The Narrow Land Page 4

  The exception was the stepped pyramid, the mystery of which irked Root. It was built of massive granite blocks, set without mortar but cut so carefully that hardly a crack could be seen. Early on his arrival Root had climbed all over the pyramid, unsuccessfully seeking entrance.

  When finally he brought out his atomite torch to melt a hole in the granite a sudden swarm of natives pushed him back and in the pidgin of Dicantropus gave him to understand that entrance was forbidden. Root desisted with reluctance, and had been consumed by curiosity ever since ...

  Who had built the pyramid? In style it resembled the ziggurats of ancient Assyria. The granite had been set with a skill unknown, so far as Root could see, to the natives. But if not the natives-who? A thousand times Root had chased the question through his brain. Were the natives debased relics of a once-civilized race? If so, why were there no other ruins? And what was the purpose of the pyramid? A temple? A mausoleum? A treasure-house? Perhaps it was entered from below by a tunnel.

  As Root stood on the shore of the lake, looking across the desert, the questions flicked automatically through his mind though without their usual pungency. At the moment the problem of soothing his wife lay heavy on his mind. He debated a few moments whether or not to join her; perhaps she had cooled off and might like some company. He circled the pond and stood looking down at her glossy black hair.

  "I came over here to be alone," she said without accent and the indifference chilled him more than an insult.

  "I thought-that maybe you might like to talk," said Root. "I'm very sorry, Barbara, that you're unhappy."

  Still she said nothing, sitting with her head pressed back against the tree trunk.

  "We'll go home on the next supply ship," Root said. "Let's see, there should be one-"

  "Three months and three days," said Barbara flatly.

  Root shifted his weight, watched her from the corner of his eye. This was a new manifestation. Tears, recriminations, anger-there had been plenty of these before.

  "We'll try to keep amused till then," he said desperately. "Let's think up some games to play. Maybe badminton-or we could do more swimming."

  Barbara snorted in sharp sarcastic laughter. "With things like that popping up around you?" She gestured to one of the Dicantrops who had lazily paddled close. She narrowed her eyes, leaned forward. "What's that he's got around his neck?"

  Root peered. "Looks like a diamond necklace more than anything else."

  "My Lord!" whispered Barbara.

  Root walked down to the water's edge. "Hey, boy!" The Dicantrop turned his great velvety eyes in their sockets. "Come here!"

  Barbara joined him as the native paddled close.

  "Let's see what you've got there," said Root, leaning to the necklace.

  "Why, those are beautiful breathed his wife.

  Root chewed his lip thoughtfully. "They certainly look like diamonds. The setting might be platinum or indium. Hey, boy, where did you get these?"

  The Dicantrop paddled backward. "We find."

  "Where?"

  The Dicantrop blew froth from his breath-holes but it seemed to Root as if his eyes had glanced momentarily toward the pyramid.

  "You find in big pile of rock?"

  "No," said the native and sank below the surface.

  Barbara returned to her seat by the tree, frowned at the water. Root joined her. For a moment there was silence. Then Barbara said, "That pyramid must be full of things like that!"

  Root made a deprecatory noise in his throat. "Oh-I suppose it's possible."

  "Why don't you go out and see?"

  "I'd like to-but you know it would make trouble."

  "You could go out at night."

  "No," said Root uncomfortably. "It's really not right. If they want to keep the thing closed up and secret it's their business. After all it belongs to them."

  "How do you know it does?" his wife insisted, with a hard and sharp directness. "They didn't build it and probably never put those diamonds there." Scorn crept into her voice. "Are you afraid?"

  "Yes," said Root I'm afraid. There's an awful lot of them and only two of us. That's one objection. But the other, most important-"

  Barbara let herself slump back against the trunk. "I don't want to hear it"

  Root, now angry himself, said nothing for a minute. Then, thinking of the three months and three days till the arrival of the supply ship, he said, "It's no use our being disagreeable. It just makes it harder on both of us, I made a mistake bringing you out here and I'm sorry. I thought you'd enjoy the experience, just the two of us alone on a strange planet-"

  Barbara was not listening to him. Her mind was elsewhere.

  "Barbara!"

  "Shh!" she snapped. "Be still! Listen!" He jerked his head up. The air vibrated with a far thrum-m-m-m. Root sprang out into the sunlight, scanned the sky. The sound grew louder. There was no question about it, a ship was dropping down from space.

  Root ran into the station, flipped open the communicator-but there were no signals coming in. He returned to the door and watched as the ship sank down to a bumpy rough landing two hundred yards from the station.

  It was a small ship, the type rich men sometimes used as private yachts, but old and battered. It sat in a quiver of hot air, its tubes creaking and hissing as they cooled. Root approached.

  The dogs on the port began to turn, the port swung open. A man stood in the opening. For a moment he teetered on loose legs, then fell headlong.

  Root, springing forward, caught him before he struck ground. "Barbara!" Root called. His wife approached. "Take his feet we'll carry him inside. He's sick." They laid him on the couch and his eyes opened halfway. "What's the trouble?" asked Root "Where do you feel sick?"

  "My legs are like ice," husked the man. "My shoulders ache. I can't breathe."

  "Wait till I look in the book," muttered Root. He pulled out the Official Spaceman's Self-help Guide, traced down the symptoms. He looked across to the sick man. "You been anywhere near Alphard?" "Just came from there," panted the man. "Looks like you got a dose of Lyma's Virus. A shot of mycosetin should fix you up, according to the book."

  He inserted an ampoule into the hypo-spray, pressed the tip to his patient's arm, pushed the plunger home. "That should do it-according to the Guide."

  "Thanks," said his patient. "I feel better already." He closed his eyes. Root stood up, glanced at Barbara. She was scrutinizing the man with a peculiar calculation. Root looked down again, seeing the man for the first time. He was young, perhaps thirty, thin but strong with a tight, nervous muscularity. His face was lean, almost gaunt, his skin very bronzed. He had short black hair, heavy black eyebrows, a long jaw, a thin high nose.

  Root turned away. Glancing at his wife he foresaw the future with a sick certainty.

  He washed out the hypospray, returned the Guide to the rack, all with a sudden self-conscious awkwardness. When he turned around, Barbara was staring at him with wide thoughtful eyes. Root slowly left the room.

  A day later Marville Landry was on his feet and when he had shaved and changed his clothes there was no sign of the illness. He was by profession a mining engineer, so he revealed to Root, en route to a contract on Thuban XIV.

  The virus had struck swiftly and only by luck had he noticed the proximity of Dicantropus on his charts. Rapidly weakening, he had been forced to decelerate so swiftly and land so uncertainly that he feared his fuel was low. And indeed, when they went out to check, they found only enough fuel to throw the ship a hundred feet into the air.

  Landry shook his head ruefully. "And there's a ten-million-munit contract waiting for me on Thuban Fourteen."

  Said Root dismally, "The supply packets' due in three months."

  Landry winced. "Three months-in this hell-hole? That's murder." They returned to the station. "How do you stand it here?

  Barbara heard him. "We don't. I've been on the verge of hysterics every minute the last six months. Jim"-she made a wry grimace toward her husband-"he's got h
is bones and rocks and the antenna. He's not too much company." "Maybe I can help out," Landry offered airily. "Maybe," she said with a cool blank glance at Root. Presently she left the room, walking more gracefully now, with an air of mysterious gaiety.

  Dinner that evening was a gala event. As soon as the sun took its blue glare past the horizon Barbara and Landry carried a table down to the lake and there they set it with all the splendor the station could afford. With no word to Root she pulled the cork on the gallon of brandy he had been nursing for a year and served generous highballs with canned lime-juice, Maraschino cherries and ice.

  For a space, with the candles glowing and evoking lambent ghosts in the highballs, even Root was gay. The air was wonderfully cool and the sands of the desert spread white and clean as damask out into the dimness. So they feasted on canned fowl and mushrooms and frozen fruit and drank deep of Root's brandy, and across the pond the natives watched from the dark.

  And presently, while Root grew sleepy and dull, Landry became gay, and Barbara sparkled-the complete hostess, charming, witty and the Dicantropus night tinkled and throbbed with her laughter. She and Landry toasted each other and exchanged laughing comments at Root's expense- who now sat slumping, stupid, half-asleep. Finally he lurched to his feet and stumbled off to the station.

  On the table by the lake the candles burnt low. Barbara poured more brandy. Their voices became murmurs and at last the candles guttered.

  In spite of any human will to hold time in blessed darkness, morning came and brought a day of silence and averted eyes. Then other days and nights succeeded each other and time proceeded as usual. And there was now little pretense at the station.

  Barbara frankly avoided Root and when she had occasion to speak her voice was one of covert amusement. Landry, secure, confident, aquiline, had a trick of sitting back and looking from one to the other as if inwardly chuckling over the whole episode. Root preserved a studied calm and spoke in a subdued tone which conveyed no meaning other than the sense of his words.

  There were a few minor clashes. Entering the bathroom one morning Root found Landry shaving with his razor. Without heat Root took the shaver out of Landry's hand.

  For an instant Landry stared blankly, then wrenched his mouth into the beginnings of a snarl.

  Root smiled almost sadly. "Don't get me wrong, Landry. There's a difference between a razor and a woman. The razor is mine. A human being can't be owned. Leave my personal property alone." Landry's eyebrows rose. "Man, you're crazy." He turned away. "Heat's got you."

  The days went past and now they were unchanging as before but unchanging with a new leaden tension. Words became even fewer and dislike hung like tattered tinsel. Every motion, every line of the body, became a detestable sight, an evil which the other flaunted deliberately.

  Root burrowed almost desperately into his rocks and bones, peered through his microscope, made a thousand measurements, a thousand notes. Landry and Barbara fell into the habit of taking long walks in the evening, usually out to the pyramid, then slowly back across the quiet cool sand.

  The mystery of the pyramid suddenly fascinated Landry and he even questioned Root

  "I've no idea," said Root. "Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that the natives don't want anyone trying to get into it.

  "Mph," said Landry, gazing across the desert. "No telling what's inside. Barbara said one of the natives was wearing a diamond necklace worth thousands."

  "I suppose anything's possible," said Root. He had noticed the acquisitive twitch to Landry's mouth, the hook of the fingers. "You'd better not get any ideas. I don't want any trouble with the natives. Remember that, Landry."

  Landry asked with seeming mildness, "Do you have any authority over that pyramid?"

  "No," said Root shortly. "None whatever."

  "It's not-yours?" Landry sardonically accented the word and Root remembered the incident of the shaver.

  "No."

  Then," said Landry, rising, "mind your own business."

  He left the room.

  During the day Root noticed Landry and Barbara deep in conversation and he saw Landry rummaging through his ship. At dinner no single word was spoken.

  As usual, when the afterglow had died to a cool blue glimmer, Barbara and Landry strolled off into the desert. But tonight Root watched after them and he noticed a pack on Landry's shoulders and Barbara seemed to be carrying a handbag.

  He paced back and forth, puffing furiously at his pipe. Landry was right-it was none of his business. If there were profit, he wanted none of it. And if there were danger, it would strike only those who provoked it. Or would it? Would he, Root, be automatically involved because of his association with Landry and Barbara? To the Dicantrops, a man was a man, and if one man needed punishment, all men did likewise.

  Would there be killing? Root puffed at his pipe, chewed the stem, blew smoke out in gusts between his teeth. In a way he was responsible for Barbara's safety. He had taken her from a sheltered life on Earth. He shook his head, put down his pipe, went to the drawer where he kept his gun. It was gone.

  Root looked vacantly across the room. Landry had it. No telling how long since he'd taken it. Root went to the kitchen, found a meat-axe, tucked it inside his jumper, set out across the desert.

  He made a wide circle in order to approach the pyramid from behind. The air was quiet and dark and cool as water in an old well. The crisp sand sounded faintly under his feet. Above him spread the sky and the sprinkle of the thousand stars. Somewhere up there was the Sun and old Earth.

  The pyramid loomed suddenly large and now he saw a glow, heard the muffled clinking of tools. He approached quietly, halted several hundred feet out in the darkness, stood watching, alert to all sounds.

  Landry's atomite torch ate at the granite. As he cut, Barbara hooked the detached chunks out into the sand. From time to time Landry stood back, sweating and gasping from radiated heat.

  A foot he cut into the granite, two feet, three feet, and Root heard the excited murmur of voices. They were through, into empty space. Careless of watching behind them they sidled through the hole they had cut. Root, more wary, listened, strove to pierce the darkness... Nothing.

  He sprang forward, hastened to the hole, peered within. The yellow gleam of Landry's torch swept past his eyes. He crept into the hole, pushed his head out into emptiness. The air was cold, smelled of dust and damp rock.

  Landry and Barbara stood fifty feet away. In the desultory flash of the lamp Root saw stone walls and a stone floor. The pyramid appeared to be an empty shell. Why then were the natives so particular? He heard Landry's voice, edged with bitterness.

  "Not a damn thing, not even a mummy for your husband to gloat over."

  Root could sense Barbara shuddering. "Let's go. It gives me the shivers. It's like a dungeon."

  "Just a minute, we might as well make sure ... Hm." He was playing the light on the walls. "That's peculiar."

  "What's peculiar?"

  "It looks like the stone was sliced with a torch. Notice how it's fused here on the inside..."

  Root squinted, trying to see. "Strange," he heard Land mutter. "Outside it's chipped, inside it's cut by a torch, doesn't look so very old here inside, either."

  "The air would preserve it," suggested Barbara dubiously.

  "I suppose so-still, old places look old. There's dust and a kind of dullness. This looks raw."

  "I don't understand how that could be."

  "I don't either. There's something funny somewhere."

  Root stiffened. Sound from without? Shuffle of splay feet in the sand-he started to back out. Something pushed him, he sprawled forward, fell. The bright eye of Landry's torch stared in his direction. "What's that?" came a hard voice. "Who's there?"

  Root looked over his shoulder. The light passed over him, struck a dozen gray bony forms. They stood quietly just inside the hole, their eyes like balls of black plush.

  Root gained his feet "Hah" cried Landry. "So you're here too."r />
  "Not because I want to be," returned Root grimly.

  Landry edged slowly forward, keeping his light on the Dicantrops. He asked Root sharply, "Are these lads dangerous?"

  Root appraised the natives. "I don't know."

  "Stay still," said one of these in the front rank. "Stay still." His voice was a deep croak.

  "Stay still, hell exclaimed Landry. "We're leaving. There's nothing here I want. Get out of the way." He stepped forward.

  "Stay still... We kill..."

  Landry paused.

  "What's the trouble now?" interposed Root anxiously. "Surely there's no harm in looking. There's nothing here."

  "That is why we kill. Nothing here, now you know. Now you look other place. When you think this place important, then you not look other place. We kill, new man come, he think this place important"

  Landry muttered. "Do you get what he's driving at?"

  Root said slowly, "I don't know for sure." He addressed the Dicantrop. "We don't care about your secrets. You've no reason to hide things from us."

  The native jerked his head. "Then why do you come here? You look for secrets."

  Barbara's voice came from behind. "What is your secret? Diamonds?"

  The native jerked his head again. Amusement? Anger? His emotions, unearthly, could be matched by no earthly words. "Diamonds are nothing-rocks."

  "I'd like a carload," Landry muttered under his breath.

  "Now look here," said Root persuasively. "You let us out and we won't pry into any of your secrets. It was wrong of us to break in and I'm sorry it happened. We'll repair the damage-"

  The Dicantrop made a faint sputtering sound. "You do not understand. You tell other men-pyramid is nothing. Then other men look all around for other thing. They bother, look, look, look. All this no good. You die, everything go like before."

  "There's too much talk," said Landry viciously, "and I don't like the sound of it Let's get out of here." He pulled out Root's gun. "Come on," he snapped at Root, "let's move."

  To the natives, "Get out of the way or I'll do some killing myself!"

  A rustle of movement from the natives, a thin excited whimper.