some people – East.’ He pointed.
‘What’s there – East?’
His face was so angry she was afraid of him. East was a town where he had seen monkeys, and people, in cages. He had seen the cages slung between work beasts, like the water cans on a carrying pole, people clinging to the bars and crying and begging, women and children as well as men, particularly children: they were to be sold in the towns along the coast.
‘Dann,’ said Mara, touching his arm to bring him back out of his anger. After a few moments he did sigh, then nodded at her: All right. And then in the dust on the floor of the machine he drew Ifrik again, put a finger where she knew he meant the Rock Village, and then walked his fingers to a spot that he whispered was Majab, and then to the next, which was Chelops.
They had been flying for about two hours when the skimmer began to descend. It landed on a high ridge; beyond it they could see only sky. The sun was red and gold and violet, sending rays across the sky.
Felice got out of the pilot’s seat and opened the door for them.
‘But this isn’t Chelops,’ said Dann. ‘You’ve cheated us.’
‘Chelops is over the ridge,’ she said. ‘Now listen to me. I am not supposed to say this. If they found out I’d said it…But don’t go into Chelops. Make a detour.’
‘For one thing we haven’t got any food and not much water left,’ said Mara.
‘Well I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know what to say. I like you two kids. Well, if it’s possible, see if you can buy some food in the market up in the north-east. Don’t go through the centre.’ And with that she was back in her machine, and they watched the machine labour into the sky and go over the ridge, just skimming it.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Dann. ‘I wanted to show you something up here anyway.’
And he began walking on, to the top of the ridge, where they could look down on Chelops. It was enormous. She had not imagined there could be anything like it. The light was going, it was dusk down there, but she could see tall black towers clustered together, though all dark, and a town spreading away from them, a big spread of houses, a wide scattering of lights.
Dann seemed familiar with this place. He said he had come over this ridge when he was walking down Ifrik to get to her, that somewhere close there was an old city, ruins he had heard people talk about.
They found a higher place, like the other nights, with flat rocks on it. There was no moon, but the stars glittered and seemed to rustle and talk. They ate the last piece of their bread, drank almost the last of their water, and lay down on a rock and looked up. The heat stored in the rock would warm them through the night, and above was the cold shine of the stars. He slept while she watched. She did hear scuffling and clicking from quite near, but these were not the sounds the dragons or lizards made. Then she slept. He woke her to show her an enormous beetle, yellow, with black feelers, running off to some rocks.
Before the sun rose they moved off their rock with its store of warmth and walked along the ridge that marked the descent into Chelops. ‘And here it is,’ said Dann, ‘it is where they said…’ He sounded perplexed. Ahead of them were buildings of all shapes, round or square or like bowls, but they had no roofs and were all of a piece, with round holes for windows. They were of a dull greenish or brown metal, sometimes two-storeyed with outside stairs, but were mostly one-storey. When the two stood a foot or so away from a wall they saw their reflections, brownish distorted pictures of themselves, deep in the dull metal. What was this metal that still reflected after so long? It was not rusted, or dulled, or dented or scratched. The smooth, dull walls enclosed spaces that were hot and airless, or, rather, the air seemed flat, like stale water: both of them were pleased to step outside into the heat. They went from one to another and found not a crack, not a hole, not a chip. Mara pulled out of her sack the tunic that could be worn for years and never show a mark, or a tear, never lose its dull sheen, and she said to Dann, ‘Look.’ She held the slippery glisten of the tunic near the wall of a house: they were the same; and she put the can for their water near a wall: the same. The same people made the houses, the tunics, the cans. The two walked about among the houses, the sun beating down on them, and the metal of the buildings did not absorb or throw out heat but kept a mild, indifferent tepidity, no matter where they laid their palms. This city extended along the edge of the ridge and back from it for a mile or so: lumps of buildings, dead, ugly things that could never change or decay.
Mara asked, ‘Did they tell you how old this place is?’
‘They think it is three thousand years old.’
‘Do they know what kind of people they were?’
‘They found bones. They used to throw their dead people down over the edge for the animals to eat. The bones were all broken up because they were so old, but those people were much taller than we are. They had bigger heads. They had long arms and their feet were big too.’
The two were dispirited, dismayed, even angry. ‘How did they make this thing,’ said Mara, suddenly emotional, and she hit the wall of a house, first with her fist, then with a stone; but there was not a sound – nothing.
‘No one knows,’ said Dann.
‘No one?’
‘Those old people were clever. They knew all kinds of things.’
‘Then I’m glad they’re dead. I’m glad, I’m glad,’ said Mara, and began shouting, ‘I’m glad, I’m glad – ’ and she was shouting away into the hot air all her years of feeling the slippery deadness of the material sliding around her, on her body, her legs, her arms.
Dann was leaning with one hand on a wall, watching her. What he said was, ‘Mara, you’re better, do you know that? When I saw you back there at the waterhole you couldn’t have shouted, or made this kind of – fuss.’ And he was smiling at her, affectionate, and with those narrow, sharp eyes of his for once ordinary – kind. And then Mara began to laugh. It was with relief. She felt she had escaped for ever the nastiness of that dead, brown stuff, and the unpleasantness that had made these houses. He smiled, while she laughed. She knew this was a moment new for them, of trust and relaxation, after such effort and danger. Did he know how rare it was for him not to be on guard?
‘The people who lived here,’ she said at last, summing up, ending their little moment, ‘they must have been monsters. How could they have borne it? To live all your life in houses that can’t change, with things that never break, with clothes you can’t tear, that never wear out?’ And she kicked a house, hard, so that her long toenails scratched the metal – or would have, if this metal could be affected by anything. For three thousand years these things had been here. And she remembered the ruins of the cities near the Rock Village with affectionate respect for them, their generosity in giving up what made them to people who came after, so that the houses of the Rock People were made of the stones and pillars of those people who had lived there so much earlier.
She squatted in the dust, took up a little stick, and said, ‘Tell me about numbers, Dann. Tell me about three thousand.’ And she laid her two hands flat on the earth: ten; and stretched out her two feet: ten again. He knelt in the dust opposite her, and with a stick wrote 10, then 20, looking at her to see if she understood. Then he went on: 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, saying the words as he wrote. And again he looked at her.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘One hundred.’ She had reached that point herself, though not to write it with these strange new marks. And now
