Lin Carter - Down to a Sunless Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

... are they your—wives?"
    Brant had to laugh. Then he explained how he had stumbled upon them, staked out to die in the ruined city on the plateau, Harbin nodded thoughtfully.
    "That must have been Ythiom," he murmured, "the best preserved of the ancient ruins atop the Ogygis Regio. I'd hoped to visit it on my return journey, for I'm planning to end up in Sun Lake City."
    They talked further, and, as they talked, Agila plodded along in the rear of the party, leading the pack-loper. More rested from its ordeal by now, the beast was spruce enough to bear plump little Suoli. Nor was Agila at all displeased by this turn of events.
    He had been rather long without enjoying a woman, had Agila, and to happen upon two of them, both young and both, in different ways, desirable, seemed to him a stroke of luck. Perhaps the Timeless Ones were smiling upon his fortunes at last, he thought to himself—that being the People's term for their mysterious gods.
    The first woman, Zuarra, was too tall for his taste, and, with her close-cropped russet furcap, altogether too boyish.
    But the second was a choice morsel, he thought to himself. He liked his women soft, plump, submissive.
    Stealing a glance at her as she swayed listlessly in the saddle, clutching the saddle bow with both weak, ineffectual hands, he licked his thin cruel lips, dreaming of what might yet come of this chance meeting. . . .
    When they reached the cliffwall, they unburdened the lop-ers and let the two women prepare the midday meal, for it was afternoon by now and they had long fasted and were hungry.
    Squatting on his hams a few paces from the others, Agila studied the soft little woman narrowly, catching her startled gaze a time or two, on which occasion he gave her an admiring grin. Flustered, the girl blushed and looked hastily away; but, when she thought that the guide might not be observing, she stole a quick glance or two at him herself.
    After the meal, Brant explained to the older man his intention of riding along the base of the cliffs until they discovered a large ravine in which to take shelter for the night. Harbin nodded, drew a microviewer from his gear, and flipped the dial for a brief time.
    "There's just the sort of place you're looking for about two kilometers south of here," he remarked. "That is, if the CA Air Reconnaissance photomaps can be trusted. At even a moderate pace, we should be able to reach it well before nightfall—that is, if you have no objections to our joining you?"
    Brant shook his head. "Not at all; glad of some companionship," he grunted. Always safety in number, he knew.
    They mounted up and rode on, with Harbin mounted upon his own pack-loper and Zuarra taking her turn atop Brant's steed. As they rode, the scientist studied the exposed rock-strata and the loose gravel which carpeted the sands at the base of the cliffwall. His sharp eyes discerned many interesting fossils, uniformly of marine life, left over from the time, eons before, when this had been the bottom of a long-forgotten ocean.
    He eyed them a bit wistfully, but said nothing. True, he would very much have liked to take some samples, but in order to reach their destination and make camp before nightfall, they should keep moving. Besides, there would be many more fossils up ahead, he knew, and just as appetizing as these.
    From time to time, Harbin studied the dials on the pack of instruments he wore slung about his chest, and made a small, neat notation on the pad he wore at his waist. The geographical relief map he would eventually create from these notes would comprise the most scrupulously detailed and accurate survey ever made of these uninhabited southern parts of the planet—the CA Survey maps having been put together in a photomontage of footage taken by one or another of the permanent satellite stations in close orbit about Mars.
    The rest of the time, he studied Brant. He wondered who he truly was and what had brought him down to these inhospitable and