Edmund Cooper - Seahorse in the Sky

“I am the chosen leader of my people,” said Grahame. “I hope you can understand. We do not have a sept, as you call it, but I am the chief man, if you like, among my friends and companions.”

Absu mes Marur smiled faintly. “You are the lord of your sept. Know that your metal will not be disgraced when I am able to lift my sword.”

“I will not willingly fight you,” said Grahame. “Now or ever.”

“It is your duty.”

“It is not my duty. My duty is to take you to your home when you are well enough to travel.”

Again the knight shuddered. Then he attempted to pull himself together. “I am gonfalonier of the western keeps, charioteer of the red spice caravans, holder of the royal falchion and elected sire of the unknowns,” he announced with some pride. “Whoso dares to disgrace me may, in the end, need many squadrons of lances to preserve him.”

“No one wishes to disgrace you,” said Grahame patiently. “I and my companions wish only to help you… We will fight if we must, but we wish to live in peace. We desire to be your friends. We desire also that you and your people should be our friends. Now rest, Absu mes Marur. No one will harm you.”

The knight was breathing heavily, and sweat beaded on his forehead. “What is your rank?”

“I have no rank.”

Absu mes Marur groaned.

“For Christ’s sake, Russell!” exclaimed Marion. “Tell him something. The poor bastard is off his trolley with anxiety.”

“My dear,” said Grahame, “wasn’t it Oscar Wilde who said: we are separated by the barrier of a common language? He appears to speak English—though we know he can’t and his lips make different word shapes—so he has probably had something done to his head, like us. The trouble is, although we can communicate, his concepts are completely alien—medieval alien, I imagine.”

“Your rank!” shouted Absu mes Marur desperately.

Russell shrugged. “Oh well, here goes.” He turned to the knight. “I am Russell Grahame, Member of Parliament,” he announced impressively. “Voice of the queen’s people, creator of the royal laws, holder of the 1939–45 star, and member of the Royal Automobile Club.”

Absu mes Marur nodded eagerly and uncomprehendingly. “Then you are in truth lord of your sept

?”

“So be it. I am lord of my sept… But we belong to different worlds, you and I. Try to understand that. I and my people come from a world that is beyond the stars and on the far side of the sun. We were brought here in a way which—”

Absu mes Marur opened his eyes wide, uttered a piercing cry and retreated once more to the merciful haven of unconsciousness.

IT TOOK SEVERAL days before Absu mes Marur’s wounds were sufficiently healed for him to be able to walk once more. During that time, he and Russell Grahame learned a great deal about each other and about the quite different worlds from which each of them came. In this respect, Grahame had the considerable advantage of having been reared in a technological and emotionally sophisticated society. He was able to grasp ideas and concepts that were far beyond the mind of one whose culture was roughly similar—as Grahame had surmised—to that of the European Dark Ages.

The one thing that continued to surprise Russell Grahame and his companions was that Absu was indisputably human. Familiar though he was with the beginnings of space exploration and the preparations for interplanetary travel that were already being carried out on Earth, Grahame had never given much thought to its breathtaking possibilities. He had imagined that such journeyings must of necessity be confined to the solar system, since the gaps between the stars were too vast to be spanned effectively by ‘conventional’ modes of travel.

But he and his companions had received by their own experience dramatic confirmation that long star voyages were not only possible but could be accomplished with relative ease. However, because the terrestrials had been unconscious, presumably, during their abduction, there was no way of knowing the subjective time that had been needed to transport them to Erewhon. They could have been in their plastic coffins—possibly under some kind of suspended animation—for minutes or centuries. Perhaps one day their captors—if, indeed, they ever revealed themselves—might explain the mechanics as well as the purpose of the abduction. But, for the time being, all was wild speculation.

It became clear, though, after some discussion, that the terrestrials were not alone in their bafflement or in their isolation from the world they had known. Absu mes Marur and fifteen companions had arrived on Erewhon in a similar fashion. The only difference was that they had not been taken from an airborne transport but from an earth-bound caravan consisting of merchants, warriors, women and pack-beasts transporting the precious red spice of the Kingdom of Ullos to the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Gren Li.

That these kingdoms, as Absu described them, could not exist on any planet of the solar system, Grahame was absolutely certain. He knew enough about the solar system to realize that only Earth, the third planet, was naturally favourable to the evolution of human life.

Yet Absu mes Marur, whose planet of origin must therefore belong to an alien star, was undeniably human. On Earth he might have passed as the result of mixing African and Asian blood. But he was not of Earth nor even of the Sun’s family. Yet he was human. And, as time passed, Grahame began to entertain the equally baffling notion that Absu mes Marur and his kind would turn out to be genetically compatible with the men and women of Earth.

He thought grimly of Anna Markova’s light-hearted threat that she would bear his children. If things did not go well in this, fantastic situation that was developing—or, indeed, if things went too well—poor Anna and the other women in the group might find that they would be faced with the possibility of bearing—in every sense of the word—far more than they could at present imagine.

In the matter of his origin, Absu was not a great deal of help. Despite his initial horror and humiliation—inspired, no doubt, by strange tabus or attitudes—he came to trust Grahame, and even to accept his friendship.

“Let us talk, Absu,” said Grahame one morning when the knight was well enough to sit up and concentrate. “I think we have much to discuss.”

“I am willing to talk with the lord Grahame,” returned Absu evenly, “if the lord Grahame will declare with hands on head and heart, swearing by the sacred robe, that there is nothing of deceit or treachery in his words.”

Feeling somewhat foolish, Grahame placed one hand on his forehead and one on his chest. “Like this?”

Absu mes Marur nodded. “Such is the custom.”

“I swear,” said Grahame solemnly, “by the sacred robe that there is nothing of deceit or treachery in what I have to say. I swear also that neither I nor my companions have any enmity towards the lord Absu mes Marur or his people.”

“The lord Grahame is generous in his oath.”

“Russell is my first name and I understand that Absu is your first name. Is it proper for us to use these names to each other?”

“Only if we have made the bond.”

“How can we make this bond?”

Absu mes Marur smiled. “With a sword or a lance or a poniard at each other’s throats. Between sept lords it should properly be swords.”

“I have no sword, but I wish to make the bond.” He glanced at the weapon that had not left Absu’s bedside since he had placed it there. “May we not manage with one sword only?”

“It has been known,” conceded the knight, “but chiefly on the field of battle.”