City of Golden Shadow (73 page)

"Paul, look!" Gally shouted from outside, splashing gleefully. "Raurau threw me in the water, but I'm swimming!"

The great city Tuktubim stood out of sight on the cliffs above, yet though it was only a mile or so away, there was no direct route up the hills. Instead, Klooroo herded them back into his skiff and they set out once more along the canal. Paul wondered if the impossibility of a direct approach was meant to reduce the chances of success for a violent uprising among the serfs.

As they pulled away from Nimbortown, Paul could finally see the full sweep of the cliffs, which were a deep brownish red in the midday sun. At the top, almost invisible, jutted the prickly tops of a dozen pointed towers, all that was visible of the city. As the cliffs fell away and the skiff circled wide around the perimeter of the hills, the vastness of the red desert became apparent. On either side of the Great Canal, broken only by distant mountains on one side and the crosshatching of lesser canals, the sands stretched away as far as he could see, a shifting, softly hissing scarlet ocean.

"Are there other cities out there?" Paul asked.

"Oh, aye; although it's leagues to the nearest in any direction." Klooroo squinted ahead down the watercourse. "You wouldn't want to go off searching for them, even on the canals, without a great deal of preparation. Dangerous lands. Fierce animals."

Gally's eyes widened a little. "Like that thing in the water. . . !" he began, then something buzzed loudly in the sky above them. As he and Paul looked up, the light changed. For a moment, the bright, yellowish sky turned a sickly bruised green and the air itself became almost solid around them.

Paul blinked. For just a moment, the canal and sky had appeared to flow together into one sparkling, granulated whole. Now, everything was as it had been.

"What was that? It happened when we were on the river last night, too."

Klooroo was again making vigorous signs against evil. "I do not know. Strange storms. There have been several of them recently. The gods are angry, I suppose-fighting among themselves. If it had not begun some months ago, I would say it was because you broke the Festival taboo." He glowered. "I am certain, however, that you have not improved the gods' mood."

The Great Canal looped broadly around the hills on which Tuktubim sat. As the skiff made its way around the loop toward the peripheral canal which led to the city, Paul stared across the great expanses of cracked, muddy fields on either side. He could understand why the Ullamari held the rain in such reverence. It was hard to believe that anything could make those flat, baked expanses fertile, but Klooroo had said that every stalk of grain on Mars was grown, and every herd animal grazed, within a few miles of the Great Canal's banks. It was a tiny thread of life running through the vastness of the desert. A year without rain and half the population might die.

The canal was not as busy now as it was just after sunrise and just before sunset, Klooroo had assured them-the heat kept most people indoors-but to Paul it still seemed almost choked with boats, large and small. Most were crewed by one or more nimbors like Klooroo, but some carried taltor soldiers as well, or others in less militaristic dress that Paul guessed were merchants or government officials. Some of these boats were even larger and more spectacular than the priestly barge that had docked at the island, so top-heavy with gilt and ornament, so draped with billowing fabrics and crammed with heavily bejeweled nobles that it was a wonder they didn't simply sink to the bottom of the canal. He thought the same could be said of some of the grotesquely overdressed taltor nobles as well.

Klooroo swung the boat into a smaller canal that doubled back beneath the hills. From this side they could see the city itself, nestled just beneath the crest and looking down on the fanlike array of farms spreading out from the loop of the Great Canal and fed by an intricate system of smaller waterways. Tuktubim stood over them like a crowned emperor, its towers of silver and gold glinting in the midsummer sun.

"But how can we get up there in a boat?" asked Gally, staring at the corona of towers.

"You'll see." Klooroo was amused. "Just keep your eyes rolled up, little sand-toad."

The secret was revealed as they reached the first of a series of locks; dozens more were ranged in tiers above them, each fitted with huge pumping-wheels. Even now Paul could see a ship with white sails being lifted up to the highest lock. It looked like a toy, but he knew it must be one of the large flat-bottomed merchant ships like those whose wakes had set their tiny skiff bobbing on the Great Canal.

It took the larger part of the afternoon for the skiff to be lifted up halfway. Nimbors were allowed to bring their boats no higher, and so they left it in a small marina built, paradoxically, on the side of a hill. Klooroo led them to the public path and they began the rest of the ascent. The walk was long, but not arduous: the fishskin sandals Klooroo had found for them turned out to be surprisingly comfortable. They stopped occasionally to drink from the standpipes that dripped into basins by the side of the path, or to rest in the shade of tall stones, great red boulders shot through with streaks of gold and black.

Soldiers were waiting at the huge city gates, but they seemed more interested in observing the show than in asking questions of a nimbor and a pair of off-worlders. It was a parade worth watching-nobles in covered golden litters carried by sweating nimbors, others riding creatures that seemed part horse, part reptile, and almost all of them the same jade-green as Klooroo. Here and there Paul saw a glimpse of blue flesh or a shimmer of pale feathers in the jostling crowd, and each time he caught his breath, even though he knew it was false hope; there was little chance the woman he sought would be allowed to walk the noonday streets of Tuktubim. She would be kept somewhere, carefully watched, perhaps in the cluster of towers at the center of the city.

Klooroo led Paul and Gally through the tall gate-pillars of ivory and gold and into a street that seemed almost as wide as the Great Canal itself. On either side, sheltered from the fierce sun by vast striped awnings, all of Tuktubim's population seemed involved in either arguing or bargaining; most of the activity seemed to consist of a combination of the two.

"This is all the market?" asked Paul after they had walked for many minutes.

Klooroo shook his head. "This? No, these are just the street vendors. I am taking you to the bazaar-the greatest marketplace on all of Ullamar, or so I am told by those better-traveled than I."

He was about to say more, but Paul was suddenly distracted by a voice somewhere behind them shouting in his native language. Klooroo's translating necklaces made the nimbor and other Ullamari seem to be speaking his tongue, but there was a sense of both the original speech and the translation happening at the same time. This new voice, growing louder by the second, was clearly and unequivocally something he could understand without any necklace.

"I say! Hold on there, will you?"

Paul turned. A startled Gally turned, too, suddenly feral as an alley cat his little fingers extended like claws. A man was running toward them with the easy grace of an athlete. He seemed unquestionably human and an Earthling.

"Ah, thank you," he said as he reached them. "I was afraid I'd have to chase after you all the way to the bazaar. Not much joy in this heat, what?"

Paul was a little uncertain. He had a reflexive feeling that he should fear recognition or pursuit of any kind, but it was difficult to reconcile that with the stranger's appearance. The smiling newcomer was a tall and handsome young man, blond-bearded and lithely muscular. He wore an outfit similar to Paul's, except that he had a loose white shirt beneath his waistcoat, and instead of sandals made from canal-fish hide, he wore high leather boots.

"Say, dashed rude of me just to come belting up to you this way and not introduce myself," the blond man said. "Brummond-Hurley Brummond. Used to be Captain Brummond of Her Majesty's Life Guard, but that was long ago and far away, I suppose. Ah, and here's my friend, Professor Bagwalter, caught up at last. Say hello, Bags!" He gestured to an older man, also bearded, but more formally dressed, who was limping toward them, a frock coat draped over his arm. The new arrival paused before them, panting, removed spectacles which had been steamed opaque, then took out his handkerchief and wiped at his streaming brow.

"Good Lord, Brummond, you have led me a chase." He waited for a few more breaths before continuing. "Pleasure to meet you folks. We saw you go in at the gate."

"That's right," said the blond man. "We don't see many of our folk here, and we know pretty near all of them. Still, we didn't chase you just because you were new faces." He laughed. "It's not that boring at the Ares Club."

The professor coughed. "I didn't chase them at all. I was trying to keep up with you."

"And a damn foolish idea, too, in this swelter." Brummond turned back to Paul. "Truth is, for a moment I thought you were an old mate of mine-Billy Kirk, his name was. 'Kedgeree' Kirk, we used to call him, on account of he was so particular about breakfast. He and I fought together in Crimea, at Sevastopol, and Balaktava. Fine gunnery man, one of the best. But I saw as soon as I caught up that it wasn't so. Damned remarkable likeness, though."

Paul was having trouble keeping up with Brummond's swift, clipped speech. "No, my name is Paul. Paul. . . ." He hesitated as for a moment he felt even his name grow slippery and dubious. "Paul Jonas. This is Gally. And Klooroo here, who pulled us out of the Great Canal."

"Fine boy," said Brummond, ruffling Gally's hair. The boy scowled. Klooroo, who had fallen silent at the man's initial approach, seemed just as happy to be ignored.

Professor Bagwalter was looking at Paul speculatively, as though he were an interesting example of some rather arcane scientific effect. "You have a strange accent, Mister Jonas. Are you Canadian?"

Paul stared, caught off-balance. "I . . . I don't think I am."

Bagwalter raised a bushy eyebrow at Paul's answer, but Brummond reached out and clasped Paul by the shoulder. His grip was very strong. "Good Lord, Bags, we aren't going to stand here in the blazing sun while you riddle away some linguistic nonsense of yours, are we? Pay no attention, Jonas-the professor can't listen to the first bluebird of spring without wanting to dissect it. But as long as we've interrupted your day, let us buy you a drink, what? There's a fair-to-middling soz-house just down that little sidestreet, there. We'll get the boy something weaker, eh?" He laughed and squeezed Paul's shoulder companionably; for a moment, Paul was afraid something might be pulled loose. "No, better still," Brummond said, "we'll take you to the Ares Club. Do you good-give you a taste of home. Come, then, what do you say?"

"That's . . . that's fine," Paul replied.

Paul was dismayed to discover that the Ares Club doorman-a rather ill-favored taltor-would not allow Klooroo to enter. "No dog-faces," he pronounced, and would not entertain further discussion. A potentially embarrassing situation was avoided when the nimbor volunteered to show Gally around the bazaar. Paul accepted the offer gratefully, but Brummond did not seem to approve.

"Listen, old man," he said as Gally and Klooroo walked away, "love thy neighbor, all well and good sort of thing, but you won't get far putting too much faith in greenskins."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, they can be all right in their way, and this one seems fond of you and the boy, but just don't expect him to cover your back. They're not trustworthy. Not like an Earthman, if you see what I mean."

The inside of the club seemed strangely familiar. A word, Victorian, drifted through Paul's head, but he did not know what it meant. The furniture was heavy and overstuffed, the walls paneled in dark wood. Dozens of strange creatures' heads on plaques-or unplaqued, but companioned by the rest of their stuffed bodies-stared down at the visitors. Except for Paul and his two companions, the club seemed empty, which gave the ranked glassy stares an even more intimidating effect.

Brummond saw Paul staring at a huge shaggy head, vaguely feline, but with the mandibles of an insect. "Nasty-looking customer, eh? That's a yellow stonecat. Live in the foothills, eat anything they can get, including you and me and Auntie Maude. Almost as unpleasant as a blue squanch."

"What Hurley's not mentioning is that he's the one who dragged in that particular trophy," said Professor Bagwalter dryly. "Killed it with a cavalry saber."

Brummond shrugged. "Got a bit lucky, you know the sort of thing."

With a wide choice of tables, they selected one at a small window overlooking what Paul assumed was the bazaar, a massive public square almost completely covered with small awnings. A vast crowd, primarily Martian, swirled in and out beneath them. Paul watched it, amazed by the vitality and activity. He almost thought he could see patterns in the ebb and flow of the marketers, repeating designs, spontaneous shared movements like a flock of birds on the wing.

"Jonas?" Brummond nudged him. "What's your poison, old man?"

Paul looked up. An aged nimbor wearing an incongruous-looking white dinner jacket was waiting patiently for his order. Without knowing where the idea came from, he asked for a brandy. The nimbor inclined his head and disappeared on soundless feet.

"You know, of course, that the local brandy is barely fit to hold the name," said Professor Bagwalter. "Still, it's a damn sight better than the local beer." He fixed Paul with his sharp brown eyes. "So, what brings you to Tuktubim, Mister Jonas? I asked you if you were Canadian because I thought you might have come in with Loubert on L'Age D'Or-they say he's got a lot of Canucks in his crew."

"Blood and thunder, Bags, you're interrogating the poor fellow again," laughed Brummond. He leaned back in his chair as if to leave the field to two well-matched adversaries.

Paul hesitated. He didn't feel well-matched at all. and there was something about Professor Bagwalter that made him decidedly uncomfortable, although it was hard to define just what it was. Where Brummond, like Klooroo and others he'd met here, seemed as comfortable with life on Mars as a fish in a stream, the professor had a strange edge, a questioning intelligence that seemed out of place. Still, just a few moments of listening to them talk about someone named Loubert and someplace called Canada made it clear he would never be able to bluff his way through.