describe all my emotions to you - the bit I told you about our ride to the Calling Hills."
"There is a great difference between sentimentality and honest sentiment," I told him. "The trouble is that people tend to confuse one for the other and so reject both. All we seek is honesty."
"And an absence of fear." He smiled.
"That comes with honesty," I suggested.
"Partly," he agreed.
"What a mistrusting lot we are on Earth," I said. "We are so blind that we even distrust beauty when we see it, feeling that it cannot be what it appears to be."
"A healthy enough feeling," Kane pointed out. "But it can, as you say, go too far. Perhaps the old medieval ideal is not such a bad one - moderation in all things. So often that phrase is taken to apply to just the physical side of mankind, but it is just as important to his spiritual development, I think."
I nodded.
"Well," he said. "For fear of boring you further, I will return to the basement and the matter transmitter. I find that Earth is a better place every time I return - but I find Mars the same, also. I am a lucky man."
"You are an exceptionally lucky man," I said. "When will you come back? There must be more adventures yet to come."
"Wasn't that one enough? " He grinned.
"For the moment," I told him. 'But I will soon want to hear more."
"Remember," he joked, pretending to wag a warning finger. "Moderation in all things."
"It will comfort me as I wait for your next visit," I said, smiling.
"I will be back," he assured me.
And then he had left the room - left me sitting beside a dying fire, still full of memories of Mars.
There would be even more memories for me soon. Of that I was sure.
Masters of the Pit or Barbarians of Mars Page 12