Edmund Cooper - Seahorse in the Sky

“My friend,” said Grahame without humour, “I think we may regard ourselves as being, in this place, on the field of battle.”

“So be it,” said the knight. “Let us then draw blood.”

With a surprisingly agile movement for one who was injured and lying in bed, Absu mes Marur gripped his sword, leaned forward and pressed the point lightly into Grahame’s throat.

Grahame felt a thin trickle of blood running down his neck. He gazed along a metre of razor sharp metal into the fierce eyes of a man who could end his life by a slight jerk of the wrist. He did not move.

Absu mes Marur growled. “Here is one whom I cannot kill. Here is one upon whom I may turn my back. Here is one in whose presence I may sleep. Here is one with whom my women may speak. If I forget these things, may a shameful death remind me. Thus, by the robe, it shall be.”

He put down the sword and gestured to Grahame to take it.

Grahame held it gingerly. He did not trust himself with it. He was afraid to place it too near Absu’s neck.

“Draw blood!” snapped the knight. Seeing that Grahame was reluctant, he pushed his throat on to the tip of the blade, and a thin stream of blood began to flow. “Now repeat the bond!”

Looking along the blade into the eyes of his companion, he spoke the words. Oddly, he found them very moving. They were, after all, a most powerful incantation. For they could stop men killing each other.

When he had finished, he placed the sword by Absu’s side.

“This means that we no longer need to fight each other?” he asked.

“It means that we must never meet in combat.”

“Good. To your custom, Absu, let us add one from my country.” He held out a hand and showed Absu mes Marur how to clasp it and shake it. “I give you my hand in friendship… Now, if you are not too tired, I will tell you about my own country and how I and my companions were brought to this place. When I have done so, you shall tell me about yourself.”

In as simple a way as possible, he tried to describe the technological civilization of the industrialized countries of Earth. But when he spoke of flying machines, of machines that could cover great distances rapidly on land or sea and of machines for communicating at a distance, he saw that Absu’s understanding and credulity were at breaking point. Hastily, he concluded with a description of their arrival on Erewhon in the plastic coffins and of their attempts at exploration.

“You are, then, a race of magicians?” Absu regarded him mistrustfully.

“No, Absu, we are not magicians. I think the main difference between us is that my people have had longer to work metals than your people. And the clever men among us discovered how to make machines that would do much of the work of men and beasts… Now let me hear your story. There will be time enough for us both to think about these things.”

So it was that Grahame, his head aching because Absu naively assumed much background knowledge on his part, learned of the fateful red spice caravan travelling from the Kingdom of Ullos to the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Gren Li. Absu had been in command of the whole entourage, which consisted of some thirty warriors, nine or ten merchants, about fifteen women and more than thirty pulpuls—a sort of mixture of deer and horse—carrying spice and other goods. Absu had no idea how or when the attack, as he chose to define it, had taken place. In this respect, his memories and those of his companions were just as hazy as the recollections of the terrestrials. All that he knew for certain was that the caravan had been five days out of Ullos and was making its way across the high and extensive mountain range that separated Ullos from the Upper and Lower Kingdoms.

The manner of their arrival on Erewhon was much the same as that of the terrestrials except that instead of an hotel there was a stout wooden keep and instead of a supermarket there was a herd of pulpuls. The curious thing was that Absu had received his injuries in the same way that Gunnar had met his death—quite possibly, even in the same pit.

Fortunately, on his exploratory jaunt, Absu had been riding a pulpul, which had taken the brunt of the fall and had impaled itself on the sharpened stakes. Ironically, most of Absu’s wounds were caused by the pulpul in its death throes. He evidently became unconscious for a time, but in the end he managed to stand on the remains of the pulpul and haul himself out of the pit.

Being half out of his mind with pain and shock, he had tried to find his way back to the safety of the keep only to wind up in a place that seemed, as he put it, to have been fashioned in the country of the dead.

The white faces of the people he met—it appeared he had not noticed Selene—only served to confirm his first impression that he was among demons or ghosts.

“You are not among magicians or demons or ghosts,” said Grahame, when he had finished his account. “You are among people like yourselves, Absu. It is true that our skins are paler—though some of our people are also dark—and that we are taller and live in different ways. But we, also, are men and women. Like you we have been taken from our own world and placed—”

“From your own world?” interrupted Absu. “You mean, do you not, from your own country?”

“No, from our own world.”

Absu mes Marur laughed. There was a look of relief upon his face. “So you magicians do not know everything,” he observed jovially. “Know, friend Russell, that there is only one world. It is at the centre of all things, and the sun is its lantern… You have already spoken some nonsense of a world beyond the stars and on the far side of the sun. But such cannot exist; for Earth is as it always was—the play-board of the gods.”

Grahame was confounded for a moment. “You speak of Earth?”

“I speak of Earth, this stage whereon our games are played, where we were born and where we must die. It is the only place, Russell, where men can live. It is the only place in all the strange abundance that the gods have created.”

Grahame gazed at him in perplexity. “What shape do you think this earth is?”

Again Absu laughed. “So much for the great machines and the great wisdom of you magicians.

Truly, you must live near to the rim and so to outer darkness… Even children know the shape of the Earth.

It is flat and round like a platter and very great are its dimensions. It is, doubtless, filled with many countries and many strange peoples with strange customs. But both your race and mine, Russell, belong to this Earth.

We are its children.”

“Then tell me,” said Russell helplessly, “what would happen if a man were to journey to the very end of the world?”

“He would fall off,” said Absu. “He would fall into darkness and be seen no more by his fellows.

Such is the punishment of folly.”

“Absu, my friend,” said Russell with a sigh. “I fear that both of us have much to learn.”

KEEP MARUR WAS no more than about fifteen kilometres to the north-west. When Absu had more or less recovered from his wounds—and by terrestrial standards his powers of recovery were amazing—Russell and Anna escorted him home. Russell had wanted to make the journey with Absu by himself. He was worried that there might be other surprises in store for the occupants of the Erewhon Hilton. The People of the River, for example, might turn up in force; and from reports they seemed pretty tough customers. So Russell was against reducing garrison strength more than was vital.

But Anna was firm. Someone, she claimed, would have to go with him, if only to keep him company on the homeward journey. Absu himself was quick to point out that his people would provide an escort for the return journey. But, being unused to arguing with women and noting that Russell as lord of his sept did not do too well at the task, he accepted defeat with as much grace as was possible for a warrior lord in a male-orientated culture. That is to say, he ignored her henceforth and confined all his remarks to Russell.