DUALITY: The World of Lies (33 page)

Together they made their first expedition to
the near oasis to negotiate the water fees from the men who
controlled it, as well as gauge Gahre's mettle in the desert. Gahre
again suspected collusion between Javal and these men. What other
reason would they have to inhabit the oasis but to collect these
fees from expeditionist types like himself who had come from afar
to test themselves in the Sea of Sand? According to Javal, Gahre
was the only such explorer who had arrived this season. That made
Gahre the sole source of the entire industry's income, and he
sensed that they were determined to squeeze as much out of him as
possible. Gahre did not care if they ended up with his very last
coin so long as his ends were met, but it was a long road ahead,
and the money was going far too fast. These “water fees” were
surely illegal, and his overall success in this venture depended on
getting them down to a much lower rate than the parasites likely
had their sights set on.

The trek from Mar Valda to the first oasis
could be made in six days by Javal's reckoning, though he claimed
on his own he could manage it in four. The reason was that the
typical tourist was an outsider, not acclimated to the harsh desert
environs, who required more rest and more water. Gahre was as hardy
a wayfarer as there was to be found anywhere, who had walked the
span of a continent to get here, and so told Javal to aim for
five.

They hydrated themselves and their camels and
headed out as Cearulei set over the horizon. The brilliant night
sky was clearer than he had ever seen. Many newly visible stars and
striations in the cosmic clouds revealed themselves. The redmoon
Oberion was new and waxing, and Rubeli shone with all the sublime
luminescence of an empyreal throne. Gahre knew something Javal did
not: the great secret that were men who traversed these heavenly
bodies, and that out there were stars upon stars, worlds upon
worlds, without end.

He had no trouble keeping pace with
Javal and rationed his water sip by sip, only to be scolded by
Javal for it and told that one must drink long and hard to hydrate
the body deep within. Mere sips would be stolen away by the dry air
and bring a man to death. He also told him that there were
aquifers hidden beneath the sands, and as such there
were, though rare and hidden, low points where a man could dig and
find water. He knew of one of such hidden oasis that would aid them
greatly in the future of their campaign, but bid Gahre to keep this
a secret from the other locals.
Hmmmm... if
there is a hidden oasis between the first and the
second, perhaps there are more to be discovered in the
span beyond?

Well before dawn Javal scouted a depression
between the dunes, a former pitcamp, refilled by the shifting
sands. They shoveled for an hour until the pit was once more. To
Gahre it seemed like an obscene amount of labor for a mere day’s
sleep. They covered the pit with poles and then thick tarp to block
the solar rays, and even brought the stinking camels in with them.
For nourishment they ate salted rations, and then all slept
together in that hole like so many burrowed animals.

When he woke, he understood the benefit gained
from the previous day's expenditure of energy. It was several
degrees cooler inside the pit than it was on the broiling surface
above. As evening fell they packed up camp and set upon the next
leg. Javal was obsessive with the compass and sextant, yet had no
map. Javal told him that the map was ingrained in his mind. Gahre,
who had something more than a passing familiarity in the art of
cartography and stellar navigation, bid Javal to teach him how to
precisely record locales in the desert so that they might be found
again, as there were no concrete landmarks in the everchanging
sands. Javal had a better understanding of the astral cycles, the
circling of Polestar North and the annual and monthly cycle of the
redmoon Haven, how the four Kings travailed the seasons, and the
steady precision of the oppositional relationship between Cearulei
and Ignis Rubeli. Taken all together it was such a multifarious
mishmash of relative factors that Gahre's head reeled. Night by
night he quizzed Javal, who often needed to repeat the same things
over again as Gahre forgot them. By the time they reached the near
oasis, the jumbled mass of it had begun to coalesce into a more
manageable model in Gahre's mind.

On the fifth night, where the land descended
from the high dunescape, the first oasis came into view. It was
neatly circular and the size of what one would not call a lake but
a large pond, contrasting the colorless landscape with its still
blue waters and surrounding greenery. There were lanterns lit and
wagons, wagons he recognized at once as being from the very same
caravan he had tracked to the north and met up within again the
previous week in Mar Valda. It was not the full contingent, but a
squad of eight of their strongest men, among them the same leader
who recommended Javal to him, and three of their womenfolk, who
busied themselves about the camp attending chores.

What this told Gahre immediately was that
these men who collected “water fees” at the oasis had only just
arrived there themselves, and entirely on his account. They were
greeted gruffly, but Gahre could see by the familiar looks they
shared with Javal that even this was a show put on for his benefit
-or rather detriment. Their camels were allowed to drink, and hot
food and tea were offered in a cordial enough manner. Then the
negotiations began, and began badly. Ten coin per jar for water.
Javal had estimated they would need many hundreds of jars buried in
caches, and most would need to be refilled multiple times as they
would also have to consume them on the return trips. That alone
worked out to thousands in coin, and he would need even more in the
as-yet-secret third phase of the campaign. Javal was of little
help, arguing more on their behalf than Gahre's. No man owned the
oasis, and it was infuriating that these caravaners considered it
their water to sell. He wanted to tell them off completely and just
take of it as he willed, but he understood that would lead to
retribution and sabotage of his venture. Gahre held his ground and
only offered a monthly water fee of a hundred coin, telling them
that any more than that would lead him into cost overrun which
would force him to forfeit the entire expedition and sell his gear
to recover what he could of his funds. In response they
not-so-subtly threatened that he would fetch no more than a trifle
of what he had paid in Mar Valda for his gear, to which Gahre
replied he would take it all to the city of Tokinga further east to
recover its worth. All night it went on: the lying, the
brinkmanship, both parties standing up and threatening to walk away
from any deal only to be lured back to the table by the slightest
hint of compromise. It was a torturous way to do business, but he
knew he held all the cards really. The bottom line, as he would
have them believe it to be, was that if he aborted the venture,
they got nothing. That itself was a lie since he had no intention
at all of giving up, but he made them believe they were driving him
to that point nonetheless. Lying, he hated it more than anything,
to be dragged so deeply into the same mire he ultimately sought to
ascend. He was reminded of Indulu and the filthy wheels of
governance he bemoaned. Hours of argument and theatrics later, and
they tentatively agreed to a three hundred coin per month water
fee. Worn down from it all and anxious to conclude the tedious
negotiations, Gahre made the mistake of showing an eagerness to
accept. Thus it was quickly followed by demands for new fees, for
camping and stabling the camels and everything else they could
dream up. He asked them how much the air might cost and if they
thought they owned that too. This at least elicited a hearty laugh.
Gahre changed his displayed disposition to appear unenthused by the
three hundred coin fee and insisted he would additionally expect
them to haul food, provisions, and empty jars for him from Mar
Valda for that kind of money. And really, what else did these
people have to do?

In the end they came to agreement, and Gahre
breathed a sigh of relief. The liquor came out, and Gahre was
pleased to see that Javal did not partake of it. Where they were
headed there was no room for error, and even less for dehydration.
The following night they set out two days east and buried their
first cache. Then it was back to the oasis and on again three days
to the next cache, and drawing water back from the first on the
next return trip. The law of diminishing returns Javal had spoken
of became very evident in the grueling weeks that followed,
covering the same ground time and again, up and back again, to
stretch the water caches evermore slightly further. He had made a
smart deal. The caravaners hauled their food provisions and
replacement gear to the first oasis, sparing them from any return
trips to Mar Valda. In these days, Gahre grew more adapted to the
desert, his skin tanned to a such a darkened state he barely
recognized it as his own, and his daily water consumption lessened
until it was almost on par with Javal's. After being bitten twice
and spit upon countless times, he grew to understand the camels,
communicate with them, and most importantly control them with a
firm mind and at times a firm whip.

Javel had veered them off a direct course with
a southeasterly heading. He had his reasons. In a low point along
the dunescape they found darkened sand -damp sand. Javal's hidden
oasis! They excavated a pit there as deep as the sands would allow
until they stood in a pool of muddy water. Yes, muddy, but potable.
Javal's theory was that this was part of an underground artesian
aquifer which fed the far oasis they were nearing, and with this
water source to draw from, were able to reach just two days
later.

It was a sublime sight. The oasis curved in a
crescent shape holding within itself a lush wetland of greenery.
Gahre stripped off at once and dove into this fountain of the gods.
Surely this was the spring that fed Javal's secret aquifer. The
water cooled measurably beneath the surface and went down so far
Gahre could not find the depths of it. There were signs of human
visitation, including a collapsed tent frame with the remnants of
canvas clinging to its poles like dried out scraps of meat on a
bone. Additionally, and to Gahre's good fortune, there were several
dozen intact water jars abandoned here. Javal explained how this
had been from the last expedition to this oasis, which he had
guided some four years past. Javal was quite pleased with himself
for arriving here, and he praised Gahre on his aptitude, quick
learning, and endurance. Then Javal asked him how long he wished to
remain before returning to Mar Valda. That was when Gahre told him
that this was not his true destination and that from here he
planned to continue east. Javal became visibly distressed and told
him there was no end to the Sea of Sand. Gahre countered that all
seas had shores. Javal offered, for more fee, to help explore some
days east, but begged Gahre to reconsider going any further than
that. The camels, he claimed, would venture no more than three days
out, because they too knew better. There was no other shore, there
was only death, and this had been known fact since ancient times.
In the sands to the north of the oasis, he showed Gahre the fallen
markers of graves and pleaded with him to take satisfaction in the
success they he had already achieved and not to push things
further.

Gahre had two gems remaining, each worth a
solid thousand in coin. He told Javal that he would give him one if
he could route provisions to this oasis as Gahre laid the eastward
caches, and that when that was done, the second gem would be his as
well. Javal's greed and sense of humanity came into immediate
impasse, first agreeing to the deal, then disagreeing, changing his
mind to and fro about it. To Javal, Gahre understood, he had
proposed for himself a course of certain doom. Gahre reassured him
that he understood the risk and had aimed to take it all along, how
he had crossed a continent to come to this point and would carry on
with or without Javal's aid. That is if he didn't actually want the
precious jewels being offered to him. Javal finally relented and
solemnly accepted the gem.

On the following eve, they divided the tarp
into two parts, as Javal would need shelter on the return trip to
Mar Valda. He promised to return with more tarp, rations, and jars.
He took one camel leaving Gahre the other and set off. Gahre took
another night and day to rest, and then hauled his first water
cache eastward. He continually checked his compass heading and took
frequent notation of the sextant. Javal was no longer present to
guide him so he had to rely on his own skill now with no room
whatsoever for oversights. His camel showed profound unease at
being commanded east, but with some prodding took him three days in
that direction, where Gahre laid the cache and returned. The next
trip was set for five days but the camel expressed extreme unease
when bid to surpass the three day cache. Gahre prodded and
harangued it to continue. Four and a half days east of the second
oasis en route to the next cachesite, the beast stopped and
stubbornly refused to take one more step eastbound. There was no
cajoling it; it feared that span of desert more than anything Gahre
could do to it. Javal had warned him of this, that there was no
camel who would take on that task. Gahre laid the cache where they
stood deadlocked and then returned with the camel to the oasis. He
pondered the problem and came to terms with its one and only
solution. He would use the camel to haul jars to the five day
cachesite, and beyond that he would take over the beastly burden by
the sweat of his own back. The sleigh drew heavily, and he was
forced to moderate the load since did not have the hauling strength
of a camel or its four legs to pull by. This excess expenditure of
energy dehydrated him faster, and consequently shortened the
hauling distance. Having laid the last of the water jars, he had
naught to do but return to the oasis and enjoy a respite while
awaiting Javal's return.